The Call for Papers for the Keats Foundation annual conference, Friday 5 June – Sunday 9 June 2026 at Keats House Hampstead, is now open. Our theme for 2026 will be ‘The Keats Circle’ and we are delighted to announce that our keynote speakers will be Lauren Cooper, Kate Singer, and Sara Wootton. For full details about the Call for Papers, Registration and other Conference information please go to https://keatsfoundation.com/conference/
Keats Foundation
You are warmly invited to submit proposals for the BARS digital events series for spring 2026! We are particularly interested in 90-minute roundtables that bring together four or five speakers, presenting for about 10 minutes each, followed by a Q&A. At least one of the panelists should be an early career researcher or PhD student.
Topics might include, but are not limited to:
These events are free to access, and a wonderful way to test out new research! We strongly encourage ECRs and PhD students to apply. For inspiration, why not check out our YouTube channel?
Please send a 250-word abstract, suggested title(s) and a list of (potential) participants in your panel by January 7th, 2026 to bars.digitalevents@gmail.com.
Roslyn Irving, BARS Digital Events Officer
Volcanic Materiality: Cultural Phenomena in the Age of the Anthropocene
Editor: Dewey W. Hall
Call for Contributions
Volcanic Materiality: Phenomena in the Age of the Anthropocene asserts that volcanic eruptions during the long nineteenth century contributed to the rise of the Anthropocene, which has been viewed as human impact on the climate and environment since James Watts’s reinvention of the steam engine in 1784. Whereas in the past geologic epoch, the Holocene, the Earth evolved and changed over deep time, unprecedented changes have occurred in the past 240 years inducing a global, existential crisis as a direct result from human intervention due in part to capitalist industrialism, which has disrupted the climate and environment. Volcanic Materiality: Phenomena in the Age of the Anthropocene stakes out the claim that volcanic eruptions in their fiery reality with a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 4 or greater created shocks to the system that exacerbated the growing threat of carbon emissions. Subsequently, with implications for the 21st century, the edition considers these two major questions: 1) How have volcanoes and humanity contributed to the rise of the Anthropocene due to volcanic and anthropogenic activity? 2) What sort of evidence appears in literary and visual representations during the long nineteenth century?
Volcanic matter really matters. During a one hundred year span from the 1780s to 1880s, a series of volcanic eruptions occurred that altered the atmosphere, disrupted weather conditions, and caused unprecedented loss due to famine and widespread disease: Laki, Iceland (1783-1784); Vesuvius, Italy (1794); Pico Viejo, Canary Islands (1798); Tambora, Indonesia (1815); Ferdinandea, Sicily (1831); Hekla, Iceland (1840, 1845); and Krakatoa, Indonesia (1883). Various critics have written about the systemic effects geologically, meteorologically, and ecologically such as Richard Altick, David Higgins, Monique Morgan, Marilynn Olsen, Nicholas Robbins, Jesse Oak Taylor, and Gillen D’Arcy Wood.
A variety of writers and artists documented the effects due, in part to a great extent, to the eruptions, which may include the sky watchers identified, but are not limited to the following.
In literary studies, one might think of literary and non-literary records:
In visual art, a host of artists captured the dramatic stratovolcanic eruptions and the sky altering effects:
Scholars interested in submitting to the call for contributions to the edited collection Volcanic Materiality will be asked to include a 200-300 word abstract along with a 100 word biography sent to Dewey W. Hall, Ph.D. at dwhall@cpp.edu. The deadline will be November 30, 2025.
Dewey W. Hall
Listed below are calls for panel contributions for the 2026 Conference (updated 18/11/25). If you would like to send out a similar call for contributions, please write to the conference organisers at: bars2026@contacts.bham.ac.uk
Letitia Elizabeth Landon and the Poetics of Retrospection, BARS Birmingham 2026
Convenor: Emily Rohrbach, University of Durham
This in-person session invites proposals for papers addressing the conference topic of retrospection in the poetry and/or prose writing of Letitia Elizabeth Landon. Themes of personal and/or historical pasts, loss, grief, regret, forgetting; the pleasures and/or pains of memory; subjectivity and the processes of retrospection and anticipation; comparisons between Landon and other Romantics vis-à-vis retrospection; Landon’s relations to authors from previous generations (e.g. the eighteenth century, the Classical world).
Please send a proposal of 250 words and a very brief bio by the end of November 2025 to emily.rohrbach@durham.ac.uk. Informal inquiries prior to this deadline are also welcome.
