CFP: Neo-Victorianism and Steampunk

The 35th Annual Conference of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA)

“Popular and American Cultural Studies: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow”

February 19th – 22nd 2014

Hyatt Regency Hotel and Conference Center
Albuquerque New Mexico 87102

Submission Deadline: November 1st 2013 at http://conference2014.southwestpca.org

What the neo-Victorian represents, then, is a different way into the Victorians – for students and faculty alike. This is not contemporary literature as a substitute for the nineteenth century but as a mediator into the experience of reading the ‘real’ thing; after all, neo-Victorian texts are, in the main, processes of writing that act out the results of reading the Victorians and their literary productions.
-- Mark Llewellyn, “What Is Neo-Victorian Studies?” Neo-Victorian Studies 1:1 (Autumn 2008) 168.

Originally coined in the late 1980s, the term steampunk was “retrofitted,” if you will, to describe a group of nineteenth-century-inspired technofantasies – darkly atmospheric novels of a time that never was… It is an uncommon hybrid of a term, describing even more uncommon tales of historical science fiction infused with Victorian visions of wildly anachronistic technologies.
-- Julie Ann Taddeo and Cynthia J. Miller eds. Steaming into a Victorian Future: A Steampunk Anthology. Latham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013. xv.

…[O]ne common element arguably shared by all steampunk texts, objects, or performances is the one on which this journal is predicated: the invocation of Victorianism.
-- Rachel A. Bowser and Brian Croxall, “Introduction: Industrial Evolution” Neo-Victorian Studies 3:1 (2010) 1.

These three quotations on both Neo-Victorianism and Steampunk begin to form the general parameters of what these fields are or will become. Our aim is to press against the boundaries of the accepted discourse in the hopes of finding new texts, images, sub-cultures, etc. that can expand or further define this new and exciting genre and culture. Any paper on any aspect of Neo-Victorianism and/or Steampunk will be considered.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Neo-Victorian/Steampunk Literature
• Neo-Victorian/Steampunk film and television series
• The importance of the web to Neo-Victorianism/Steampunk
• Periodizing Steampunk
• Steampunk as part of the Neo-Victorian cultural discourse
• The outsider/amateur and the cultural production of Steampunk
• Maker culture in Steampunk
• Steampunk community formation
• The politics of Neo-Victorianism/Steampunk
• Consumption and Consumerism
• Gender and Sexuality
• Race and postcoloniality in Neo-Victorianism/Steampunk

The conference organizers are particularly interested in graduate student presentations (as well as those of independent scholars in order to make the conference both as inclusive as possible and provide a balance of viewpoints on a particular subject) and as such have a number of awards for graduate student papers. For more information, see:
http://southwestpca.org/conference/graduate-student-awards/

The 35th conference will also see the debut of the Association’s new journal: Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy. More information, including the journal’s first call for papers, can be found on its website: http://journaldialogue.org/

For information about the conference and other presentation areas, registration, and hotel accommodations, go to the SWPACA website at: http://www.southwestpca.org

To apply to the Neo-Victorianism and Steampunk Area please follow the instructions for submitting a paper abstract on the submissions database at: http://conference2014.southwestpca.org

If you have questions, requests, or require further information, please contact the Area Chair:

Gordon Marshall, Area Chair, Neo-Victorianism and Steampunk

Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Science and Literature
Istanbul Aydin University
Inonu Cad. No: 38
Sefakoy - Kucukcekmece
Istanbul TURKEY

gordmarshall@gmail.com