Lincoln, Nebraska, April 13 - 16, 2016
Deadline: Sep 30, 2015

The New and the Novel in the 19th Century/New Directions in 19th-Century Studies
April 13-16, Lincoln, Nebraska

We invite papers and panels that investigate any aspect of the new and
the novel in the long 19th century, including forms and genres (song
cycles, photography, “loose baggy monsters”), fashions and roles (the
dandy, crinoline, Berlin wool work), aesthetics (Pater, panoramas), the
old made new (Graecophilia, dinosaurs), crimes and vices (serial
murder, racial science), faiths (Mormons, Positivists), geographies
(frontiers, the source of the Nile), models of heroism (Custer, Byron,
F. Nightingale), times (railroad tables, the eight-hour-day),
psychologies (phrenology, chirology, Freud), attractions (the Great
Exhibition, sensation fiction, Yellowstone), and anxieties (Chartism,
empire). Recent methods in 19th-century studies (digital humanist
approaches and editing, “surface,” “suspicious,” and “deep” reading)
are invited, as are theorizations of novelty itself or epistemologies
of the new, and alternate, interdisciplinary, and trans-Atlantic
interpretations of the theme.
Please email 250-word abstracts for 20-minute papers along with
one-page CVs to the program chairs by September 30, 2015, to
ncsanebraska2016@gmail.com. Abstracts should include author’s name,
institutional affiliation if any, and paper title. We welcome panel
proposals with three panelists and a moderator, or alternative formats
with pre-circulated papers and discussion.
Please note that submission of a proposal constitutes a commitment to
attend the conference if the proposal is accepted. All proposals will
be acknowledged, and presenters will be notified in December 2015.
Graduate students whose proposals are accepted may submit complete
papers in competition for a travel grant to help cover transportation
and lodging. Scholars who live outside the North American continent,
whose proposals have been accepted, may submit a full paper to be
considered for the International Scholar Travel Grant.