Please find below details of a call for papers for the upcoming Victorian Studies Association of Ontario conference,
“Light in Dark Places: Victorian Animals and Human Interventions,” to be held at Glendon College, Toronto, 25 April 2020.
Keynote Speakers:
Jody Berland, York University
Susan Hamilton, University of Alberta
From Queen Victoria’s beloved dachshund, Dash, to Lewis Carroll’s furry feline, Dinah, pets were an integral part of the Victorian domestic world, while thousands of working animals laboured outside the home in transportation, farming, mining, and other industries. As the century went on, the rise in animal welfare agencies and the anti-vivisection movement focused the public’s attention on the exploitation of and cruelty to animals. Imperialist and colonialist big game hunters killed hundreds of animals for trophies to display back home in Britain. A burgeoning reading public reacted in various ways to Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species and Descent of Man, both of which suggested deep connections between humans and other species. As a result, there was a shift in Victorians’ perceptions of animals and their relationship(s) to human beings. Ever since Harriet Ritvo’s The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in Victorian England (1989), scholars have increasingly looked at questions surrounding animal rights, the consumption and representation of animals, and changing attitudes towards animals in the nineteenth century.
We welcome papers that explore Victorians and the biological creatures that inhabited their historical moment. How did Victorians understand and represent animals in popular culture and in various media, including the fine arts, literature, advertising, and political cartoons? What effects might we trace in the use of animals for entertainment: on the stage, in zoos and circuses, and on the street? How did Victorians consume animals and animal products for food, fashion, and housewares? What role did animals play in constructing both British colonialist and imperialist agendas?
Possible themes might include but are not limited to:
- fictional representations of animals
- anthropomorphism
- evolutionary, post-humanist, and Anthropocene theories and studies
- print culture and animals, illustrations, cartoons, poetry
- consumption of animal and animal products
- animals in visual culture, paintings, sculpture, advertising
- children’s literature and animals
- anti-vivisection
- photography and animals
- taxidermy
- animals and natural history museums and museum studies
- zoos, circuses, and menageries
- hunts and hunting cultural histories
- animals in sport
- anatomical studies
- capitalism, empire, and animal labour
- animals and colonialist and imperialist histories and representations
- medical and scientific discourses involving animals
- veterinary practice
- animal products in the fashion industry
- endangered and extinct animals of the era
Please send an email attachment of your 300-to-400-word paper proposal, and 100-word biographical statement to: Lin Young (l.young@queensu.ca) & Emily Rothwell (ejrothwell@gmail.com) by 5 February 2020.