*
Repetitions and Innovations in Late German Romanticism
Convenor: Joanna Neilly, St. Peter’s, Oxford
In the final poem of Heinrich Heine’s ‘Lyrical Intermezzo’ (1827) the poet asks for a coffin in which to bury the old songs of German Romanticism that inspired youthful dreams, which in turn occasioned adult disappointment. In an irony typical of Heine, this desire to kill off songs is placed within the wider project of his own Book of Songs. And having called for the death of the Romantic song, twenty years later Heine claims to have written ‘perhaps the last free woodland song of Romanticism’ (veilleicht das letzte / Freie Waldlied der Romantik) in his mock epic Atta Troll (1847). In this panel, papers will address how the writers of Spätromantik (German Late Romanticism) overcame the tenacious hold of seemingly worn-out Romantic forms, tropes, and motifs, repurposing them for innovative political, cultural, or aesthetic critique. The folk song; the overdetermined Gothic plot; figures such as the wanderer, the postilion, the beautiful muse; Romantic transcendence itself; are all, by the late 1810s onwards, at risk of becoming mere ciphers for a highly commercialised literary mood. This panel will investigate how and why writers who came belatedly to the Romantic scene, born too late to be among the earliest innovators of the Jena circle, nonetheless found ways of reinventing Romanticism, even if paradoxically through repetition.
Please send a proposal of 250 words and a very brief bio by the end of November 2025 to joanna.neilly@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk. Informal inquiries prior to this deadline are also welcome.
*
Creative-Critical Writing and Romantic Studies
Convenor: Adam Neikirk
This session would consider, broadly, the role and status of creative-critical writing in Romantic studies. “Creative-critical” refers to a range of writing practices that center on a literary text or texts: defined by Peter Wilson as “creative writing not in response to text, creative writing in response to text, critical-creative re-writing, critical writing in response to text, critical writing not in response to text” (“Creative writing and critical response” 440). Such writing can take on many forms—almost infinitely many—but for that reason, perhaps, its place in the ever-shifting landscape of Romantic studies might be more obscure than the thoroughgoing article or monograph, even if it has “profound pedagogical payoffs” for in the teaching of Romantic works (Rachel Feder, “Zonkey Romanticism”).
This session therefore invites both artists and scholars to consider submitting both creative-critical pieces, written in response to Romantic literary texts or other Romantic works, as well as papers that consider the role of such writing in Romantic studies from a meta-disciplinary perspective. Of course, cross-pollination is welcome. Possible subthemes include but are not limited to:
Please send a proposal of 250 words and a very brief bio by the end of November 2025 to adamneikirk@gmail.com. Informal inquiries prior to this deadline are also welcome.
*
Writing History in the Romantic Era
Convenor: Flávia Varella, Federal University of Sata Catarina, Brazil
This in-person session seeks to bring together scholars interested in how history was written, imagined, and theorized during the Romantic era. The session focuses on historians and historiographical works, inviting contributions that explore the conceptual, methodological, and institutional dimensions of Romantic historiography, its intellectual networks, and its audiences.
We welcome analyses of both canonical and lesser-known historians, as well as studies addressing transnational dialogues, formal innovations, responses to eighteenth-century ideas, and engagements with the classical tradition, among other possible approaches. The session also encourages papers examining historical works aimed at adult or juvenile audiences, including those situated at the intersection between historiography and the history of education.
Please send a proposal of 250 words and a very brief bio by the end of November 2025 to flavia_varella@hotmail.com. Informal inquiries prior to this deadline are also welcome.
*
Romantic Orientalism in Writing and Art
Convenor: Reyam Rammahi (Oxford)
Orientalism was inseparable from the Romantic movement, and orientalist depictions of the fantastical East (largely defined) prevailed in poetry, prose, music, and paintings. The abundance of orientalist works inspired authors in various ways, quite often provoking competitiveness among authors and artists as to which work would stand as having the most “authentic” or “realistic” East in it. Authors claimed to have been to the East, read authentic works about it, and had the best “translation” of it.
This panel welcomes papers that discuss any aspect of Romantic Orientalism, but especially encourages analyses of artworks and literary works, the relationship between the two, or event separate literary or art works. Panelists are encouraged to provide slides with the artworks they aim to discuss during the panel.
Please send a proposal of 250 words and a very brief bio by the end of November 2025 to reyam.rammahi@gmail.com. Informal inquiries prior to this deadline are also welcome.
