napoleon.gif (22107 bytes)

Romanticism & History

10th Annual NASSR Conference

22-25 August 2002

Draft Programme | Information (registration, accommodation, travel, etc.) | Drama Conference |Call for Papers

The conference topic, "Romanticism & History," revisits how the Romantics saw history and how history saw Romanticism. The topic engages the notion of history from numerous perspectives, including the Romantics' relation to "actual" history, but also how they saw history and whether they saw it differently from the way other eras did, given the prominence assumed by history in the nineteenth century as an organizing structure for experience.

**Deadline for Submissions:  15 January 2002**

We welcome submissions from all disciplines with an interest in the conference topic. Please submit a proposal of 500 words to <nassr@julian.uwo.ca> or to NASSR 2002, Department of English, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 3K7. Submissions for special sessions should be sent directly to the organizers (go to Special Sessions). To facilitate handling, we would prefer electronic submissions. 

POSSIBLE TOPICS INCLUDE:

Special Sessions

Proposals for these sessions should be sent directly to the session organizer. Do not submit simultaneously to the special sessions and to the NASSR 2002 organizing committee; session organizers have an earlier decision date and have been asked to forward to us any proposals they cannot use.

Dances of Romanticism

Proposals are invited for papers dealing with any aspect of dance as it relates to Romanticism.  Possible areas of inquiry are: the representation of dance in Romantic literature; the rise and nature of the Romantic ballet; dance gesture and practice in Romantic drama; dance adaptations of Romantic texts; textual (or visual) adaptations of Romantic dance;  Romantic theory and its relation to dance; dance theory and its relation to Romanticism; choreography and the Romantic body; the danse macabre and Romantic death.  Also acceptable are any of the above topics with "Gothic" substituted for "Romantic."  (There is one prohibition, however: I will not accept papers in which dance is purely metaphorical, as in describing the give-and-take of human relationships.  Choreographed bodies must be in there somewhere!)   Send two-page proposals or twenty-minute papers to Steven Bruhm, Department of English, Mount St. Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, B3M 2J6 or  <Steven.Bruhm@msvu.ca>.   Please make sure electronic submissions are readable in Macintosh Office 98.

Existing in History: Romantic Authenticity and Historical Empiricism

New Historicist criticism has highlighted the extent to which Romantic claims to "authenticity" potentially conflict with any notion of history as a shared social reference point. The aim of the panel session is to explore this tension between the "authenticity" of the individual and collective historical significance in the Romantic period as it manifests itself in writers' relationship to empiricist approaches to history. 500-word proposals or 2,500-word papers to Gavin Budge, School of English, U of Central England, Perry Barr, Birmingham, B42 2SU UK or <gavin.budge@uce.ac.uk>

Forgotten Histories

Proposals welcome for papers on Romantic-era works by lesser-known (or less-frequently-read) writers who map out alternate or unexpected literary histories, for instance Ireland's Scribbleomania (1815), Bayley's Outlines of Edinburgh (1822), or Hunt's Blue-Stocking Revels (1837). The genre is not limited to poetry by men but might include fiction, drama, criticism, journals, or anthologies, etc. 500-word proposals or 2,500-word papers to Harriet Kramer Linkin, English Department, New Mexico State U, Las Cruces, NM 88003 or <hlinkin@nmsu.edu>

The Historicity of Romantic Medievalism

Romantic period writers used the medieval thematically, tropologically, allusively, politically, generically, affectively. This session will prod some of the strategic appropriations of the medieval—sometimes conflated with, sometimes distinct from the Renaissance—that underpin Romantic conceptions of medievalism as historicity itself, as well as our own assumptions about Romanticism and the Romantic aesthetic. The task of the session is to differentiate medievalism from the more general turn to history. Proposals for Romantic medievalism as either thematic or stylistic are welcome, and proposals for papers that look at medievalism in poetry and drama are especially welcome. 500-word proposals or 2,500- word papers to Elizabeth Fay, Department of English, U of Massachusetts-Boston, Boston, MA 02125 or <elizabeth.fay@umb.edu>

Jane Austen on/in/as Popular History (JASNA session)

As recent work has reminded us (See Lynch and Johnson, for example), Austen's relation to history is a particularly contested one. She not only comments on the history of her own time, but has become an especially significant figure in the histories that others have subsequently written--of Englishness, of manners, of gender, of the rise of the novel, and so forth. Everyone, it seems, wants Jane Austen to be part of the history that they write, or at least want to believe in. Proposals welcome for papers on Austen's response to popular culture; her seemingly boundless popularity; the history of Jane Austen Studies ( the Janeites, non-normative readings of Austen, Austen and literary criticism, Austen Study Centers and electronic discussion lists); JASNA contributions to Austen Studies; Austen studies and/or the Austen "rage" as a historical phenomenon; tension between Austen as serious novelist and popular icon. Austen and the popular fiction, film, etc. Other ideas related to this topic are also welcome.  Send 500-word proposals to Jill Heydt-Stevenson, Department of English, 226 UCB, U. of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309 or <jill.heydt@colorado.edu>. (Please, no attachments. )

