Please note the change of date:

Victorian Secrets

University of Alabama
Fall 2007: November 9-11

Keynote Speaker:
John Kucich (Rutgers University)

Conference Website: http://bama.ua.edu/~apionke/VI2007/VI2007welcome.htm

The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa will host the Victorians Institute annual conference on the subject of Victorian Secrets. Papers will be welcome that address this topic from any of the specific disciplines represented in the Victorians Institute—including, but not limited to, art, history, literature, music, political science, sociology, and theology—as well as those that work across and outside of traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Topics for papers of 15 to 20 minutes in length might include:
• Secrecy and social respectability
• Secrecy and gender construction
• Secrecy and Victorian formulations of race
• Secrecy and religion
• Secrecy and business
• Theories of Victorian secrecy
• Textual secrecy: narrative red-herrings; the revelation of characters’ interior lives; secret letters, billet-doux, clandestine encounters
• The revelation of hitherto unknown individuals, collectives or texts from the Victorian period

Four presses have expressed interest in reviewing an edited collection of essays emerging from the conference, so please keep that possibility of future publication in mind when constructing proposals and authoring presentations.

Please send proposals of no more than 500 words by May 31, 2007 to Dr. Albert Pionke, Department of English, 103 Morgan Hall, Box 870244, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0244. Email: apionke@bama.ua.edu.