On behalf of the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Association (BWWA), the organizers of the thirty-third annual Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writer’s Conference (BWWC 2025) invite proposals for both individual presentations and complete panels focusing on the theme “Transformations” as it relates to texts produced by women, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming writers within global and transatlantic contexts during the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The organizers wish to consider how these texts represent, reflect, and embody transformation, as well as how they have proved and continue to prove transformative. How might the study of these texts generate transformation within the classroom, academic programs and disciplines, educational institutions, and academia at large? How might this work contribute to social, political, and ecological transformation? What transformations must occur to ensure that the conditions of academic work are just, humane, ethical, and equitable?

 

Proposals might engage with the theme of transformation as it relates to the following topics:

 

The Literary: representation, writing, reading, genre, form, criticism

The Textual: adaptation, digitization, orality, printing and binding, editing and publishing

Identities: gender, including transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming identities, sexuality, race, nation, class, ethnicity, religion

Minds and Bodies: disability, creativity, autonomy, mobility, wellness and wellbeing, mental health, reproduction, maternity, disease, age and aging, sex, violence, trauma, death, dreams, enlightenment, disillusionment

The Social: tastes, fashions, manners, leisure, family, courtship, friendship

The Political: representation, recognition, human rights, civil rights, reproductive rights, land rights, land back, animal rights, resistance, revolution, liberation, abolition, emancipation, agency

The Global: economies, war, travel, immigration, colonization, enslavement, climate

Nature: plants, animals, insects, gardens, landscapes, weather

The Supernatural: spiritualism, ghosts, monsters, the Gothic

The Material: objects, textiles, crafts, architecture, art

Academia and Academic Life: pedagogy, institutions, institutional support, labor, labor conditions, work/life balance, work/work balance, care work, the profession, research, scholarship, academic societies, academic conferences

 

Proposals on other topics related to transformation, as well as topics that fall outside of the scope of the conference theme, are also welcome.

​

Proposals for Undergraduate Research Panels

 

BWWC 2025 organizers invite proposals for a limited number of preformed panels featuring undergraduate research that fits within the parameters of the conference. Proposals for these preformed panels must be submitted by a faculty sponsor who will serve as panel moderator and mentor for the undergraduate students attending the conference. Organizers are particularly interested in undergraduate research panels that showcase innovative pedagogical strategies. Undergraduate research panels must include at least three but no more than five undergraduate presenters. A panel with five presenters should engage a roundtable format with brief presentations that will leave sufficient time for discussion. Faculty members who travel with undergraduate students to the conference must take full responsibility for their institutions’ requirements regarding undergraduate travel to off-campus events.

​

​