CALL FOR PAPERS

British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS) PGR & ECR Conference 
 
ROMANTIC (UN)CONSCIOUSNESS
 
Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge: 4th-5th September 2025

Online: 12th September 2025
 
Keynote Speakers Include:

Dr Rowan Rose Boyson (King's College London)

Dr Christopher Bundock (University of Essex)
 
“No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience.” 
 
- John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1689)
 
“The Dream is a second life. I have not been able to pierce without shuddering these doors of ivory or horn which separate us from the invisible world.” 
 
"I thought I understood that a link existed between the external world and the internal world; that inattention or mental disorder alone distorted the apparent relationships, - and that this explained the strangeness of certain paintings, similar to these grimacing reflections of real objects which move on troubled water.”
 
- Gérard de Nerval, Aurélia  (1855)
 
“One understands something most easily when one sees it represented. Thus, one understands the I only insofar as it is represented by the Non-I. The Non-I is the symbol of the I, and its sole purpose is to serve the I's understanding of itself. One understands the Non-I similarly, that is, only insofar as it is represented by the I, which becomes its symbol.”
 
“The beginning is a concept that comes later. The beginning originates later than the I; therefore, the I cannot have begun.” 
 
- Novalis, Das Allgemeine Brouillon (1798 - 1799)

The Romantic period marked the start of a new way of thinking about human experience and its relation to the surrounding world. Scientists, philosophers, writers, and artists throughout Britain and Europe challenged preconceived ideas about human consciousness and placed an emphasis on exploring the space of the subjective imagination. British and European Romanticism’s philosophical, literary, and aesthetic output illustrates the complex and varied debates that surrounded the topic of consciousness or, as the Romantics would have described it, the imagination.

The 2025 BARS Early Career Researcher and Postgraduate Conference invites explorations of the theme of ‘(un)consciousness’ within the context of Romantic-period ideas and cultural production. The conference will unite early-career and postgraduate researchers whose work considers the concept and representations of ‘consciousness’ from as wide a range of critical perspectives as possible. 
 
Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to:

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• Conceptions of the Romantic Self (and Other)
• Romantics and the history of emotions
• Altering states of consciousness
• Romantics and affect studies
• Self-conscious poetry, prose, and drama
• Romantic theories of the mind e.g. in science, philosophy, the arts
• Mind/body (dis)connection
• Relationship between the mind and the world
• Romantic Epistemology
• Symbolism and Dreams
• the Sublime, the Beautiful, and the Uncanny
• Temporality, spatiality, and consciousness in Romanticism
• Ecological and Climatological (un)consciousness
• Romantic and Panpsychism
• Political (un)consciousness
• Comparative Romanticisms and global consciousness
• Race and consciousness

Please submit 250-word abstracts for 15-minute papers, along with 100-word biographies through the forms below:

Online Paper Proposals:     SUBMIT HERE

In-Person Paper Proposals:     SUMBIT HERE

We also welcome 600-word proposals for pre-arranged panels, to be submitted by a panel chair, including individual abstracts and biographies from all panel speakers (3 papers per panel), through the following forms:

Online Panel Proposals:     SUMBIT HERE

In-Person Panel Proposals:     SUBMIT HERE​

All speakers listed on a prearranged panel are also asked to fill in and submit the individual paper form. This is to ensure that we are aware of any individual preferences, as well as all delegates' access and dietary requirements.

The deadline for submissions is Monday 20th January 2025.

Please direct all enquiries to bars.postgrads@gmail.com and refer to our conference website for further details: https://barsconference2025.wixsite.com/home

Conference Organisers: Zooey Ziller (University of Cambridge), Cleo O'Callaghan Yeoman (Universities of Stirling, Glasgow, and Edinburgh), Kate Nankervis (University of York)