n behalf of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century British Women Writers Association (BWWA), the organizers of the thirty-third annual Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century British Women Writer's Conference (BWWC 2025) invite proposals for both individual presentations and complete panels focusing on the theme "Transformations" as it realtes to texts produced by women, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming writers within global and transatlantic contexts during the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The organizers wish to consider how these texts represent, reflect, and embody transformation, as well as how they have proved and continue to prove transformative. How might the study of these texts generate transformation within the classroom, academic programs and disciplines, educational institutions, and academic at large? How might this work contribute to social, political, and ecological transformation? What transformations must occur to ensure that the conditions of academic work are just, humane, ethical, and equitable?
Proposals might engage with the theme of transformation as it relates to the following topics:
- The Literary: representation, writing, reading, genre, form, criticism.
- The Textual: adaptation, digitization, orality, printing and binding, editing and publishing.
- Identities: gender, including transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming identities, sexuality, race, nation, class, ethnicity, religion.
- Minds and Bodies: disability, creativity, autonomy, mobility, wellness and wellbeing, mental health, reproduction, maternity, disease, age and aging, sex, violence, trauma, death, dreams, enlightenment, disillusionment
- The Social: tastes, fashions, manners, leisure, family, courtship, friendship.
- The Political: representations, recognition, human rights, civil rights, reproductive rights, land rights, land back, animal rights, resistance, revolution, liberation, abolition, emancipation, agency.
- The Global: economics, war, travel, immigration, colonization, enslavement, climate.
- Nature: plants, animals, insects, gardens, landscapes, weather.
- The Supernatural: spiritualism, ghosts, monsters, the Gothic.
- The Material: objects, textiles, crafts, architecture, art.
- Academia and Academic Life: pedagogy, institutions, institutional support, labor, labor conditions, work/life balance, work/work balance, care work, the profession, research, scholarship, academic societies, academic conferences.
Proposals on other topics related to transformation, as well as topics that fall outside of the scope of the conference theme, are also welcome.
Submission Guidelines:
Proposals for individual presentations should include abstracts of no more than 300 words. Proposals for preformed panels should include three to four presenters, with an abstract of no more than 300 words for each presentation included on the panel.
The Submission form is available on the BWWC 2025 website
Proposals for Undergraduate Research Panels:
BWWC 2025 organizers invite proposals for a limited number of preformed panels featuring undergraduate research that fits within the parameters of the conference. Proposals for these preformed panels must be submitted by a faculty sponsor who will serve as panel moderator and mentor for the undergraduate students attending the conference. Organizers are particularly interested in undergradaute research panels that showcase innovative pedagogical strategies. Undergraduate research panels must include at least three but no more than five undergraduate presenters. A panel with five presenters should engage in a roundtable format with brief presentations that will leave sufficient time for discussion. Faculty members who travel with undergraduate students to the conference must take full responsibility for their institutions’ requirements regarding undergraduate travel to off-campus events.
BWWA Travel Awards:
As part of its mission to encourage conference participation by graduate students, early-career scholars, independent scholars, and contingent faculty, the BWWA offers four travel awards of up to $500 (pending availability of funds) to help assuage the costs of travel to the BWWC. These awards are offered for the following categories:
- Independent Scholar/Contingent Faculty Travel Award
- Graduate Student Travel Awards for work in the following periods: early to mid-eighteenth century, late eighteenth century to early nineteenth century, mid-nineteenth century to early twentieth century (The Pam Corpron Parker Memorial Travel Award).
For more information, please visit the BWWA website.
The BWWA Constance Fulmer Award in Mentorship:
The Constance Fulmer Award in Mentorship recognizes outstanding mentorship of graduate student and early-career scholars of long eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British women writers. The BWWA seeks nominations for the 2025 award, which will be presented at the BWWC 2025 conference.
For more information, please visit the BWWA website.
BWWA Mentorship Program:
The BWWA mentorship program pairs graduate students and early career scholars with a mentor with whom they can meet during the BWWC conference. Individuals who would like to participate in this program as a mentee or mentor may indicate their interest in and expectations for doing so when registering for the conference.
Deadline for submission of proposals: December 15, 2024. For more information about the conference, please visit the BWWC 2025 website. Questions about the conference may be directed to wwc2025@gmail.com.
Created 21 November 2024
Last modified 3 December 2024