VC is a digital humanities project that reimagines how to teach Victorian Studies through a positive, race-conscious lens. UVC’s site launched in 2021 and publishes a variety of pedagogical materials, including peer-reviewed syllabi, peer-reviewed lesson plans, peer-reviewed assignments, and Zoomcasts (i.e., video interviews with scholars engaged in important antiracist classroom work). The site has since been well-received by Victorianists and has as a whole been peer reviewed for Reviews in Digital Humanities.
UVC is looking for more assignments on Victorian and Neo-Victorian materials to publish in its assignment section. Our goal is to provide examples of innovative assignments used in colleges and universities throughout the world so that instructors can adapt them for their own teaching contexts. We are seeking assignments from instructors whose work in the classroom aligns with the mission of UVC. The assignments can target different levels of students (undergraduates/graduates, majors/non-majors). They should also be student-centered and seek to empower students through different forms of critical and/or creative engagement.
For this call, the organizers are particularly interested in assignments at the intersection of race and dis/ability. Both historically and today, white supremacy and ableism work in concert to invisibly reinforce one another in support of white able-bodiedness: disabled people are racialized, and people of color are characterized as intellectually or physically disabled even when they are not. Antiracist and anticolonial work, therefore, must also be anti-ableist. UVC hopes to expand this dimension of its mission through collecting assignments that address the intersection of race and dis/ability in form or content: assignments that merge antiracist and anti-ableist pedagogies, engage students in considering discourses and depictions of race and ability, or some combination of the two.
While these assignments should feature a nineteenth century component, they do not need to be exclusively used for the Victorianist classroom. For example, an assignment could be created for a Literature & Film course that has a segment on Victorian monsters or for a Digital Humanities course that includes digital projects about the nineteenth century. These assignments can be original assignments from courses already taught, revised versions of previously used assignments, or assignments that have been designed but not yet taught.
UVC has a simple submission process. For this Call for Assignments (CFA), the organizers request a copy of the assignment as well as short answers to a few questions that ask about the history of the assignment; its pedagogical rationale, aims, and visions; and its connection to the UVC mission. These materials will be reviewed by UVC and selected instructors will be invited to submit an essay (1,500–2,000 words) that contextualizes the assignment for others to use in different institutions all over the world. UVC will also ask contributors to participate in the peer review process by attending a workshop with UVC editors and other accepted contributors. Assignments and essays will then be published on our website as open-access resources.
The deadline for submissions is May 30, 2025. Please submit your assignment and responses directly through this Google form. (Note: Google login is required to submit a copy of your assignment through the form.) Contributors will be notified of final decisions in June and full introductory essays and assignments will be due August 29, 2025.
Visit the Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom for examples of previous assignments and to see this Call for Assignments in the context of the website.
Questions about this CFA and the Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom initiative should be directed to Sophia Hsu and Jude Fogarty.
To be placed on the UVC mailing list, kindly fill out this Google form.
Created 30 April 2025