“REFLECTIONS”

22nd Annual Meeting of the British Women Writers Conference
June 19-21, 2014
Binghamton University, State University of New York

For the 22nd annual meeting of the British Women Writers Conference, we will focus on the theme of “Reflections.” Cross-disciplinary in scope and implication, we invite papers—as well as panel and roundtable proposals—to explore “reflections” as broadly as possible, whether they are physical or metaphysical; individual or cultural; social, historical or fictional; real or imagined; seen or unseen.

For paper proposals, please send a 300-word abstract and a short bio (in a single attachment) to bwwc2014@gmail.com by January 1, 2014. For full panel or roundtable/session proposals, please attach all proposals to a single email. Papers and panels must address the theme and apply to long 18th- or 19th-century, Romantic or Victorian women’s literature.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

Reflective Objects and Spaces
Imagery of mirrors in women’s writing
Cemeteries, memorials, monuments; museums
Ruins
Shop-windows
Fashion/clothing; consumption/consumerism; advertising
Women in business/finance
Books (and readers)
Photography/photographs
Private spheres: homes/decor, women’s rooms, closets
Public spheres: public gardens, theaters, salons
Liminal spaces

Reflections of/on the Body
“Beauty”/appearance; body image
Youth/age
Changes in the female body: internal and external; psychological or physiological; perspectives and attitudes regarding adolescence and maturation, menstruation and menopause, motherhood and childbirth
Health/disease
Disability
Gender and sexuality
Body as reflection of the unconscious

Reflective Genres
Women’s life writing; women writing about women; biographical
or autobiographical reflection
Letters and journals; epistolary novel; transnational correspondence
Reviews/reception
Ekphrasis; reflections on/of visual arts (other arts) in literature
Histories/origins; the historical novel
Detective fiction
Travel writing
Medical writing
Metafiction; fiction about reading fiction; Romantic poetry

Textual Reflections
Repetition in form/structure
Doubling, doppelgängers; the uncanny
Dreams
Textual gaps or silences
Revisions/retellings of original stories
Creative Work: poetry, fiction, non-fiction inspired by BWWs

Reflective Moments
Epiphany
Memory/remembrance; Erlebnis and Erfahrung
Sensory reflection (smell, taste, sound)
Self and identity, self-recognition/narcissism
Death and (re)birth
“The mirror stage”
Desire/eroticism
BWWs and travel
Women’s rights/suffrage

Distorted Reflections
Repressed or displaced language
Translations
Cross-disciplinary reflections
Abstractions
The Gothic
The grotesque
(Re)imagining the past and future
“Aura”/mass reproduction
Madness, hysteria
Through the Looking-Glass

Reflective Possibilities
(Possible roundtables/special sessions)
British Women & Health/Medicine
British Women & American Women
British Women in Pop Culture/Film
British Women & Travel
British Women & the History of Women’s Rights British Women & the Military