The New and the Novel in the 19th Century/New Directions in 19th-Century Studies
April 13-16, Lincoln, Nebraska

We invite papers and panels that investigate any aspect of the new and the novel in the long 19th century, including forms and genres (song cycles, photography, “loose baggy monsters”), fashions and roles (the dandy, crinoline, Berlin wool work), aesthetics (Pater, panoramas), the old made new (Graecophilia, dinosaurs), crimes and vices (serial murder, racial science), faiths (Mormons, Positivists), geographies (frontiers, the source of the Nile), models of heroism (Custer, Byron, F. Nightingale), times (railroad tables, the eight-hour-day), psychologies (phrenology, chirology, Freud), attractions (the Great Exhibition, sensation fiction, Yellowstone), and anxieties (Chartism, empire). Recent methods in 19th-century studies (digital humanist approaches and editing, “surface,” “suspicious,” and “deep” reading) are invited, as are theorizations of novelty itself or epistemologies of the new, and alternate, interdisciplinary, and trans-Atlantic interpretations of the theme.
Please email 250-word abstracts for 20-minute papers along with one-page CVs to the program chairs by September 30, 2015, to ncsanebraska2016gmail.com. Abstracts should include author’s name, institutional affiliation if any, and paper title. We welcome panel proposals with three panelists and a moderator, or alternative formats with pre-circulated papers and discussion.
Please note that submission of a proposal constitutes a commitment to attend the conference if the proposal is accepted. All proposals will be acknowledged, and presenters will be notified in December 2015. Graduate students whose proposals are accepted may submit complete papers in competition for a travel grant to help cover transportation and lodging. Scholars who live outside the North American continent, whose proposals have been accepted, may submit a full paper to be considered for the International Scholar Travel Grant.