“There is more savagery, more brutality, in the pages of Wuthering Heights than in any novel of the nineteenth century, and, for good measure, more beauty too, more poetry, and, what is more unusual, a complete lack of sexual emotion…” Daphne du Maurier.

West of Canon Press invites both creative and academic works intersecting Wuthering Heights with queer, genderqueer, transmasculinities, and a focus on erotics and disability. Rejecting Terry Eagleton’s assertion that Heathcliff and Cathy will not fuck because of their “unconscious fear of incest” we would instead enjoy a deliberate read of what is/isn’t taboo, sexual, kinky, and ‘hiding’ under the text, but nonetheless discernible despite efforts by the author’s family to suppress it.  We want your wild readings that centre Cathy and Heathcliff as forces of primal nature. We want to hear about the forcemasc of Cathy through Heathcliff, and the puppyboyification of Heathcliff against the anti-savage. We want to hear about the fabulously transmasculine Ellis Bell. After all Foucault said it best when he said we keep the Victorians too laced up. Rather than restricting those waistcoats and corsets, let us open them, buttons popping right off! We hope to explore the taboo and erotically explicit ways Wuthering Heights and other Victorian Classics push the boundaries of the nineteenth century…as well as the modern reception of these works.

All panels must interact with erotics and sexual historicism in some way. Some panels we would love to hear from/include: 

• Cripqueer erotic/sexual dynamics in Wuthering Heights 
• Transmasculinities and genderqueer erotics in Wuthering Heights
• Non-Western and Indigenous perspectives on Wuthering Heights 
• Ecocritical and eco-erotic perspectives on Wuthering Heights
• Phenomenological readings of Wuthering Heights.
• Kink, BDSM, and sexual countercultures with[in] Wuthering Heights
• Taboo-breaking and taboo-enforcing in Wuthering Heights. We are especially interested to hear from those who have watched the movie and read the book here.
• The erotics of the house and landscape in Wuthering Heights 
• The erotics of ghosts, death, and otherworldly/animal/monsterous beings 
• Adaptation studies. (Any and all adaptions also include music. Someone please write about Kate Bush or Genesis! Please!)
• Creative pieces and interpretations
• Incest Studies 
• Biography about the Brontes that resists a cisgender reading and positions (especially those that present the author of the text as transmasculine, and regard the scholarship of du Maurier in relation to Branwell Bronte)

Note: Last conference I tried to host a movie after but my own howling wind and storm-loved moors prevented this. This year, our moors are even more windy and snow covered. Instead, we will simply discuss Fennell’s latest adaptation on breaks! 

Abstracts Title + 250-350 words. 

Conference Date: May 29th, 2026 - virtual.