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The Latchkey welcomes Calls for Papers, notices of forthcoming conferences and news of conference panels: unbolt@gmail.com

Call for Papers: The Sibyl # 5 Vernon Lee and the issue of gender

In ‘The Economic Parasitism of Women’ (Gospels of Anarchy), Vernon Lee complained that ‘women were over-sexed,’ which precluded any possibility of their being considered as men’s equals. At a time notorious for its segregation of men and women into ‘separate spheres,’ she wished for a sex-blind society, in which the achievements of individual artists could be assessed regardless of their gender.

Acutely aware of the limitations imposed on the weaker sex by Victorian mores and morals, Lee sided with the suffragettes, and is generally well-known for her vindication of women’s rights as well as for her unconventional life style.

Women’s quest for identity and struggle for freedom, love and social recognition are recurrent themes in her texts, where women feature prominently, either as characters, narrators, artists, muses, models, sources of inspiration or as creators in their own right.

The Sibyl therefore invites papers on the issue of gender in Vernon Lee’s life, theoretical works, fiction, correspondence…
Deadline: 25 May 2009; papers should be sent to the editor : Sophiegeoffroy632@yahoo.fr

Feminist Transitions, Edge Hill University, 19-21 June 2009

Recent years have seen an unprecedented broadening of feminist issues and practices. Feminist perspectives have moved across and beyond a number of established boundaries – including geographical, national, economic, ethnic, political, theoretical, cultural, popular, sexual and gender – to expand the scope of the movement. Now more than ever, there is a need for an inclusive feminism that sees diversity as strength and engages productively with the complexities and contradictions of the twenty-first century.

Conference team welcomes proposals for papers and panels on individual feminist thinkers and how their feminist positions have transitioned.

Please send a 250-word abstract for papers and/or a 500-word abstract for panels, along with a brief biographical note to feministtransitions@edgehill.ac.uk
DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: 30 JANUARY 2009

Women's Reading in the Nineteenth Century: a symposium

Thursday 26 March 2009, 10am-4pm 
To be held at the Institute of English Studies, University of London
Organised by the Reading Experience Database 1450-1945, the Open University Book History and Bibliography Research Group, and the Institute of English Studies
Confirmed respondents:
David Finkelstein (Queen Margaret University Edinburgh), Gill Sutherland (Newnham College, Cambridge)
Confirmed speakers:
Christina de Bellaigue (Exeter College, Oxford), Rosalind Crone (The Open University), Ella Dzelzainis (King's College, London), Katie Halsey (IES, University of London), Naomi Hetherington (London Metropolitan University), Mark Towsey (University of Liverpool)

“Much may be learned with regard to lovely woman by a look at the book she reads in.” (Thackeray)
What did women in the nineteenth-century read? How did they read it? What assumptions were made about women's reading at the time? The purpose of this symposium is to consider the different ways in which nineteenth-century female readers reacted to the texts that they encountered, in particular within different institutional and social groups, such as prisons, schools and literary networks. We will discuss the textual matter that women read, and the spectrum of responses to reading that they recorded; these range from compliant devotion to furious resistance. Such responses tell us not only about “lovely woman” herself, but also about the cultural conditions in which nineteenth-century women became readers.

The day will end with a visit to the Women's Library in Whitechapel, including a guided tour of the collections and the exhibition Between the Covers: the Politics and Pleasure of Women's Magazines.
Places are limited – please RSVP to Katie.Halsey@sas.ac.uk and R.H.Crone@open.ac.uk by 1 March 2009 to confirm your attendance.

