his special issue of Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature aims to discuss understandings of race in the Victorian period in multiple genres: fictions, non-fiction, poetry, visual art, and drama. Racist ideologies often function in complicated, convoluted ways, and this issue is interested in highlighting the ideological mechanisms that underpinned messy thinking about race in the Victorian period. This issue will investigate perceptions of race in the nineteenth century not only by analyzing racialized or racist cultural productions but also by questioning the relationship between concepts of color and race. Essays might address questions such as:
- How did nineteenth-century discourses of race define blackness, whiteness, and racial mixture?
- How did marginalized voices converse with or disrupt dominant discourses of race?
- How was color itself defined subjectively or flexibly in the nineteenth century?
- How do discussions of skin and complexion relate to Victorian perceptions of color?
- How do fictional imaginings of color, race, and complexion complicate racial categories?
- How do Victorian imaginings of racial violence contribute to definitions of race?
- How did nineteenth century visual art contribute to or destabilize definitions of race?
- How did color in visual art relate to or affect perceptions of race?
- How do narrative or generic forms (serialized fiction, periodicals, poetic forms, etc.) interact with perceptions and definitions of race?
- How do racialized discourses developed codependently with Victorian discourses of class, religion, and sexuality?
Deadline for submissions is February 1, 2025. Accepted essays will receive immediate feedback with any revisions due in May for a December print date. Finished essays should be 7,000 to 10,000 words in length, inclusive of endnotes and bibliography. Please follow MLA (7th edition) formatting and documentation.
Authors may submit manuscript through our submissions portal: Victorians Submissions.
Please direct any questions or expressions of interest to Melisa Klimaszewski. Thank you for considering publishing your work in this special issue.
Created 29 August 2024