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

Graduate Students are eligible for the $600 William H. Scheuerle Graduate Student Paper Award

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The VISAWUS Conference hotel is the Executive Hotel Pacific, a 3.5-star hotel located at 400 Spring Street (Fourth Avenue and Spring Street), directly across Spring Street from the Seattle Public Library.  The hotel just finished a complete renovation.  Amenities include complimentary in room wireless internet, complimentary in room water bottle and coffee maker, a 24-hour cardio fitness center, morning coffee and pastries (but no breakfast as such), and complimentary wine tasting Monday-Friday afternoons from 5-6.  The hotel provides valet parking at $45 a day.

Seattle’s Light Rail from the airport stops at University and Third, three blocks from the Executive Hotel.  Fare is $3.25 for adults.  Cab fare from SeaTac is $45-$55.  For those driving from other venues in the Seattle area, parking is available at the underground Seattle Public Library lot (enter from Spring Street); the lot is open from 7-9 Thursday and Friday, and 8:45-7 on Saturday.  Fees range from $8/hr to $32/day. See the Central Library website for a complete fee schedule.