CWWN Conference - Sex and the City 1860-1930:  Women and the Urban Experience

An International Interdisciplinary Conference
School of the Arts, The University of Northampton, 10-11 July 2009
Increased industrialisation in the latter half of the nineteenth century saw an influx of people into cities, many of whom were single women who moved to the city to work.  Hence, women became consumers as well as producers.  Was their perceived financial independence a reality or a myth?  How did women respond to being the “customer”?  Was there a conscious “gendering” of the way in which stores displayed their goods?  How were independent women portrayed in the literature, film and publications of the period?  What was the significance of the flâneuse and [how] did she displace/differ from the flâneur?  Did the city effect a shift in sexual mores?  How far did immigrant women’s socio-sexual role change when they moved, for example, from Eastern Europe to the USA?  To what extent did the city offer “safe” spaces for single women, or was the city more sexually dangerous?  These are among the many intriguing questions that arise… 

Abstracts of 200 words for 20-minute papers by 31st March 2009 to Laurence.Marriott@northampton.ac.uk or sonya.andermahr@northampton.ac.uk
Or by post to: Dr. Laurence Marriott/Dr. Sonya Andermahr, Avenue Campus, St. George’s Avenue, Northampton NN2 6JD, U.K.

Swinburne: A Centenary Conference

Proposals for papers are invited for a conference marking the hundredth anniversary of Swinburne's death. ‘Swinburne: A Centenary Conference' will take place in the Institute of English Studies, Senate House (London) on Friday 10th and Saturday 11th of July, 2009.

Please email proposals (500 words maximum) to all three organizers at the following addresses, stating your academic institution and status (if applicable), by 28 February 2009.
c.h.maxwell@qmul.ac.uk,
Patricia.Pulham@port.ac.uk
stefano-maria.evangelista@trinity.ox.ac.uk

Victorian Popular Novelists 1860-1900

10-12 September 2009 at the Institute for English Studies, Senate House, University of London
Keynote speakers include Professor Pamela Gilbert

In 1899 the Daily Telegraph published a list of the 100 Best Novels in the World, a list that included works by a number of Victorian popular novelists: Ainsworth, Besant & Rice, Braddon, Collins, George Lawrence, Lever, Ouida, Reade and Mrs Henry Wood. Little more than a century on, several of these writers have re-established themselves within the canon while others are the subject of increasing scholarly interest. This conference will reflect upon recent developments, such as digitization and new academic reprints, and assess their impact upon research and teaching practices. It also marks the launch of the Victorian Popular Fiction Association which aims to foster research in this field through regular seminars and conferences.

We invite proposals for 20 minute research papers addressing any aspect of the work of popular novelists – female and male - from the second half of the nineteenth century. We would like to draw attention to the work of a wide range of popular writers from this period, those as yet under-researched, and also writers who already command a wealth of academic attention. Writers of particular interest include Florence Marryat, Ouida, Mrs Henry Wood, Charles Reade, Marie Corelli, Rhoda Broughton. But the conference will also devote attention to popular novelists with a well established academic following such as Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, amongst others.
Postgraduate students are particularly welcome.
Please send abstracts of no more than 200 words to either Jane Jordan (j.jordan@kingston.ac.uk) or Greta Depledge (depledgeg@aol.com) by Thursday 2 April 2009.

Call for Papers: The 7th Biennial International Auto/Biography Association Conference

University of Sussex 29 June-2 July 2010

Conference Topic: Life Writing and Intimate Publics

 The Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research and the International Auto/Biography Association invite scholars and life writers to attend the 7th IABA conference, at the University of Sussex, Brighton, England.

Abstracts for papers should be @300 words long. There should be an abstract for each paper in a panel presentation. The deadline for abstracts will be 1 September, 2009. Though e-mail is preferred, abstracts can be submitted by mail or fax to the following numbers and addresses.

 IABA Conference Call for Papers c/o The Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research Centre for Continuing Education University of Sussex Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QQ, England e-mail: m.jolly_at_sussex.ac.uk fax: 01273 877534

UPDATE: [Victorian] Kate Chopin: Open Panel at 2009 ALA--Deadline Extended

Kate Chopin: Open Panel
To encourage an interdisciplinary dialogue about Chopin's works, the Kate Chopin International Society is proposing an open panel for the American  Literature Association 20th Annual Conference, which will take place on May 21-24, 2009, in Boston, MA. Interdisciplinary approaches which take into account, for example, contemporary history or economics, gender politics, sociological movements, or psychological theories, might serve as suggestions; however, the panel is open to other approaches as well. Panelists are strongly encouraged to explore Chopin's lesser known works in addition to her The Awakening. Chopin's work is often remarked upon for the originality of its perspective about existing institutions, so the Kate Chopin International Society encourages new ways of viewing the Chopin canon. Please send 250-400 word abstracts and a short biographical statement to both Kathleen Nigro at nigrok_at_umsl.edu

CFP: [Victorian] Personal Narrative and Political Discourse (Special Issue of Biography 8/15/2009)

Call for Papers. Special Issue of _Biography_ 32.1 (Winter 2010).
“Personal Narrative and Political Discourse.” Guest Editor: Sidonie Smith.

