VISAWUS 2025: Gateways

deadline for submissions: 
March 1, 2024
full name / name of organization: 
Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States
contact email: 

  1. Meet me in St. Louis for VISAWUS 2025: Gateways

    October 3-5, 2025

    Saint Louis University

    Keynote Speaker: Kristin Mahoney, Michigan State University

     

     Paper topics may include, but are not limited to:


    Boundaries and thresholds

    Railways

    Westward expansion and manifest destiny

    Surveillance

    Travel and travel literature

    Colonial ports and entries

    Institutional admissions and permissions

    Movement or motion

    Contact points between genres & literary periods

    Purgatory and near-death experiences

    Theories of liminality and sacred space

    Barriers or entry points to Victorian studies

    Victorian Catholicism or anti-Catholic prejudice

    Representations of the US in Victorian fiction

    St. Louis as "gateway to the West"

    1904 World's Fair in St. Louis

    Images of St. Louis in film

    Victorian house museums

     

    Please submit abstracts of no more than 200 words along with a one-page CV to visawus2025@gmail.com by March 1, 2025. Panel proposals are also welcome and should include a brief panel overview, descriptions of individual papers, and one-page CVs for each panelist.

    About the location: Saint Louis University is a Catholic, Jesuit institution in mid-town Saint Louis, founded in 1818. The campus and surrounding neighborhood abound with buildings dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Saint Louis University is also close to the St. Louis Art Museum, the Missouri History Museum, the St. Louis Botanical Gardens, and many beautifully preserved Victorian House Museums, including the Samuel Cupples House on campus as well as the Campbell House Museum and Chatillon-Demenil Mansion nearby.