The University of Hong Kong
December 6-7
This interdisciplinary conference asks participants to rethink the nineteenth century and its social, aesthetic, and discursive formations. It brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines to consider the categories that inform and shape our various disciplinary approaches to the nineteenth century. In doing so, it invokes the term “formations” in a broad sense, to convey the processes by which concepts, categories, structures, systems, and institutions—many of which remain in place today—came into existence during this period.
Convenors invite papers from scholars of the long nineteenth century from a range of fields: art history, Asian studies, China studies, East Asian studies, history, Hong Kong studies, literature, media studies, musicology, philosophy, theater studies, etc. Papers might consider the term “formation,” or they might problematize, historicize, or trace conceptual, aesthetic, or structural formations across or at any point in the nineteenth century. Papers can also interrogate the categories, concepts, forms, and structures we use today to make sense of the period, or reconsider the boundaries and periodization of fields, such as the “long nineteenth century” or Victorianism. By bringing together scholars from various backgrounds, the conference aims to start cross-disciplinary conversations that will shed new light on the nineteenth century and its legacies. The conference will also include a workshop for postgraduate students.
“Nineteenth-Century Formations” will take place in Hong Kong, a global city whose own history was indelibly shaped by the expansion of empires, trade, war, and migrations of the nineteenth century. It will be hosted by the Faculty of Arts at the University of Hong Kong and will include some outings into the city. Keynotes include Hidetaka Hirota, Associate Professor of History at Sophia University in Tokyo; Grace Lavery, Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of California Berkeley; Vanessa Smith, Professor of English Literature at the University of Sydney.
Contributions can take the format of a classic 20-minute paper or a short 5-7 minute reflection on a concept, object, text, or image. Please send a 300-word abstract and a one-page CV to Julia Bowes at jbowes@hku.hk or Jessica R. Valdez jvaldez@hku.hk by September 15, 2019.
Topics might include (but are not limited to)
Affect
Aesthetics
Capitalism, liberalism, democracy
Class
Communications and media: the telegraph, railroad, newspaper, media
Eco-criticism, the environment, environmental history
Empires, nationalism, colonialism
Form, formalism, new formalism
Gender and Sexuality
Genre
Global and transnational frameworks
Law, jurisprudence, sovereignty
Nation, the state, the public
Nationalism and cosmopolitanism
New historicism, formalism, etc.
Novel, the bildungsroman, narrative
Race, ethnicity, indigeneity
Religion
Realism
Romanticism
Romantic, Victorian, neo-Victorian
Science, evolution, empiricism
Slavery and emancipation
Time, serial form, rhythm
Urbanization, industrialization, migration