The 2008 U.S. presidential election was remarkable in part for the role played by the published life narrative and its refractions through old and new media. A race that started out as a referendum on war and became focused on the economy was largely about neither. As Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager, announced in early September: “This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” Central to that composite view were the identity narratives through which candidates figured themselves as desirable and electable. In this historic election, voters, journalists, pundits, campaign operatives, and candidates engaged in an extended national debate about the uses and abuses, mediations and meanings of autobiographical performances and published life narratives. For a special issue on "Personal Narrative and Political Discourse," we seek essays exploring this conjunction of autobiographical discourse and political discourse, life writing and national/transnational political cultures. They can mine this conjunction in the US context or in other global contexts. They can focus on contemporary political cultures or earlier historical periods. They can explore remediations of life stories through multiple routes of circulation, multiple audiences, and multiple formats. They can read this conjunction through heterogeneous theoretical lenses.

TO SUBMIT: Manuscripts should be double spaced, and ideally between 3,000 and 8,000 words. A double-blind submission policy will be followed; the author’s name should not appear anywhere on the manuscript, but an accompanying cover letter should contain the author’s name and address.
Consultation on manuscript ideas is welcome. Ideas and submissions may be sent by email to biograph_at_hawaii.edu, or in paper form to
Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, Center for Biographical
Research, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, 1800 East-West Road #325,
Honolulu, HI 96822 USA.
Deadline for receipt of completed papers: 15 August 2009.

UPDATE: [Victorian] Melmoth 2009

>From February 2009, Melmoth , The Oscholars digest of the Victorian
Gothic, will graduate to become a freestanding journal in The Oscholars family and in this new format we will be reprinting relevant articles on the subjects of the Victorian Gothic, the fantastic, Decadence and Sensation fiction. We also solicit original peer-reviewed articles on these subjects. Interdisciplinary articles on all aspects of the aforementioned topics are welcome. Our intention is to publish four issues a year, so articles may be submitted at any time for consideration.

Reminders will be published on our forum: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/oscholarship/
We will consider both short pieces and longer articles, ranging from between 1,000 -8,000 words in length. Articles should be written in endnote format. All queries and articles can be submitted for consideration to Dr Sondeep Kandola at melmothjournal_at_live.co.uk or sent to Melmoth c/o The School of English, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT. U.K.

UPDATE: [Victorian] Women Writing Space Conference: Registration now open

Registration is now open for "Women Writing Space: Representations of Gender and Space in post-1850 British Women's Writing" taking place at the University of Warwick, Saturday 7th March 2009.
For further information and a booking form please see the conference
website: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/hrc/confs/wws/
The provisional programme is also now available on the website, and abstracts of papers will be posted shortly.

Further conference information:
In the second half of the 20th century space has become a reference point of cultural debates. Feminist critics have been particularly receptive to the new findings in this field, and set out to explore the specificity of the relationship between gendered subjects and the spaces they inhabit.

This one-day conference will explore spatial perspectives on women’s writing from a range of disciplines, reflecting the scope of contemporary feminist interest in spatial configurations. The conference will address
the issue of “how British women writers represent space”, considering questions such as, how do women writers construct literary space? What types of spaces/places are represented in works by women? How are
received notions of space/place interpreted, accepted, or contested? How do we theorise the textual spaces in women’s writing?

Papers will discuss British women’s writing over a period ranging from the mid-19th century to the present. This choice conveys our intuition that the contemporary interest in space may be traced back to the Victorian age, when industrialization, and the rapid changes in landscape and workplace it involved, considerably developed the writers’ spatial awareness. Without losing sense of the specificity of the historical periods involved, this conference will therefore provide the site for a productive comparative perspective.

