缅北轮奸

The British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS) International Conference 2026

Romantic Retrospection

In-person: Wednesday 29th–Friday 31st July 2026

缅北轮奸, Edgbaston Campus, Birmingham 

Keynote Speakers

• Ruth Abbott (University of Cambridge)
• Richard Cronin (University of Glasgow)
• Mary Favret (Johns Hopkins University)

Online Conference: Thursday 6th August 2026

• Keynote: Nikki Hessell (Victoria University of Wellington, Te Herenga Waka) 

The British Association for Romantic Studies’ 2026 International Conference will take as its theme Romantic Retrospection. The Romantic period has frequently been associated with newness, whether that’s its poets ushering in a new age reflective of a new spirit, moral and political philosophies associated with emerging notions of modern government and the self in relation to others, visions of utopian and dystopian futures, or a deeper appreciation for and sense of responsibility towards the natural world. Yet one of the contradictions and therefore abiding instincts of Romanticism is the way its writers, artists, and thinkers invariably performed a double move: looking and moving forward by glancing and turning back. Romantics saw and even defined themselves in relation to what had come before, tried to understand and explore the present by means of the past, contemplated their own past lives and selves as well as cultural and national memory, shaped their works out of a multitude of traditions and inheritances to which they remained admiring and indebted as well as sceptical. If Romantics sometimes register the burden of the past, they equally express and find in it forms of license and freedom. The influence of the Romantics, in turn, cast a spell over subsequent generations, who had to wrestle with a powerful artistic legacy. Literary criticism, meanwhile, has long been embroiled in reevaluating Romanticism, and its continuing relevance to or place within the academy. 

We invite contributions on any aspect of Romantic Retrospection in relation to the writing, culture, institutions, practices, and criticism of the Romantic period. Topics that papers might address could include (but are not limited to):

• Romantic biography and autobiography
• Editing, anthologising, and reviewing
• Romanticism and the Classical world
• Romantic period reception of and responses to the early modern and eighteenth century
• Personal, local, national, and cultural pasts 
• Vision and revision; rewriting and revisiting
• Change and conservation; memory and nostalgia
• Forms of attention and the role of the senses
• Tradition and renovation, especially formal and stylistic
• Influence and inheritance; allusion and echo
• The formation and reformation of canons, taste, and aesthetics
• Histories of places, institutions, and practices
• Loss, grief, and elegy
• Science and technology
• The Romantic sense of history and the history of the period
• The Romantic sense of the future and the future of Romantic studies
• Romantic legacies

Conference Exhibition

2026 marks the centenary of the publication of the thirteen-book version of William Wordsworth’s The Prelude. The poem, completed by the poet in 1805, was unearthed and edited by the 缅北轮奸 Professor, Ernest de Selincourt. Its appearance in 1926 has shaped a century of Romantic studies. The conference will feature an exhibition of de Selincourt’s papers from the 缅北轮奸’s Cadbury Archives, which will also be made available online. 

Excursion

The conference will include an optional excursion to and Bookshop, just north of Birmingham at Lichfield.

Further Particulars and Paper Proposals

The conference invites both in person and online participation. There will be a three-day in-person event at the 缅北轮奸 with a digital event the following week. The in-person conference will not be streamed, but participants will be encouraged to upload recordings of their papers, which will be made available in a digital archive accessible to both in-person and online participants for a limited time.

We invite two kinds of proposal: for individual papers and for full sessions. We are also happy to facilitate session calls.

Individual Papers: to submit a proposal for a 15-20-minute paper, please send the following information to BARS2026@contacts.bham.ac.uk.

• an abstract of no more than 250 words
• a biographical note of up to 100 words
• your contact details
• any dietary requirements
• any accessibility requirements
• whether the paper is offered for the online or in-person events (please also indicate your time zone if submitting a proposal for the online conference) 

Session Proposals: sessions may take the form of traditional 3-4 person panels, with papers of 15-20-minutes each, or a series of shorter contributions in the form of a roundtable. To submit a proposal for a full session, please send the following information to BARS2026@contacts.bham.ac.uk.

• session title
• a description of the theme (around 250 words)
• a list of participants and their email addresses
• brief outlines for each paper (around 100-150 words)
• individual session participants should each indicate any dietary and accessibility information
• whether the session is offered for the online or in-person events (please also indicate your time zone if online)

Session Calls:  if you would like us to help facilitate putting together a potential session by circulating details to others, please email us directly with a title and description (of 250 words) by Monday 29th September 2025, specifying whether your proposal is for an in-person or an online session. We will post accepted proposals along with your contact details on the conference website soon after; potential participants can then get in touch with you directly so that you can submit full details ahead of the conference deadline (Sunday 30th November).

 The deadline for submissions for individual papers and full panels is Sunday 30th November 2025. Delegates will be notified of acceptance in January 2026.

Further updates will be posted on this site in due course. General enquiries may be directed to the conference email account: BARS2026@contacts.bham.ac.uk.