Friday March 31 – Sunday April 2 at Barnard College in New York City

All panels will take place in Julius S. Held Lecture Hall, 304 Barnard Hall, 3009 Broadway, New York, New York, 10027

The conference will feature a keynote panel with Aviva Briefel (Bowdoin), Ian Duncan (Berkeley), Lesley Higgins (York), as well as a special Sunday morning session on unionization and labor with Emily Steinlight (University of Pennsylvania and AAUP Representative) and Rithika Ramamurthy (Economic Justice Editor at Nonprofit Quarterly).

REGISTRATION

Please register here. The Google form will redirect you to the NVSA PayPal site for donations to make your payment, so please calculate and remember what you will owe before clicking submit!

Please register before March 15 to avoid a $50 late registration fee.

We hope those of you who can afford to do so will take this opportunity to donate to NVSA so that we can continue to extend support to those who express a need. If you are unable to attend the conference, please consider making a donation to help support the participation of graduate students and contingent faculty.

HOTEL

A limited number of hotel rooms are available at Aloft Harlem (a Marriott Hotel) at a reasonable rate. Click here to make your reservation. The block expires March 12, so please reserve ASAP.

FRIDAY GROUP DINNERS

According to tradition, conference participants may attend group dinners on the Friday at local restaurants. Sign-up will be available once reservations have been secured. Stay tuned for more information!

COVID

For everyone’s safety and comfort, we ask that all attendees at the conference be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 (unless they have valid medical reasons that prevent them from being able to receive the vaccination).

Schedule

All panels will take place in Julius S. Held Lecture Hall, 304 Barnard Hall, 3009 Broadway, New York, New York, 10027

FRIDAY MARCH 31

2:00pm   Welcome

2:15–4:15pm Panel 1: Variation as Technique

Jason Rudy, “No Little England: Variants in the Early Australian Colony”

Efterpi Mitsi, “Greek Matrons, Maidens and Heroines in Victorian Periodicals”

Mark Taylor, “The Voices of the Isle: Stevenson’s South Seas Variations”

4:15–4:30pm   Coffee

4:30–6:00pm   Panel 2: Textual Variants

Moderator: Jonathan Dick, University of Pennsylvania

Oishani Sengupta, “Kipling’s Cities of Dreadful Night: Empire as Textual Variance”

Alexander Bubb, “Variants on a Sanskrit Epic: Eight Victorian Ramayanas”

Evan Rosenblum, “‘A Nosegay of Culled Flowers’: Women’s Writing and the Culture of Reprinting in the Chartist Press”

6:00–7:00pm Welcome Reception in Sulzberger Parlor

7:30 Dinners on your own. Attendees can sign up at the conference for group dinners at various local restaurants.

SATURDAY, APRIL 1

10:00am–12:00pm   Keynote Panel in Honor of Carole Silver
Moderator: Simon Reader (College of Staten Island, CUNY)

Aviva Briefel (Bowdoin): Versions of Authenticity: Spirit Cloth, Native Ghosts

Ian Duncan (Berkeley): Endless Forms: Aesthetic Evolution and Imperial History in The Descent of Man

Lesley Higgins (York): Hopkins and Pater: Contending With “the Variety, the Complexity, the Surprises” of Textual Indeterminacy

12:00-1:45pm Lunch Meeting in Altschul Atrium (vote on next year’s theme)

2:00–4:00pm   Panel 3: Varying Methods

Moderator: Alisha Walters (Penn State Abington)

Imogen Forbes-Macphail, “Invariant Theory”

Athanassia Williamson, “John Dewey’s Victorians”

Abigail Droge, “Mutual Education in the Victorian Studies Classroom”

Sarah Bilston, “‘Old Species, New Variety’?: Redefining ‘The Lost Orchid’”

4:00–4:30pm   Coffee

4:30–6:00pm   Panel 4: Erotic Variants 

Moderator: Anna Henchman, Boston University

Shannon Draucker, “Victorian Musical Science and Varieties of Erotic Experience”

Abigail Joseph, “‘The Love of Variety’: Variation, Inversion, and Revolution from Aesthetics to Sexuality”

Lotte Crawford, “‘Glances which flash’ in the Darkness: Cave Ecologies and Eroticism in the Sapphic Modern”

7:00–9:00pm   Dinner Banquet with Award Announcements
Pisticci: 125 La Salle Street, NYC, 10027

SUNDAY APRIL 2

9:15–10:15am Unionization and Labor

Moderator: Paula Krebs (Executive Director, Modern Language Association)

Emily Steinlight (University of Pennsylvania)

Rithika Ramamurthy (Brown University & Nonprofit Quarterly)

10:15–10:30am Coffee

10:30–12:00pm Panel 5: Radical Variants

Monica Cohen, “Variations on a Raft and the Anglicizing of Radical Content”

Ryan Carroll, “Abolitionist Particularities in the Autobiography of Juan Francisco Manzano”

Greg Vargo, “Ira Aldridge and Abolition’s Contested Legacy”

Elizabeth Greeniaus, “A Race for Rome: Black Antiquity in Victorian Histories”

12:00–1:00pm   Conference Wrap-Up

Michael Tondre and Kyle McAuley