*
Arab and Islamic Worlds in Sir William Jones’s Works and their Influence on Romantic Thought
Convenor: Reyam Rammahi (Oxford)
On 1 December 1782, philologist Sir William Jones published his translation of the famous Arab poems “Moallakat”. This was the first time these poems appeared in English. The original poems, reputed to have been transcribed in gold and suspended from the Kaaba at Mecca, were already greatly acclaimed in the Arab world, and considered among the finest works of pre-Islamic poetical genius. Hence, these poems attracted the attention of Jones, an intellectual and scholar who appreciated the poems’ beauty and pastoral aspects, among other characteristics. The influence of Jones’s translation of the poems can be traced in numerous works by different authors of his own time as well as later periods, including those by Robert Southey and Lord Byron. Certainly, part of the appeal of these poems was their pastoral settings, reflecting the Bedouin life in Arabia, settings much praised and admired by Jones himself, at least in his Essay on the Poetry of the Eastern Nations (1772). But Jones’s legacy and impact on Romanticism extends beyond the Moallakat.
Please send a proposal of 250 words and a very brief bio by the end of November 2025 to reyam.rammahi@gmail.com. Informal inquiries prior to this deadline are also welcome.
The Byron Society is looking for a new Society Fellow. This paid role will focus on digital promotion activities.
The Byron Society celebrates the life and works of Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), a poet, traveller and revolutionary. Based in London, but hosting events around the UK and abroad, the Byron Society brings together all those interested in the famous Romantic poet Lord Byron, whose controversial works and astonishing life have entranced readers for more than 200 years. Our members are of all backgrounds and ages, and include scholars, enthusiasts, authors and artists.
Role
This role focuses on digital content management. It involves keeping the events pages, committee pages, and bursary pages up to date on the Society website, setting up events pages for Zoom and Eventbrite, and managing the Society’s social media profile. We also request the Society Fellow to attend all online events, to provide tech support as required, and to try to attend the in-person events where possible. This role also involves providing support for the Annual Newstead Abbey Conference.
Renumeration
This is a paid role, with an annual stipend of £2,500 paid quarterly.
Candidate
We are looking for an early career researcher in the Romanticism field, preferably with experience of website management and social media, who would be interested in supporting Society activities.
Application Process
Please send applications to Emily Paterson Morgan, the Society Director. The application should include a brief CV and a cover letter outlining the applicant’s interest in the role and suitability. The short listed applicants will have an online interview.
Applications to be sent to: contact@thebyronsociety.com and emily@p-m.uk.com.
Application deadline 19th November.
The Byron Society.
The Byron Society invites applications for a PhD bursary of up to £5,000 per year.
Applications are open to new and existing full-time PhD students enrolled at a UK university and working on a thesis addressing any aspect of the life, work and /or influence of the poet Lord Byron. Applications are also welcomed from those studying multiple poets or authors, including Byron.
Each bursary covers just one year, however multiple applications can be made and postgraduates whose research focuses solely on Byron can receive up to three annual bursaries. (Those who study Byron alongside other poets and authors can only be awarded one bursary).
Applications can be made by students with additional sources of funding, but please list these in your application. The applications should also include a summary of the applicant’s academic record, an outline of his / her proposed research and the names of two referees who may be contacted. Please also state what year of study you are in.
Please provide the following information:
Applications should be sent by email to Dr Emily Paterson-Morgan, Director of the Byron Society, at contact@thebyronsociety.com. In addition please cc in emily@p-m.uk.com as a back-up.
The application process for 2026//2027 is now open. It will close on the 1st of May 2026. However, please get in touch if you have any questions.
The Byron Society
Volcanic Romanticism (30 October 7PM UK time)
In the ‘Year Without A Summer’ of 1816, a remarkable meeting of minds took place at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva. Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley (then Mary Godwin), Claire Clairmont, and John William Polidori spent much of the time indoors, sheltering from the rain, and engaging in discussions that would lead to some of the most influential works of British Romanticism, including Byron’s ‘Darkness’, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Last Man, and numerous poems by Percy Shelley. The Diodati Circle were unaware that the unusually cold and stormy weather that summer had been largely caused by the massive eruption of the Indonesian volcano Mount Tambora the previous year. Nonetheless, the anomalous weather, in combination with the sublime Alpine landscape and their intensely speculative conversations, had a powerful impact on their work.
