CFP: “The past is never dead. It’s not even the past.” QAQV 9 Conference

From Queen Anne to Queen Victoria 9 Conference

“The past is never dead. It’s not even the past.”

Dobra 55, Warsaw, Poland

24-26 September 2025

Slowly approaching a significant anniversary, we would like to start looking at the past and decided to use William Faulkner’s quotation as our theme. We call for papers that engage in a conversation with the way the past(s) can be re-examined and revalued, but also revisited and relived. As always our focus are 18th- and 19th-century British literature and culture and their contemporary rewritings.

We encourage proposals considering diverse forms of cultural expression, including the arts, literature, poetry, theatre, radio, film and TV, games, digital media, performativity, fashion as well as a range of historical, social, and geographical contexts.

Topics for papers may include, but are not limited to:

• 18th- and 19th-c. perspectives on the past
• dialogues with past traditions, writers
• the evolution of literary genres
• historical novel then and now
• poetry and British national identity
• rewriting and reclaiming history
• biography and biofiction
• travel writing and life writing as ways of engaging with the past
• the themes of memory and trauma as ways of reliving the past
• 19th century science fiction and contemporary literature and culture
• neo-Classicism, (neo-)Gothicism, neo-Romanticism, neo-Victorianism
• Victorian Medievalism and the culture of chivalry
• political implications of rewriting the past
• colonialism and post-colonial perspectives
• modes of literary and cultural engagement with 18th and 19th centuries
• 18th- and 19th-c . works in adaptations
• the influence of historical fashion on current trends and vice versa
• inter-, multi- and transmediality in the 18th and 19th centuries
• interacting with the past(s) in old and new media.

We accept proposals for 20-minute papers as well as panels of three 20-minute papers.

Submission Guidelines:

• Please submit a 250-word proposal and a 100-word bionote by March 31, 2025 using this form.
• Notifications of acceptance will be sent by April 30, 2025, and the registration and fee deadline is May 31, 2025.

For up-to-date information, please check the conference page on the QAQV website: https://qaqv.ia.uw.edu.pl/