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Victorian Popular Fiction Association @vpfa.bsky.social · 8d

🚨Call for Papers!
❓Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities: A VPFA Study Day
🗺️Loughborough University
📅27 March 2026
💷 FREE
For full CfP: victorianpopularfiction.org/studyday/for...
Contact the organiser Anne-Marie Beller (@braddonite.bsky.social) at [email protected] for more information

Mentally ill patients dancing at a ball at Somerset County Asylum. Process
print after a lithograph by K. Drake, ca. 1850/1855.
https://wellcomecollection.org/works/xswz3swa

CFP: Sensation Fiction and the Health Humanities
A VPFA Study Day
Loughborough University, 27 March 2026

The Health Humanities and Victorian popular fiction intersect in revealing ways, offering insights into how 19th-century literature shaped and reflected contemporary understandings of health, illness, and the body. Popular narratives not only mirrored anxieties surrounding public health and medical progress but also contributed to shaping public perceptions of health and healing. Health Humanities approaches re-examine these texts to uncover how cultural narratives and literary representations influenced attitudes toward physical and mental well-being, gendered experiences of illness, and the ethics of care in an age of rapid scientific change.

Health Humanities is a particularly useful approach to sensation fiction because it illuminates the ways in which these emotionally charged, often morally ambiguous narratives explore and interrogate concepts of the body, illness, and mental health. Sensation fiction, with its focus on secrets, trauma, nervous disorders, and abnormal psychological states, frequently dramatizes the anxieties of Victorian society surrounding health, gender, and identity. By applying the lens of Health Humanities, scholars can uncover how these texts reflect and shape contemporary medical discourse. Interdisciplinary approaches also highlight how sensation fiction critiques institutional medicine, domestic care practices, and the pathologization of women’s experiences. Ultimately, Health Humanities allows us to see sensation fiction not just as entertainment, but as a culturally significant form that negotiates the meanings of illness, morality, and human vulnerability in a rapidly changing world.

20-minute papers are invited on any aspect of the health humanities and sensation fiction. Topics may include, but are not limited to the following:

• Madness, Hysteria, and the Sensation Heroine
• The Role of Doctors and Medical Authority in Se…

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jeremynewton64.bsky.social @jeremynewton64.bsky.social · Jul 25

Here are a few of the #BirkbeckVictorianists on tour again, this time at the @bavs-uk.bsky.social 2025 Conference in Oxford. With @janetteleaf.bsky.social, @helenaesser.bsky.social and @nonfictioness.bsky.social.

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jeremynewton64.bsky.social @jeremynewton64.bsky.social · Jul 16

Great to see my fellow #BirkbeckVictorianist @helenaesser.bsky.social in action this morning, talking about #Ouida and spy fiction at the @vpfa.bsky.social conference in Birmingham. With fellow panellists Professor Claudia Capancioni and Dr. Alison Dingle.

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Dr Helena Esser @helenaesser.bsky.social · Jul 14

Just chaired an excellent first panel of #VPFAExtremes with fellow #Birkbeck Victorianists @janetteleaf.bsky.social, Jeremy Newton, & Gordon Bates on Hypnotic Gothic Fictions!

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jeremynewton64.bsky.social @jeremynewton64.bsky.social · Jul 11

Always great to see @janetteleaf.bsky.social in action. Today's talk at the British Theatre and the 1920s conference at Wilton's Music Hall in London, on three stage adaptations of Richard Marsh's The Beetle. Energetic and illuminating as ever!

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jeremynewton64.bsky.social @jeremynewton64.bsky.social · Jun 20

Looking forward to this one-day conference at Wilton's Music Hall on Friday 11 July: British Theatre of the 1920s.

I'm speaking on the critical reception of English drama of the war. Plenty to say about censorship, propaganda and taste in a time of crisis.

www.eventbrite.com/e/one-day-co...

One-day conference: British Theatre of the 1920s

Join us for a jam-packed day of talks diving into the vibrant world of British Theatre of the 1920s!

www.eventbrite.com

jeremynewton64.bsky.social @jeremynewton64.bsky.social · Jun 1

Great to be back in Dorchester this weekend for the Thomas Hardy birthday celebrations. Looking forward to this evening's performance of A Beautiful Thread: Thomas Hardy in Words and Music at St Michael's Church, Stinsford.

Tickets are still available at www.ticketsource.co.uk/event/EDGFJL...

www.ticketsource.co.uk

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