Victorian Modernities - AVSA 2025
Date: 24-25 July
Location: The University of Queensland
Keynote Speakers: Professor Sally Shuttleworth (Oxford) and Professor Anna Johnston (UQ)
“We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time” wrote Thomas Carlyle in 1829, as he urged his contemporaries to discern the “distinctive characters and deeper tendencies” of their age. For many Victorians, the present was an age of profound transformation and self-questioning, marked by rapid industrialisation, urbanisation, and technological innovation. It was an age when global communications and travel became faster and more accessible, thanks to the railways, steamships, and the electric telegraph. Advances in science and technology, from Darwin’s theories to electricity’s integration into daily life, sparked excitement and anxiety. Victorians began to grapple with the complexities of being 'modern,' a term increasingly invoked in debates about progress, tradition, and history. Sociologists, philosophers, and cultural theorists reflected on how these shifts redefined society, while Victorian fictions probed the social and psychological consequences of such changes.
Papers at this conference come from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including Literature, History, Art, Fashion, History of Medicine, and History of Science, each exploring how the Victorians experienced, understood, and represented their modernities.
