VISAWUS 2025: Gateways
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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.