The aim of this panel is to offer a new perspective on the Diodatic Circle by reflecting on the relationship between weather, climate, and planetary volatility in their writings of 1816 and after. It will address, in particular, how they understood the volcanic as a sublime, apocalyptic force, and how it inflected their powerful visions of the future. Attention will also be paid to the longer history of Romantic responses to vulcanism and planetary catastrophe.
Presentations:
· ‘From Diodati to the End of the World: The Volcanic Origins of The Last Man’ – Dilara Kalkan (Ataturk University)
· ‘Before Tambora: Cowper, the Laki Haze and the Emergence of Volcanic Romanticism’ – Katerina Liontou (University of Leeds)
· ‘“The veil of life and death” – The Volcanic Sublimity of Shelley’s Mountains’ – Chloe Melvin (University of Birmingham)
· ‘“Meteorological Imaginations” and the Solastalgic Skies of Percy Shelley’ – Kate Nankervis (University of York)
Chair: David Higgins (University of Leeds)
———————————————————————————————-
Shelley’s Anni Mirabiles: The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley (12 November 6PM UK time)
Our Panellists:
Professor Neil Fraistat (Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland)
Professor Nora Crook (Professor Emerita, Anglia Ruskin University)
Professor Stephen Behrendt (Professor Emeritus, University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
Dr Madeleine Callaghan (University of Sheffield)
Chair: Dr Amanda Blake Davis (University of Derby)
This roundtable will celebrate the publication of the latest volume, Volume IV, of the acclaimed Johns Hopkins University Press edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetry, covering the years 1818 to early 1820, the first phase of Shelley’s Italian period. Volume IV contains some of the masterpieces that Shelley produced during the first part of these years: Julian and Maddalo, inspired by conversations conducted on horseback near Venice between himself and the self-exiled Byron; The Cenci, an indictment of tyranny, domestic and political, probably the most actable of Romantic dramas and containing one of the most chilling studies of a psychopathic sexual abuser in nineteenth-century English literature; The Mask of Anarchy, the “greatest poem of political protest ever written in English” (too inflammatory to be published in 1819); Peter Bell the Third, a brilliant satire on Wordsworth; lesser known poems like his eclogue for women’s voices, Rosalind and Helen, and some of his best known shorter poems (“England in 1819,” “Love’s Philosophy,” and “Stanzas, Written in dejection”).
This event also commemorates the late Professor Stuart Curran, who died in October 2024. He described Shelley’s annus mirabilis as the year in which “the poet discovered his genius in the fertile warmth of Italy and produced a series of works which, for diversity and brilliance, have seldom been matched by any writer” (Shelley’s Annus Mirabilis: The Maturing of an Epic Vision, xiii). Amongst his innumerable scholarly achievements and contributions to Romantic Studies over 55 years, Professor Curran was a major contributing editor to Volume IV, which thus contains his last academic writings.
We anticipate lively conversation and discussion about some of the major works of Shelley’s anni mirabiles, including some new discoveries.
Volume IV of The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley is available to pre-order here: https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/9831/complete-poetry-percy-bysshe-shelley
Independent researchers with an interest in any aspect of Romantic Studies (including literature, architecture, art, politics, culture, history etc) are invited to apply for the Independent Researcher Bursary.
The purpose of the Independent Researcher Bursary is to enable professionals working outside of academia to attend and present at the British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS) International Conference.
We recognize that there is limited funding available for independent scholars, whether those in alternative-academic (alt-ac) professions such as university administration, information management, the heritage sector and teaching, or those pursuing careers in non-academic professions. We are therefore creating a new bursary, thanks to a generous directed donation, to address this need.
The higher education sector is facing significant headwinds at present, and there is no doubt that the field of literary studies is facing substantial cuts in the number of available jobs. We want to ensure that everyone feels encouraged to become part of the BARS community, especially non-traditional academics and interested external professionals – and to support a wider range of valuable contributions to our academic field.
The Bursary
The bursary will be for £500.
The bursary should be used to help defray costs associated with attending and presenting at the BARS Conference. This might include travel, accommodation, or registration fees.
The bursary can also be used to cover the cost of a year’s membership of BARS (currently £37.00), as all those presenting at the conference must be a member of the organisation.
The award is contingent upon the applicant’s presentation being accepted for inclusion in the conference programme by the conference organising committee.
Awards will be made based upon the level of projected engagement with the BARS community, together with the significance of the proposed conference abstract.
