It was not until around 1800 that the generation became a properly historical category. For it was during this period that the shared experience of contemporaries—the experience, for example, of being young at the dawn of the French Revolution—emerged as a way of understanding and articulating a new sense of collective identity. As Goethe noted in his Poetry and Truth of 1811, “anybody born only a decade earlier or later might well have become a completely different person.” “Romantic” is a retrospective label, one first applied by later generations to their predecessors. “Generation,” by contrast, was a category invented by the Romantics themselves.
The Romantic Studies Association of Australasia invites proposals for papers and panels on the theme of “Romantic Generations.” The 2021 conference provides an opportunity to revisit the generations of the Romantics, and to ask what they generated. It is also an opportunity to consider the present and future of Romanticism as a critical field of historicist study. What can Romanticism generate today? What will future generations make of it?
We intend the theme of our conference to be generative in the widest possible sense, and invite proposals that might address, but are no means limited to:
- first-, second-, third-, nth-generation Romanticisms
- Boomer Romanticism, Gen X Romanticism, Millennial Romanticism
- periodisation, history and biology
- Romantic successions and obsolescences
- Romantic inheritances and legacies
- degeneracy and degeneration
- sexual and intellectual reproduction
- life and vitalism
- self-creation, autogenesis and epigenesis
- genders, sexualities and genres
- literature, electricity and power
- aesthetic, political and social transitions to modernity
- structural changes in the experience of collective life.
For individual 15- to 20-minute papers, please send a 250-word abstract and a 100-word biography. For complete panels of 3-4 papers, please provide 1) the name, affiliation and email address of the panel organizer; 2) the panel title and brief rationale; and 3) abstracts and biographies for all panellists.
Please send all proposals to RSAA2021@latrobe.edu.au
For more details about Romantic Generations see the conference website
Olivia Murphy, University of Sydney
Nikki Hessell, Victoria University of Wellington
Tobias Menely, University of California, Davis
ORGANISING COMMITTEE
Tom Ford, Claire Knowles, Alexis Harley
INAUGURAL EARLY CAREER KEYNOTE ADDRESS
The RSAA invites proposals for its inaugural Early Career Keynote address, to be held at its 2021 conference, Romantic Generations, between 9 and 11 December. Proposals should be sent to rsaa2021@latrobe.edu.au by 1st July, 2021. Please include a title, a 250-word abstract for a paper of approximately 40 minutes duration in response to the CFP, and a two-page curriculum vitae. 'Early career' here means no more than five years beyond conferral of PhD, excepting significant career interruptions. The RSAA will pay for the keynote speaker's travel from anywhere in New Zealand or Australia to Melbourne and five nights accommodation.