Guest speakers:
Lynne Walker (University of London)
Rosa Ainley (London Metropolitan University)
Any enquires may be directed to the conference organisers:
Charlotte Mathieson C.E.Mathieson_at_warwick.ac.uk
Arina Lungu A-N.Lungu_at_warwick.ac.uk
or Sue Dibben at the Humanities Research Centre HRC_at_warwick.ac.uk

CFP: [Victorian] Institutions: History, Practice, Method -- UCLA Conference June 5th, 2009

20th Annual UCLA Southland Graduate Student Conference Call for Papers
Conference Title: Institutions: History, Practice, Method Conference Date: June 5th, 2009
Keynote Speakers: Helen Deutsch and Mark McGurl, UCLA Department of English
Please email abstracts of 200-300 words, in .doc or .pdf files, to Glenn
Brewer and James Landau at southland.ucla_at_gmail.com by March 16th, 2009.
Further information will appear at
http://www.english.ucla.edu/events/southland.

CFP: [Victorian] Tennyson Bicentenary Panel at RMMLA (3/1; 10/8-10/10/09)

Tennyson Bicentenary: 21st-Century Critical Responses to the Victorian Laureate Special Topic Panel
Rocky Mountain MLA Convention, 63rd Annual Meeting October 8-10, 2009
The Cliff Lodge at Snowbird, Utah (29 miles from the Salt Lake City airport)
Submission Deadline: 1 March 2009
Paper proposals sought for an RMMLA panel commemorating Alfred Lord Tennyson’s bicentenary year with new critical approaches to his poetry. Papers on any of Tennyson’s poetry, from a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives, are encouraged.
Email or send 300-word abstracts by March 1, 2009 to:
Ingrid Ranum
Department of English
Gonzaga University
E. 502 Boone Ave.
Spokane, WA 99258
ranum_at_gonzaga.edu
Please see the RMMLA Website (http://rmmla.wsu.edu) for information regarding membership and conference registration.

UPDATE: [Victorian] Conference Registration Info TENNYSON’S FUTURES’, 27-28 MARCH 2009, ENGLISH FACULTY, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.
-‘Locksley Hall’

I remember once in London the realization coming over me, of the whole of
its inhabitants lying horizontal a hundred years hence.
-Alfred Tennyson

Tennyson was acutely aware of his place in time, and the future, with all of the uncertainties and certainties that it holds, is one of the central preoccupations of his poetry. The bicentenary of Tennyson’s birth in 2009 provides an ideal opportunity to consider the poet’s position both in relation to his future and to ours. This two-day conference will explore possible future directions in Tennyson studies and ask vital questions about Tennyson’s conception of and relationship to the future. How does Tennyson imagine the various futures that he describes in his poetry? How is his role as a poet affected by his need to look forward? How have later writers and artists responded to Tennyson’s work? And how might the emergence of new critical trends affect assessments of Tennyson in the future?

Speakers include:
Matthew Bevis, Matthew Campbell, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Eric Griffiths, Samantha Matthews, Francis O’Gorman, Cornelia Pearsall, Seamus Perry, Christopher Ricks, W. David Shaw, Nicholas Shrimpton, Helen Small, Herbert F. Tucker.
Registration for the conference is now open. Please register by 27 February to take advantage of the currently reduced conference fee.

We are pleased to announce that we are offering two postgraduate bursaries for conference reporters, funded by the British Association of Victorian Studies (BAVS). Each bursary will be worth £50 and will cover the cost of the conference registration fee. The holders of these bursaries will each write a short report on the conference, one for the BAVS newsletter and one for the Literature Compass website. If you wish to apply for one of these bursaries, please write to us saying what interests you about the conference and what makes you a suitable reporter. Applicants should send a proposal of no more than 250 words to tennysonsfutures_at_gmail.com by 30 January.

