CALL for PAPERS
for the 20th Annual
Nineteenth-century Studies Association conference
"VISIONS, DREAMS, AND NIGHTMARES"
March 23-25 2000, in Arlington, VA (& Washington D.C.)
In honor of the arrival of the new millennium and of the one hundreth
anniversary of Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, NCSA invites papers
or panels from multiple disciplines that consider any manner of
nineteenth-century permutations, materials, expressions, or interpretations
of "Visions, Dreams, and Nightmares" Papers or panels may consider any one
or all of the theme's terms and interpret them in any variety of ways.
"Visions" encompasses millennial hopes, political aspirations, utopian plans
and communities, revolutionary plots, religious prophecies, technological
promises, avant-garde aesthetics, and visionary architectural constructs.
The ways and means of vision may also be explored: the extraordinary vision
of spiritualism, hypnosis, telepathy, and clairvoyance; the more "ordinary"
vision of plein-air painting, photographic representation, new color
theories, balloon or nocturnal sightings, and various optical technologies.
"Dreams" and "Nightmares" may be those that haunt the Gothic imagination or
of the Freudian mind. They may be the political dream of Fourierism or the
nightmare of terroristic acts. Marx's communist revolution promised
salvation from the "nightmare of materialism"; yet for many it represented
"the spectre that is haunting Europe." For some the geological and
evolutionary sciences of Lyell and Darwin were a dream come true; for many
creationists, they brought the nightmare of a world without faith. Writers
like Collins, James, Poe, Shelley, and Stoker invented ghost stories, the
pit and the pendulum, Frankenstein and Dracula. Artists like Delacroix,
Puvis, and Burne-Jones depicted dreams of past and future empires, Moreau
and Redon created supernatural visions, while Church and Moran painted
barely explored earthly frontiers.
Proposals of one page, single spaced, for twenty-minute papers should be
accompanied by a cover letter and a 1-2 page curriculum vita. Proposals for
a 1 1/2 hour panel should include a cover letter from the panel organizer
indicating format and issues to be discussed, accompanied by a one page
proposal and curriculum vita from each paticipant. Proposals on other topics
for open sessions are also welcome. All materials should reach the Program
Director by mail no later than October 1, 1999. You may email queries to the
Location Director and you may email proposals only to the Program Director.
Decisions will be announced in December 1999.
SUBMITPROPOSALS TO NCSA 2000 Conference Program Director:
Prof. Phylis Floyd
Dept. of Art
Michigan state University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1119
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Location Director:
Prof. Karen V. Waters
Dept. of English
Marymount University
Arlington, VA 22207-4299
2807 N. Glebe Road
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