Past versus Present

How did the Victorians rearrange the past? What new pasts did they discover?

Churchill College, Cambridge University 13-15 July 2009

Hosted by the Cambridge Victorian Studies Group

Plenaries:

Mary Beard
A. S. Byatt
Peter Galison
Simon Schama

Other Participants Include:

Kate Flint
Matthew Kneale
Josephine McDonagh
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Sally Shuttleworth
Gill Sutherland
David Vincent

Conference Topics Include:

The ways in which new discoveries across diverse fields helped shape new disciplines such as geology, biology, linguistics, classics, history and archaeology.

The proliferation of myths of origin - cosmic, geological, biological, historical, and anthropological.

New technologies and tools for investigating the past - such as photography or museology.

Diverse and even contradictory responses to the past from different groups of people.

What the Victorians decided to throw out, and what they decided to keep.

The heritage that the Victorians invented for us - are we still living in a Victorian world?

For further information please see the conference website. Enquiries may be directed to past-vs-present@victorians.group.cam.ac.uk Please put "BAVS-NAVSA" in the subject line.

Postgraduate and Postdoctoral Conference Bursaries

We are looking to award bursaries (thirteen in total) worth £100 each for both observers (either post-graduate students or post-doctoral scholars) who will report on the conference for the BAVS newsletter, and for postgraduate or post-doctoral paper presenters. Download the bursary details document. The deadline for applications is 15th December 2008.