The Victorian is a category that seems almost endlessly adaptable and appropriable in contemporary culture. Scholars of the neo-Victorian are asking searching questions about the nature of our attraction to the nineteenth century, which bridges a whole host of cultural genres. These include the literatures of adaptation and appropriation, as well as fictional biographies of eminent Victorians. They encompass filmed adaptations of Victorian works, biopics, and representations of the Victorians in fine art, fashion and material culture. This one- day international conference will invite a critical gaze that takes in not just the Victorian and the postmodern neo-Victorian, but also the large space in between. It places leading experts on neo-Victorianism in conversation with postgraduate researchers working on a broad range of fields and time periods, with the hope of generating new scholarly exchange.

The event features training sessions on interview technique and publication, transferrable skills relevant to researchers from across the arts.

Panels address such diverse topics as queer theory, transatlantic influence, and the anxiety of origin, featuring authors ranging from the Brontës, Henry James, and Oscar Wilde in the long nineteenth century, to Sarah Waters, Alan Hollinghurst, and Colm Tóibín in the present day.

Our keynote speakers are:
Professor Cora Kaplan, author of Victoriana: Histories, Fictions, Criticisms
Professor Ann Heilmann, University of Hull, co-author, with Mark Llewellyn, of Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty- First Century, 1999-2009
Dr. Simon Grimble, University of Durham, author of Landscape, Writing and ‘the Condition of England’: Ruskin to Modernism