ood teaching is never easy, but has it ever been this hard? Since the COVID-19 pandemic, educators have been asked to pivot and reimagine their pedagogical practices again and again. Six years later, the “new normal” has yet to arrive. Instead of a return to business as usual, faculty are facing a barrage of legislative attacks on academic freedom and the dizzyingly rapid adoption of AI by universities and students alike. As teachers, we are being tasked with simultaneously revolutionizing our approach to assignment design and assessment, while ridding our curriculum and lesson plans of material associated with DEI initiatives or deemed “divisive” by politicians.
This virtual roundtable series, organized by the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States (VISAWUS), is dedicated to the problem and practice of teaching Victorian studies in an era marked by retrograde policies and techno-optimistic imperatives. It asks, how do we teach nineteenth-century literature and culture, while remaining present to the challenges of the twenty-first century university? And what might we gain by employing Victorian modes of embodied learning—such as object lessons and recitation assignments—in the contemporary classroom?
The virtual series will take place over several dates in Fall 2026 and will be geared toward resource sharing and community building. Participants will be invited to share a 6–8-minute presentation, as well as a tangible part of their classroom practice: an assignment, exercise, or activity. We invite proposals from contingent faculty, graduate students, early career scholars, and senior faculty alike.
Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Teaching reading and writing in the age of LLMs and AI
- Navigating contemporary politics in the Victorian classroom
- Forms of attention and distraction and/or strategies for cultivating focus
- Object lessons, especially models for hands-on engagement and approaches to teaching material culture
- Structures for formative feedback, rubrics, and assessment
- Approaches to “ungrading” and labor-based grading practices
- Cultivating reflective practices (as educators and with students)
- Multimodal learning and assignments
- Using digital tools to facilitate material gains (online archives, course blogs, annotation software, etc.)
- Experiential learning and service learning
Please submit a presentation title and brief abstract of no more than 200 words along with a one-page CV to visawus2026@gmail.com by May 30, 2026. Panel proposals are also welcome. Questions should be directed to Ashley Nadeau (Utah Valley University).
Created 26 May 2026
Last modified 26 May 2026