The ninth annual Brandeis Novel Symposium (BNS), which will
take place on Friday October 17, 2025, invites proposals for
papers on Henry James’s novel The Bostonians (1886). The
Brandeis Novel Symposium is a one-day conference that
chooses a single novel as a point of focus for salient
theoretical, historical, political, and narratological
questions about the novel as a genre. (See the 2024 BNS
website and this archive for more information about the
BNS.)

In that spirit, we welcome proposals approaching The
Bostonians from any angle. Among the topics that may spark
a productive BNS conversation: rhetoric, mass media, and
social influence; social reform, progressivism, and their
blind spots; America’s cultural elite and its discontents;
queerness, gender, and sexuality. Papers illuminating the
novel’s specific social context and ones that draw out the
book’s resonances with the present day are equally
welcome. Or work examining the novel’s formal features, its
early serialization and enduring influence on other
(including subsequent) authors and texts, as well as
discussions of ways that The Bostonians exemplifies James’s
insights, biases, contradictions, and the lessons they offer
today.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words by June
15, 2025 to Iana Seerung at iseerung@brandeis.edu.