Jewish History/Historiography and British Romanticism

Jewish History/Historiography and British Romanticism, a special session focusing on the complex relationship between Jewish history/historiography and British Romanticism. Interdisciplinary papers, especially, are invited on topics such as: Jewish historiography during the Romantic Period; censorship and Jewish historiography; Christian ideology and Jewish historiography; the British construction of the "Jew"; and literary transformations of Jewish history. 500-word proposals or 2,500-word papers to Sheila A. Spector, 141 E. 13th Street #R2A, New York, New York 10003, (212) 260-4278 or sheilaspector@aol.com>

Legacies of Paul de Man

This panel will consider ways in which de Man's work speaks to Romanticism as an institution and discourse within the present-day academy, and/or to history and the problematic of history within Romantic texts. 500-word proposals or 2,500-word papers to Marc Redfield, Department of English, Claremont Graduate U, 143 East 10th Street, Claremont, CA 91711 or <marc.redfield@cgu.edu>

Mourning and Memory

Papers are invited on any aspect of mourning and memory in the construction of private and personal or public and official history. Topics may include the culture of public mourning, nationalism and nostalgia, national traumas, Romanticism and psychoanalysis, Romanticism and the failed promise of the French Revolution, the role of desire in the construction of auto/biographies, and the role of loss in Romantic historiography and representation. 500-word proposals or 2500-word papers to Ranita Chatterjee, Department of English, California State U, Northridge 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA 91330-8248 or <Ranita.Chatterjee@csun.edu>

‘The past is a foreign country’: Romantic Travel and Its Views of History

This panel seeks to address the problem of contemporaneity in representations of travel, that is, the ways in which travel is often constructed not just as a journey to another place but as a journey back to an earlier historical era or to a timeless or history-less place (Johannes Fabian writes about this in Of Time and the Other). Other issues that papers could address: How do travel books enlist history? How do historical works enlist travel books? How does the practice of travel affect what counts as "history"? How do travel books mirror accepted history and/or provide an alternate history? 500-word proposals or 2,500-word papers to Jeanne Moskal, Professor and Director of Graduate Placement, Department of English Box 3520, U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520 or <jmoskal@email.unc.edu>

Romantic Animals

While many Romantic authors claim to seek a harmony between humans and nature, treatment of animals often reveals a different side to Romanticism. We appropriate animals as objects in our construction of world, both imaginatively and physically, but animals have an agency of their own preventing us from ever fully domesticating them. Topics include: Becoming-animal, Husbandry, Paintings, Figuring animals, Agency, Commodification, Disease, Picturesque and Ecological theory. 500-word proposals or 2,500-word papers to Ron Broglio, LCC, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0165 or <ron.broglio@lcc.gatech.edu>

Romantic Antiquarianism

This session seeks to explore the ways in which antiquarianism is influenced by, or influences, Romanticism. I invite submissions (representing any nationalities/disciplines/literatures) analysing Romantic-era responses to antiquities, the physical artifacts of the pre-Renaissance past. Examples: Constructing nationhood through the relics of the past; the effect of artifacts on Romantic imagination; explorations of the relationship between artifact and antiquary; the question of who has the right to "possess" antiquities. 500-word proposals or 2,500-word papers to Clare A. Simmons, Department of English, The Ohio State U, 164 West 17th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210-1370 or <simmons.9@osu.edu>

Romanticism and the Secular

Recent books (Ryan, Priestman) have reminded us of the importance of religious debate during the romantic era. Such work has situated both canonical and non-canonical figures within a broadly-articulated religious culture. Historical studies of romanticism and religion have not, however, addressed themselves as readily to matters of form or of consciousness, which remain at least implicitly sites of the secular. Papers might consider some of the following: relationships among romanticism, secularism, and 'modernity'; questions of form in relationship to history; religious and secular theories of history; intentionality, sincerity, and expressivism; literary 'value' and the secular; secular and religious rhetorics (allegory, symbol, metaphor); histories of selfhood; histories of secularization. 500-word proposals or 2,500-word papers to Colin Jager, Department of English, Murray Hall, Rutgers U, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 or <cjager@rci.rutgers.edu>

Romanticism–Comparatively Speaking

Papers that examine romanticism from a comparative point of view, considering, for example, how romanticism as a literary-historical period has been constructed on the basis of a comparative model. Also welcome are interdisciplinary approaches, ones that might consider the interactions between literature and philosophy, for instance, as the impetus for romanticism. How does reading romanticism from a comparative perspective affect our understanding of the period and its (place in) history? What kind of histories does one write when considering romanticism comparatively or in its relation to other disciplines such as philosophy? 500-word proposals or 2,500-word papers to Jan Plug, Comparative Literature, 1220 Linden Dr., U of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706-1558 or <jplug@facstaff.wisc.edu>

