CFP: Victorian Sustainability Study Day

10th June 2024, Senate House, University of London

Keynote speakers: Professor Paul Young, University of Exeter / Professor Lesa Scholl, University of Melbourne

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‘All England may, if it so chooses, become one manufacturing town; and Englishmen, sacrificing themselves to the good of general humanity, may live diminished lives in the midst of noise, of darkness, and of deadly exhalation’ (John Ruskin, 1860)

“Here is a mine of truth, which, however vigorously it may be worked, is likely to outlast our coal.” (George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1871)

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The crises of climate change demand new perspectives on contemporary and historical cultures. Though the term ‘sustainability’ was not used in its current sense of seeking to manage and mitigate humanity’s environmental impacts until the late twentieth century (Kriesel 2018), scholars identify many of the conceptual roots of sustainable or ‘green’ thinking in the economic, scientific, aesthetic, and technological developments of the Victorian era. From Malthusian population theory and Marx’s articulations of the metabolic rift to the 1860s ‘Coal Question’; to popular debates around pollution and waste management; to the rise of second-hand fashion and domestic cultures of repair; to the privatisation of land and efforts to conserve ‘wild space’ at home and in the Empire, the nineteenth century generated new ways to imagine, engage with, and safeguard natural environments, as well as to conceptualise the future of life on Earth.

Held in collaboration with Royal Holloway, University of London, the University of Surrey, and the British Association for Victorian Studies, this one-day study day seeks to interrogate the development and place of ‘sustainability’ in nineteenth-century cultures. Our primary aim is to explore and examine the ways in which Victorian writers, activists, artists, and commentators grappled with the pressing ecological concerns of their day and how this thinking continues to structure the present, as well as to assess the social and material relations that emerge from living with and within (un)sustainable environments.

The organisers welcome proposals for individual 10-minute ‘lightning papers’, panels, or round tables, which consider Victorian ‘sustainability’ in its many forms and from various disciplinary perspectives. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

· Population, urbanisation, and industrialisation in the Victorian period

· Energy production and consumption; alternative energy futures

· Recycling, waste, and pollution

· Making, mending, repairing and systems of exchange/re-use

· Ecosystems theory; natural and built environments in Victorian literature and culture

· Globalisation, colonialism, settler colonialism, and the ethics of imperial modernity

· Sustenance, famine, and the sustainability of food production and distribution

· Sustainable research / practice in Victorian studies

Please send 200-word proposals, with a 50-word bio-note to the organisers Dr Danielle Dove (d.m.dove@surrey.ac.uk) and Dr Briony Wickes (Briony.Wickes@rhul.ac.uk) by 30th April 2024. This free event is generously funded by the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS). PGR/ECR participants are also encouraged to apply for two travel bursaries supplied by BAVS to support their attendance. To apply for a bursary, please fill in this google form when submitting your proposal.