For further information about the bursaries, about registration, and about the conference meal and accommodation at Brasenose College, University of Oxford, please visit the conference website at
sites.google.com/site/tennysonsfutures or email tennysonsfutures_at_gmail.com

CFP: [Victorian] New Victorian Postgraduate Journal

Call for Papers: New Postgraduate Journal – Victorian Network
Victorian Network is a new online journal dedicated to publishing and promoting the best postgraduate work in Victorian Studies. The journal is guest edited by established scholars in the field and peer-reviewed by other doctoral students.
Two types of submissions are now accepted for the first issue. We are seeking essays of no longer than 7000 words which engage with the topic of the first issue, “The British Empire and Victorian Literature and Culture”.

Please send submissions to Victoriannetwork_at_gmail.com. Deadline for
Submissions: 1st April 2009.

CFP: [Victorian] Inventing American Supremacy (ASA, November 5-8, 2009; deadline January 26)

Relevant topics may include:
• invention, creation, and art
• inventions, use-value, and pragmatism
• inventors as embodiments of the populist intellectual
• the process of invention as it relates to scientific experiment
• invention as a material embodiment of “progress”
• inventors as folk heroes
• invention, patent law, and copyright
• “tinkering” as an epistemological and intellectual process
Please submit 250-500 word abstracts, along with C.V., to Samuel Schwartz
at sam29_at_email.arizona.edu by Friday, January 24th.

CFP: [Victorian] SCMLA 2009--Special Session: Oscar Wilde: History, Sexuality, and Displacement

In recent decades, Oscar Wilde has been theorized as a figure who represented a historical shift or a displacement in how we think of identity, gender, and sexuality. This panel invites papers that interrogate these critical assumptions, broadly addressing Wilde's own thinking about the relationship between history and identity. Papers may also focus on the critical reception of Wilde from the early 20th century to the present.
This is a special session for the SCMLA 2009 conference in Baton Rouge, LA. The theme of the conference is "Continuity and Displacement." A panel will be chosen by February 20 and selected panels will be announced by March 2009.
Please send abstracts of 250 words to Daniel Novak (dnovak_at_lsu.edu) by January 25, 2009

UPDATE: [Victorian] Instruction, Amusement and Spectacle: Popular Shows and Exhibitions 1800-1914

Conference at the University of Exeter, UK 16-18 April 2009.
Confirmed keynote speakers: Prof. Bernard Lightman, Prof. Vanessa
Toulmin, Prof. Martin Hewitt Dr. Jon Burrows, Dr. Ann Featherstone
  
This conference aims to examine the eclectic range of popular entertainments in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, with a particular focus on exhibition practices. The intention is to provide a forum that brings together the range of research currently being undertaken by different disciplines in this area, including film studies, Victorian studies, history of science, performance studies, English literature, art history and studies of popular culture.
CONFERENCE REGISTRATION NOW OPEN at
http://www.sall.ex.ac.uk/conferences/victorian-shows.html

CFP: [Victorian] Victorian Markets and Marketing (Mar 10)

Preliminary Call for Papers: Victorian Markets and Marketing
October 15-17, 2009 at The Coast Renaissance Hotel, Vancouver, BC
A Joint Conference of the Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada and the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States. Hosted by Emily Carr University of Art and Design and the University of the Fraser Valley

"Come buy, come buy"—the call of Christina Rossetti’s goblins encapsulates the lure and menace of Victorian commodity culture. This international conference will bring together specialists in Victorian art history, history, gender studies, science, and literature to contemplate the many markets of Victorian England and its colonies. We invite paper proposals on literary and art markets, financial markets, Victorian capitalism, speculation, consumerism and economic transformations.

CFP: Sexing the Book, McGill Graduate Conference on Language and Literature 2009, (1/16/09; 3/27-29/09)

The English Graduate Students Association of McGill University is pleased to announce its 15th annual Graduate Conference on Language and Literature. This year’s conference is entitled “Sexing the Book: Bodies, Texts, Practices.” The conference will be held in Montreal, Canada on March 27-29th, 2009.

From Chaucer to Butler and beyond, writers, critics, and theorists have been writing about sex in conventional as well as controversial ways. Within literary studies, a recent focus on sexual practices and sex work has reemphasized the material nature of sexual acts, providing detailed and fascinating examinations of sexuality’s particular socio-historical forms. In literary and extra-literary contexts alike, scholarship on sexuality continues to provide a forum for questioning broader cultural practices, the nature of human inwardness, and various kinds of social relationships.