Applicant criteria
Eligible applicants include all those participating in the wider network of invested communities supporting the field of Romantic studies, such as: members and managers of relevant literary/learned societies (without academic affiliation); curators and archivists; members of the teaching profession; those with relevant alt-ac positions; those pursuing careers in non-academic professions; historians; those without academic affiliation publishing original research in relevant topics. Given the scope of potential professions, this list is not exhaustive – so if your profession is not listed, please do not assume you are excluded from this application process.
Ineligible applicants include: students, full-time researchers, those in established academic posts, those retired from established academic posts, and those actively seeking full-time academic roles – as other sources of funding are already available for these groups.
Application process
For the application process, we require a document containing:
This document should be 250-500 words long.
In addition, a copy of the presentation abstract submitted to the BARS Conference organisers should be included in the application.
Application deadline
The deadline for the current round, which will support attendance at the 2026 BARS International Conference at the University of Birmingham, is Friday 28th November 2025.
Applications should be emailed to the BARS Bursaries Officer, Gerard McKeever: gerard.mckeever@ed.ac.uk
Questions
If you have any questions about the bursary, eligibility criteria, or other matters, please get in touch with our Executive Committee Member for Independent Researchers, Emily Paterson-Morgan (emily@p-m.uk.com)
Listed below are calls for panel contributions for the 2026 Conference. If you would like to send out a similar call for contributions, please write to the conference organisers at: bars2026@contacts.bham.ac.uk
Letitia Elizabeth Landon and the Poetics of Retrospection, BARS Birmingham 2026
Convenor: Emily Rohrbach, University of Durham
This in-person session invites proposals for papers addressing the conference topic of retrospection in the poetry and/or prose writing of Letitia Elizabeth Landon. Themes of personal and/or historical pasts, loss, grief, regret, forgetting; the pleasures and/or pains of memory; subjectivity and the processes of retrospection and anticipation; comparisons between Landon and other Romantics vis-à-vis retrospection; Landon’s relations to authors from previous generations (e.g. the eighteenth century, the Classical world).
Please send a proposal of 250 words and a very brief bio by 14 November 2025 to emily.rohrbach@durham.ac.uk. Informal inquiries prior to this deadline are also welcome.
*
Repetitions and Innovations in Late German Romanticism
Convenor: Joanna Neilly, St. Peter’s, Oxford
In the final poem of Heinrich Heine’s ‘Lyrical Intermezzo’ (1827) the poet asks for a coffin in which to bury the old songs of German Romanticism that inspired youthful dreams, which in turn occasioned adult disappointment. In an irony typical of Heine, this desire to kill off songs is placed within the wider project of his own Book of Songs. And having called for the death of the Romantic song, twenty years later Heine claims to have written ‘perhaps the last free woodland song of Romanticism’ (veilleicht das letzte / Freie Waldlied der Romantik) in his mock epic Atta Troll (1847). In this panel, papers will address how the writers of Spätromantik (German Late Romanticism) overcame the tenacious hold of seemingly worn-out Romantic forms, tropes, and motifs, repurposing them for innovative political, cultural, or aesthetic critique. The folk song; the overdetermined Gothic plot; figures such as the wanderer, the postilion, the beautiful muse; Romantic transcendence itself; are all, by the late 1810s onwards, at risk of becoming mere ciphers for a highly commercialised literary mood. This panel will investigate how and why writers who came belatedly to the Romantic scene, born too late to be among the earliest innovators of the Jena circle, nonetheless found ways of reinventing Romanticism, even if paradoxically through repetition.
Please send a proposal of 250 words and a very brief bio by 14 November 2025 to joanna.neilly@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk. Informal inquiries prior to this deadline are also welcome.
*
Creative-Critical Writing and Romantic Studies
Convenor: Adam Neikirk
This session would consider, broadly, the role and status of creative-critical writing in Romantic studies. “Creative-critical” refers to a range of writing practices that center on a literary text or texts: defined by Peter Wilson as “creative writing not in response to text, creative writing in response to text, critical-creative re-writing, critical writing in response to text, critical writing not in response to text” (“Creative writing and critical response” 440). Such writing can take on many forms—almost infinitely many—but for that reason, perhaps, its place in the ever-shifting landscape of Romantic studies might be more obscure than the thoroughgoing article or monograph, even if it has “profound pedagogical payoffs” for in the teaching of Romantic works (Rachel Feder, “Zonkey Romanticism”).
