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Call for Papers – Open Panels at BARS 2017: Romantic Improvement We are delighted to announce that the following open panels have been accepted for BARS 2017 and that chairs are now inviting abstracts for papers. Alison O'Byrne (York): Imaging the City: Improvement and Decline in the Romantic Period Carmen Casaliggi (Cardiff Met): Education and Useful Knowledge Daniel Cook (Dundee): Scottish Innovation Elizabeth Edwards (CAWKS, Wales): The (C21) Lives of Hester Thrale Piozzi: Recovery, Form, Improvement Jon Mee (York): ‘Apology for the Literary Pursuits of Physicians’ Ivan Ortiz (San Diego): Improving Austen Dr Emily Rohrbach (Manchester): Improvement in Austen’s Novels Please follow this link for details of each panel. Alternatively, you can read the rationales in the attached PDF. Abstracts should be emailed to panel chairs by 9 January 2017. Please see below for further information on submission. 2nd Call for Papers – BARS 2017: Romantic Improvement Proposals are invited for the 2017 conference of the British Association for Romantic Studies, to be hosted by the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies and the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York from 27-30th July. The theme of this interdisciplinary conference is ‘improvement’, which marks a semantic field also encompassing cognate terms such as ‘innovation’, ‘progress’, and ‘reform’, all with implications across a range of discourses. The aim of the conference is to develop a collective investigation of the different but imbricated meanings of improvement in a period alternatively optimistic and pessimistic about its prospects in literary and other fields. The keynote speakers for Romantic Improvement are Catherine Hall (UCL), Jon Klancher (Carnegie Mellon), Nigel Leask (Glasgow), and Jane Rendall (York). We encourage proposals for themed panels and individual 20-minute papers. Proposals are also encouraged for the open-call sessions listed here. Subjects covered might include (but are not limited to): Progress and perfectibility: ‘the march of mind’; universal modernity; ‘four stages’ theory and conjectural history; utopias and anti-utopias; millenarianism; philanthropy; socialism and social security Languages of reform: the 1790s and the Revolution controversy; popular radicalism; evangelicalism and atonement; innovation/ renovation; utilitarianism Education and useful knowledge: libraries, readers and reading; dissenting academies, schools, universities; Sunday Schools; clubs, societies, and networks of improvement; ‘home’ and domesticity The arts and ‘improvement’: genre; adaptation, mediation, performance; legacies and afterlives; ‘crooked roads … of Genius’; ruin writing; nostalgia; the arts as ‘non-progressive’ Fiction and romance: the ‘progress of romance’; historical fiction and national pasts; Gothic; didacticism and improvement fiction; children’s literature Print and material culture: technologies of print and publishing; book history; editing and illustrating; museums; exhibition and display Empire: the ‘improvement’ of subject-peoples; four-nations Britain; travel-writing and cultural comparison; missionaries; settling, planting, transplanting; abolitionism and amelioration; colonial administration The city: urban planning and urbanization; architectural improvement; consumer culture, fashion, shopping; interior decoration; policing; assembly rooms, theatres, and spaces of sociability Land and landscape: estates, parks, gardens; enclosure; farming and agriculture; radical agrarianism; animal husbandry Commerce and manufacture: political economy; industrialization; machines and machinery; the factory system; steam power; roads, turnpikes, canals The sciences: botany and botanic gardens; medicine; asylums and mental health; chemistry; public science; electricity; experiment and spectacle Presentation formats We welcome proposals for the following: Individual 20 minute papers. Abstracts of no more than 250 words. Please include your name and institutional affiliation (if applicable). Panels of three 20 minute papers or four 15 minute papers. Please include an abstract of the panel theme, together with 250-word proposals from each of the speakers, in a single document. Papers for inclusion on open panels. Abstracts of no more than 250 words. Please include your name and affiliation (if applicable). Submissions The deadline for submissions of panels and individual papers is 18 December 2016. Please email abstracts to [log in to unmask], directing any enquiries to Dr Joanna Wharton. The deadline for papers on open panels is 9 January 2017. Please email abstracts directly to the panel chairs, as listed here. ********************************************************* British Association for Romantic Studies http://www.bars.ac.uk<http://www.bars.ac.uk/> To advertise Romantic literature conferences, publications, jobs, or other events that the BARS members would be interested in, please contact Neil Ramsey <[log in to unmask]> Also use this address to register any change in your e-mail address, or to be removed from the list. Messages are held in archives, along with other information about the Mailbase at: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/bars.html *********************************************************