Mapping Victorian Empires, Cultures, Identities, May 13-16, 2019

A conference on nineteenth-century literature, art, and history to be held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Haifa, co-sponsored by the University of California Dickens Project

Nineteenth-century British culture was preoccupied with the paradigm of mapping across diverse areas of enterprise, including literature, popular culture, journalism, archeology, and art. Scholars have identified Victorian practices of mapping with the strategies of imperial planning and compartmentalization requisite for organizing a burgeoning empire, and for subsequent negotiations of shifting definitions of home. 

We shall examine mapping in its various manifestations, from analyses of direct representations of maps in nineteenth-century literary texts and their cultural afterlives, through discussions of mapping as an aesthetic praxis with its own figurative imaginary.  Speakers will explore the metaphorical maps that texts create by juxtaposing modern imperial tactics with artistic interests to form new intersections of literature with cartography, geography, scientific exploration, ethnicity, and the visual arts.

Our keynote speakers will be Regenia Gagnier, who will talk about “Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth Century”; and Robert L. Patten, whose talk is titled “Mapping Dickens.”

Please address inquiries to the organizers, Zoe Beenstock zbeenstoc@univ.haifa.ac.il and Galia Benziman galia.benziman@mail.huji.ac.il.

Advisory Committee: Eitan Bar-Yosef, Ben-Gurion University; Murray Baumgarten, University of California Santa Cruz; Zoe Beenstock, University of Haifa; Galia Benziman, Hebrew University; John Jordan, University of California Santa Cruz; Milette Shamir, Tel Aviv University; Leona Toker, Hebrew University.