This session therefore invites both artists and scholars to consider submitting both creative-critical pieces, written in response to Romantic literary texts or other Romantic works, as well as papers that consider the role of such writing in Romantic studies from a meta-disciplinary perspective. Of course, cross-pollination is welcome. Possible subthemes include but are not limited to:
Please send a proposal of 250 words and a very brief bio by 14 November 2025 to adamneikirk@gmail.com. Informal inquiries prior to this deadline are also welcome.
Romantic Elements: Rocks, and Stones, and Soil, 1750–1850
Symposium at The University of Manchester, 25–26 June, 2026
Dreams hang on every leaf: unearthly forms
Glide through the gloom; and mystic visions swim
Before the cheated sense. – Anna Letitia Barbauld, ‘To Mr. C[oleridge]’
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees. – William Wordsworth, ‘A slumber did my spirit seal’
Mont Blanc appears—still, snow, and serene;
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms
Pile around it, ice and rock; … – Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘Mont Blanc’
Keynote Speakers
Dr Jeremy Davies (University of Leeds)
Dr Stephanie O’Rourke (University of St Andrews)
Romantic-era writing is littered with stones, as Noah Heringman brilliantly demonstrated in his
influential Romantic Rocks, Aesthetic Geology over twenty years ago. Whether they offer a
source of deep-time wonderment, as in Wordsworth’s ‘Resolution and Independence’, a
playful disruption of subject–object distinctions, as in Blake’s ‘The Clod and the Pebble’, or an
analogy between geological and political revolutions for poems such as Charlotte Smith’s
‘Beachy Head’, rocks in the Romantic era are less stable surfaces than they are porous
substances: sublime, strange, and open to inquiry.
Earth and earthiness are ubiquitous in the period’s many modes of nature writing, but elements
of the ground do not flow or yield their depths like water, nor mediate like air. Earth as physical
entity obscures, obstructs, and sullies, proving a less tractable ground for what we might still
think of as defining Romantic-era postures of idealism and spontaneity. What literary forms,
what knowledge practices, does earthly matter press poetics into? Is the geological record
hostile to the human and human expression in its radical alterity, as Heringman at times
suggests? Or are there underground places of passage, sympathy, even love, as Mary
Jacobus, Susan Wolfson, and Tristram Wolff have more recently proposed? Is there a whole
spectrum of attachments to rocks and stones, amounting to (in Wolff’s phrase) a ‘gray
romanticism’, in which writers can both resist and relish digging in the dirt?
‘Romantic Elements: Rocks, and Stones, and Soil, 1750–1850’ aims to explore these
questions. We seek to go beyond the exhilarating stony subjects of mountains, deep time, and
fossils, widening the remit of Romantic-era writing about the earth to include more particulate
matter and more conceptual treatments. We want to add soil, dirt, dust, sand, and ashes to
the Wordsworthian catalogue of Romantic elements; and we want to expand our theoretical
and metaphoric range to excavate the implications of Barbauld’s and Shelley’s ‘unearthly
forms’.
We invite proposals for 20-minute papers on the theme of earth, unearthing, and the unearthly
in Romantic-era poetry and prose (1750–1850). When engaging with the theme, prospective
speakers may wish to explore topics such as the following:
• Earth, earthiness, and literary form/genre
• The subterranean/undercommons
• The components of earth: mud, soil, clods, dust, sand
• Earthy elements as sites of affect or criticality
• Poetic and/or epistemological obscurity
• Images or forms of burial and concealment
• Images or forms of unearthing, unveiling, or revelation
• Earth as generative, fertile, life-giving
• Earth as a site of labour and resource extraction
• Earth as gendered, queered/queering, racialized, classed
• Formalist, ecocritical, queer, and affective approaches to earth, earthiness, and
unearthing
Please send proposals for 20-minute papers in the form of a 250-word abstract and an author
biography (150 words) to James Metcalf (james.metcalf@manchester.ac.uk) and Millie
Schurch (millie.schurch@english.su.se) by Friday 30 January 2026.
Please note: this will be an in-person meeting only. With thanks to support from the Swedish
Research Council, there will be no conference fee for speakers, other than to attend the
optional conference dinner at the end of the first day. Food and refreshments will be provided
on both days (coffee and pastries; lunch; tea-break snack).
We are particularly keen to encourage the participation of early career researchers and
scholars on precarious employment contracts. We are pleased to be able to offer up to 10
bursaries to cover accommodation and travel within the UK for those without access to
institutional support for research activities. Please indicate with your abstract submission if
you do not have access to institutional financial support and would like to be considered for a
bursary.
We hope to hear from you!
Millie and James