CALL FOR PAPERS

INTERDISCIPLINARY NINETEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES CONFERENCE

Pitzer College, Claremont, CA

March 31-April 3, 2011

SPEAKING NATURE

“On the one hand, we have the human mind obeying the laws of its own existence…On the other hand, we have what is called Nature, obeying likewise its laws; but incessantly coming into contact with the minds of men, exciting their passions, stimulating their intellect, and therefore giving to their actions a direction which they would not have taken without such disturbance. Thus we have man modifying nature, and nature modifying man; while out of this reciprocal modification all events must necessarily spring.” -- Henry Thomas Buckle, History of Civilization in England (1867)

How did the nineteenth century conceive, construct, and represent the physical world? In what ways did nature as an ideology and/or material reality shape the nineteenth century? How did the nineteenth century understand the relation of human beings to nature? The 2011 Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS) Conference invites proposals that investigate any aspect of this topic from multiple interdisciplinary perspectives, including and/or integrating Literature, History, Science, Art History, Environmental Studies, Law, Philosophy, Sociology, Anthropology, Music, Economics, and Theology.

Keynote Speakers will include James Kincaid, Aerol Arnold Professor of English at the University of Southern California and Harriet Ritvo, Arthur J. Conner Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

human nature animal nature plant nature gender & nature empire & nature anatomy, medicine, health Nature’s language laws of nature

environmentalism & sustainability natural disasters & catastrophes natural frontiers wilderness & gardens cities & ruins violent /nurturing nature new worlds, lost worlds, our world landscapes, oceans, deserts

conquest of nature nature & antiquity nature & art nature & technology nature & the sciences nature & human responsibility nature & the disciplines

Please submit 250-word abstracts by November 1, 2010 to incs2011@pitzer.edu. For more information on INCS, see www.nd.edu/~incshp/. Selected conference papers will be published in Nineteenth-Century Contexts.