At this year’s conference, we hope to bring together a variety of perspectives on human sexuality, including literary, sociological, anthropological, and historical views of sex. We warmly invite both literary and non-literary papers that address aspects of human sexuality from a range of disciplines, critical perspectives, periods, and genres.

Our keynote speaker for the conference will be Professor William Fisher of Lehman College, CUNY. His award-winning book is entitled Materializing Gender in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Cambridge UP, 2006), and he is presently working on a new book on sexual practices in the Renaissance.
Please send paper proposals (300 words) to Emily at emily.essert_at_mail.mcgill.ca or to Sara at saracoodin_at_hotmail.com by Friday, January 16th, 2009. If you are interested in applying to one of the specific panels listed on UPenn CFP list, please contact the panel coordinators directly at the address provided. Applicants with successful proposals will be notified by email in Early February.

CFP: [General] Literary London Conference 2009 (UK; 3/27/09; 7/9-10/09)

Literary London 2009
Representations of London in Literature An Interdisciplinary Conference Hosted by the School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London UK
Organised by the University of Northampton, Kingston University, and Queen Mary, University of London
9-10th July 2009  

Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers which consider any period or genre of English literature about, set in, inspired by, or alluding to central and suburban London and its environs, from the city’s roots in pre-classical times to the present day. While the main focus of the conference will be on literary texts, we actively encourage interdisciplinary contributions relating film, architecture, geography, theories of urban space, etc., to literary representations of London. Papers from postgraduate students are welcome for consideration. While proposals on all topics are encouraged, this year we would especially welcome paper or panel proposals on the theme of ‘Urban Geographies’.

Abstracts of 200 words for 20-minute papers by Friday 27 March 2009 to:
contact_at_literarylondon.org. Proposals for comprised panels of three
speakers are also welcome.
Literary London Organising Committee: Dr Lawrence Phillips (University of
Northampton), Dr Brycchan Carey (Kingston University), and Professor
Markman Ellis (Queen Mary, University of London).
The Annual Literary London conference is mutually supportive of the e-
journal of the same name.
Web site: www.literarylondon.org

Women and Spirituality, Université d’Aix-Marseille, France  -  12-13 June 2009
Deadline for proposals: 15 November 2008 (closed)

In international conference organised by LERMA, Université d’Aix-Marseille, in collaboration with Queen Mary University, London, to be held at Aix-en-Provence.
This conference, focusing on the English-speaking world, will explore the complex relationships between women and spirituality.  Culturally defined by their gender, women occupy an ambiguous place both at the centre and on the margins of the spiritual sphere.  Such ambivalence is palpable in the Judeo-Christian heritage, where virginity and motherhood are valued respectively as badges of purity and fruitfulness, whilst the biological processes which underlie them are considered taboo or impure.  Throughout history, women are in turn represented as inferior, defective creatures or as privileged ‘empty vessels’ in their relationship with the divine. This polarised, dual conception of the nature of woman has influenced the way in which religious institutions, learned writers, or indeed women themselves came to consider the female relationship with the divine.

Study Day, West of England and South Wales Women's History Network, Saturday February 21 2009, Bristol.

Topics: Gender and House History in South West England and Gender, Death and Dying.
Free of charge. All welcome (including non-members). Please see programme details here. For further information email Katherine.Holden@uwe.ac.uk

Call for Papers, Women’s History Network, Midlands Region Conference April 25th 2009,   9.30 am – 1.30 pm, University of Worcester.

This conference offers a forum for the presentation of papers or `research in progress’ relating to the broad theme of Women and War. A conference title will emerge at a later date which will reflect the nature of those papers. Papers are invited for this event and abstracts of 300 words should be sent to Sue Johnson, IHCA, University of Worcester, Henwick Grove, Worcester WR2 6AJ. Email: s.johnson@worc.ac.uk Deadline: March 23 2009
Contact Dr Laurence Lux-Sterritt (laurence.sterritt@univ-provence.fr) and Dr Claire Sorin (clairesorin@hotmail.com).

