During the nineteenth century, you couldn't turn a corner - or a page - without some broom-wielding urchin, be-ribboned cherub, or herd of baby buggies getting in your way. How much of this was due to an actual change in population and how much of it was the result of a shift in cultural focus?

26TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES ASSOCIATION

Augusta, Georgia and Aiken, South Carolina - March 10-12, 2005

CALL FOR PAPERS

During the nineteenth century, you couldn't turn a corner - or a page - without some broom-wielding urchin, be-ribboned cherub, or herd of baby buggies getting in your way. How much of this was due to an actual change in population and how much of it was the result of a shift in cultural focus? The NCSA invites proposals for papers addressing ways in which the nineteenth century developed, interpreted, or invented infancy, childhood, adolescence, and youth both as ontological categories and as phases in human and national development. The conference will be held in Augusta, Georgia (at the historic Partridge Inn) and Aiken, South Carolina. Augusta's airport has frequent connections to Atlanta.

The NCSA was founded to promote interdisciplinarity. We encourage proposal submitters to consider ways in which the attention to childhood and youth re-shaped fields such as medicine, art, nature, music, literature, politics, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and architecture. Possible topics include:

- toys, clothing, and other artifacts
- growing pains - evolving life
- childhood, race, and ethnicity
- boyish masculinity and politics, imperialism, and careers
- women's "babification" (as Mary Elizabeth Braddon called it)
- concern for children, censorship, and new publishing criteria
- babes in the woods: children, nature, and animals
- youth-centeredness and developments in aesthetics, artistic genres and architecture
- the place of maternity in the suffragette movement
- fantasy, imagination, and the young
- the changing practice of medicine and the development of Public Health initiatives
- childhood and emerging disciplines such as anthropology and sexology
- childhood as a middle- and upper-class phenomenon, unfamiliar to the working classes and poor
- the Pre-Raphaelites' children - where are they?
- the impact of labour needs and industrialization on the boundaries of age
categories
- youth, crime, and criminality
- age, demographics, and sciences of the city and built environment
- eternal youth and the rise of consumerism
- ageism and the role of the elderly in society and the family
- Female Impressionists and the cult of the baby

Proposals should consist of a one-page, single-spaced abstract (12 point font), with the title of the paper and author as heading; the paper must be able to be presented within 20 minutes. Proposals should be accompanied by a one-to-two page vita. Send materials to Program Director Ann Ross. E-mail submission to <annrossphd@hotmail.com> (or <aross@csudh.edu> ) is preferred; for "snail" mail, address to Ann Ross / Dept. of English / California State University, Dominguez Hills / 1000 E. Victoria Street / Carson, CA 90747-0005. The deadline for submissions is October 15, 2004.

Further information about registration and accommodations will be available in the Fall from Local Arrangements Director Suzanne Ozment, who may be contacted at <suzanneo@usca.edu> or
Office of Academic Affairs, University of South
Carolina, Aiken, SC 29801.