Romantic Case Histories

Papers which address how Romanticism, British or otherwise, historicizes, confesses, describes, systematizes, theorizes, classifies, narrativizes, analyzes, pathologizes, normalizes the psyche. The case history as auto/history; Romanticism as case history; the ‘treatment’ of pathology; specters of the cogito; the psychosomatic body; descriptions of/cultural opinions about madness, hysteria, etc. 500-word proposals or 2,500-word papers to Joel Faflak, Department of English, Wilfrid Laurier U, Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5 or <jfaflak@wlu.ca>

Romantic-Era Drama and Theatre I: Texts and Interpretation (joint with "Drama and Theatre History, 1770-1840")

This session invites papers that explore how current scholarship can deal with dramatic texts of the Romantic era-through editing, in the classroom, as objects of interpretation-given the historical complexity of rethinking the period's neglected theatre history. Examples of approaches to particular texts or authors as well as methodological discussions are welcome. Possible areas for inquiry: What are the unique issues involved in editorial preparation of dramatic texts? How do different media of publication deal with these issues today? How are dramatic texts explored in the classroom? What methods, assumptions, materials help students and teachers engage these texts? What ways of interpreting or performing dramatic texts of the era hold the most promise and why? What kinds of historicizing seem most important when interpreting dramatic writing? Can dramas be productively read or staged without careful historicization? Other comparable topics of interest are also welcome.  Please send 1-2-page abstracts and CV to Michael Eberle-Sinatra, Department of English, University of Montreal, P.O. Box 6128, Station Centre Ville, Montreal, Quebec, H3C 3J7 or <michael.eberle.sinatra@umontreal.ca>

Romantic-Era Drama and Theatre II: Performers and Theatres (joint with "Drama and Theatre History, 1770-1840")

This session invites papers that examine the "performers" and "theatres" of Romantic era drama-that is, those agents and venues that are relevant to contemporary interpretation of its practices and history. Presentations on particular figures or institutions as well as methodological discussions are welcome. Possible areas for inquiry: How are the experiences of women theatre workers in the era particularly revealing of social practices and cultural values? What institutions had important influence on the theatre? (See, for instance, Gillian Russell's The Theatres of War.) How did other forms of public culture (events, media, styles) affect the theatre and how might these effects be interpreted? What were the "politics" of particular theatres, events, performers and how might one interpret them? What influence do current scholarly institutions and practices have on how theatre history of the Romantic era is understood and written today? Other comparable topics of interest are also welcome. Please send 1-2-page abstracts and CV to Catherine Burroughs, Department of English, Wells College, Aurora, NY 13026 or <cb64@cornell.edu>

Time’s Witness: Forensic Genres in Romanticism

Aristotle says (Rhetoric 1358b) that each of the three species of rhetoric has its own "time." For forensic or judicial rhetoric, that "time" refers to the past, to "what has been done." How does Romanticism witness or judge "what has been done"––-in literature, in law, in art, in history? acts of witness (testimony, evidence, proof); forensic dramas (courtroom accusation, literary defense); theoros (spectator) vs. krites (judge); history on trial. 500-word proposals or 2,500-word papers to J. Douglas Kneale, Department of English, U of Western Ontario, London ON, N6A 3K7 or <jdkneale@uwo.ca>

Visualizing History: Memory in German Romanticism

F. Schlegel's remark on the middle ages, "we want to hold fast to the image of those great times" opens up the question: how do history and visual forms of representation relate to each other in German Romanticism? Romantics seem to oscillate between an atmospheric historical representation like C.D. Friedrich's cloister ruins and depictions of a specific historical moment like M. von Schwind's Wartburg paintings. Similarly Romantics seem to emphasize visual forms of representation that range from concrete architecture like Ludwig I's Walhalla to a metaphoric inner image like Schlegel's. How do German Romantics negotiate the tensions between myth and history in shaping different kinds of visual representations? Proposals addressing any aspect of visualizing history in German Romanticism are invited. Possible areas of inquiry might be: How are remembering, collecting or recollecting pictured? How do the visual aspects of rhetorical figures, such as symbols, metaphors or allegories relate to the representation of history? How do German Romantics envision the transformation of memory from a traditional archival, emblematic function to an active, productive form of remembrance? 500-word proposals or 2,500-word papers to Angela Borchert, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, U of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 3K7 or <borchert@uwo.ca>

Please direct any general enquiries to the conference e-mail address, nassr@uwo.ca, or NASSR 2002, Department of English, University College, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario Canada N6A 3K7.

   g_met_~1.gif (5777 bytes)