Call for Papers, History of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland, Consecrated Women: Crossing Boundaries, 18-19 September 2009, Bar Convent, York, UK.

The Historians of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland (H-WRBI) invite both individual and panel proposals on the history of women religious of Britain and Ireland. The overarching theme of the conference is Crossing Boundaries. Papers are invited for the following conference strands: Internationalism; Gendered Spaces; The specificity of place; Relationships between the centre and peripheries.

Abstracts of not more than 300 words are requested and proposals from postgraduate students are particularly welcomed. H-WRIB encourages papers on consecrated women from all historical periods and from different religious traditions.

Deadline for proposals: 28 February 2009. Programme and booking forms will be found on our website shortly after this date. www.rhul.ac.uk/Bedford-Centre/history-women-religious/ Please send all proposals to Dr Caroline Bowden at c.bowden@qmul.ac.uk or Dr Carmen Mangion at carmen.mangion@manchester.ac.uk

Conference, The International Federation for Research in Women’s History (IFRWH), Amsterdam, August 2010 (in conjunction with the 21st International Congress of Historical Sciences, 22-28 August 2010) Unequal Sisters: Women, Gender, and Global Inequalities in Historical Perspective.

The general theme of our 2010 conference will be: “Unequal Sisters: Women, Gender, and Global Inequalities in Historical Perspective.” The aim of this theme is to focus on and further explore women’s history from a global and non-Western perspective. Within that frame we are looking for papers that deal with a variety of material and nonmaterial inequalities and hierarchies – such as those related to class, gender, “race,” caste, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, education, age, or health – that have affected women’s lives in and across all parts of the world and in different historical periods. We also hope to explore the many ways in which women have challenged or fought these inequalities and hierarchies, i.e., through different kinds of politics and activism, as well as individual actions and forms of resistance in the so-called “private sphere.”

We welcome papers that rethink relations and interconnections between women and women’s organizations in different regions and parts of the world and encourage panels with an international composition that explore topics, concepts, historical events, and/or the role of organizations and individuals from a variety of locations and perspectives. How, for instance, are Clara Zetkin, Paulina Luisi, or Sarojini Naidu remembered in different locations and political contexts? Were there other local, national, regional, or transnational leaders or “heroines” that inspired women in their various struggles? What forms did patriarchy take in different historical and geographical contexts, and how did it interact with capitalism? How did “race” shape women’s lives and women’s movements in differing temporal and spatial contexts? What was the impact of the imposition of Western gender categories in places where “woman” as a social category did not exist? In what ways did women in varied times and places challenge particular and intersecting hierarchies?                  

Registering: The IFRWH is an affiliated organization with the ICHS (or CISH, in French). Therefore participants in the IFRWH Congress must register centrally for the ICHS 2010 Congress. The online registration form for the ICHS 2010 congress in now operational. All participants need to register through this online form but payment can be made at a later date. For information on how to register and the online form, see the website: http://www.ichs2010.org/
If you have any questions about registration, please write to info@ichs2010.org For other questions and suggestions, please write to Francisca de Haan, Vice President, IFRWH, on behalf of the Program Committee, at dehaanf@ceu.hu, or visit the website of the IFRWH at http://www.ifrwh.com/

British Aestheticisms : Sources, Genres, Definitions, Evolutions
Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier 2-3 October 2009 (CFP CLOSED)

Both a social phenomenon, an artistic movement and a literary trend, British Aestheticism has been the object of multiple, sometimes contradictory, definitions which all point to its central role in the advent of modernity. As a movement and as an operative notion Aestheticism is of major importance to anybody interested in nineteenth and early twentieth century British culture. This international conference on ‘British Aestheticisms : Sources, Genres, Definitions, Evolutions,’ which will take place in October 2009, aims at reexamining the notion of Aestheticism from a transdisciplinary perspective and hopes to attract contributions (in French or in English) from researchers across the fields of British studies, comparative studies, art history, publishing history, aesthetics, philosophy, reception theory, women’s studies, queer theory, and gay and lesbian studies.