Theme: Victorian Elements

Thursday, October 19th to Saturday, October 21st, 2023

at the Seattle Public Library, Seattle, WA

Keynote Speaker:
Jesse Oak Taylor (University of Washington)

view Call for Papers (PDF)

Painting of storm over the ocean with islands in the background

We encourage papers across all disciplines. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Elements of style in the Victorian era (design, literary form, fashion, architecture, etc.)
  • Braving the elements: weather, the environment, and climate change, then and now
  • The periodic table of elements and its history
  • The discovery of radium, polonium, and other “new” elements
  • Classical elements: earth, water, fire, air, ether
  • Elementals: gnomes, undines, sylphs, and salamanders
  • Elementary education and educational reforms in the Victorian era
  • Elements of detection and deduction in Victorian literature and culture
  • Criminal elements in Victorian society
  • Elements of Victorian art—landscape, portraits, narrative art, history painting
  • Foreign and domestic elements that generated the rise of London’s art and literary markets
  • Political, economic, and legal elements in Victorian literature and culture
  • The exhibition, display, and interpretation of elements: chemical, natural, cultural, or social
  • Elements and evolution, the elements of evolution
  • Victorian Elements in the Modern Novel
  • Elements of Victorian music (pitch, timbre, tonality, rhythm, volume, texture, tempo, etc.)
  • Elements in the history of collecting: private and public museum collections, and curators’ and collectors’ motives at work.
  • Rethinking what is elemental in Victorian Studies and in the Victorian Studies classroom
  • Rethinking what is elemental in Victorian feminism and ideas about gender/sexuality

Submit a 300-word abstract and 1-page CV to visawus2023@gmail.com by April 16, 2023. Graduate Students are eligible for the $600 William H. Scheuerle Graduate Student Paper Award