Lehigh to Host 'Just Victorians' Conference

Lehigh hosted the North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) conference from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2, bringing together scholars from around the world to examine justice during the Victorian Period.

Michael Kramp, professor of English and one of the faculty organizers of the conference, said the theme, “Just Victorians,” was derived from two main points: the English Department’s focus on literature and social justice, and the limitations of what is understood as the Victorian period.

Kramp said the NAVSA wanted to query justice during the Victorian period because it was a time of both sincere reform and great injustice. It also wished to question what constitutes the limits of the Victorian period, and if Victorian studies extends beyond the bounds of Great Britain and Queen Victoria’s reign.

“Victorian studies is going through a close investigation of itself, trying to examine its goals and its future, and part of that investigation is to think about how Victorian scholars can do their work more justly, more effectively, more honestly and with more integrity,” Kramp said. “A lot of questions of injustice we are experiencing today have derivations that we can track back to the Victorian period.”

Lorenzo Servitje, associate professor of English and director of the Health, Medicine and Society program and co-organizer of the conference, said the process of hosting the conference started in 2017 when he submitted a proposal on Lehigh’s behalf. In it, he emphasized the English department’s focus, Bethlehem as a historic city and the draw of Lehigh as a smaller research university to allow for a more intimate conference.

“There's going to be over 250 conference attendees here. It's an immense accomplishment for Lehigh and its English department to have all those students and scholars from around the world here,” Kramp said. “It’s also the first time that the NAVSA community has been together in three years because of COVID-19. I'm really hoping that that creates a special opportunity for intellectual community building and intellectual exchange.”

The conference is spread across three days, taking place on the Lehigh campus and at the nearby Hotel Bethlehem, and it is organized into various panels, plenary events, speakers and workshops.

Featured events include a panel consisting of graduate students and professors emerging into the field of Victorian studies, a professional workshop for graduate students and networking dinners where young scholars can interact with senior scholars.

“The thing we realized we were most invested in is that we wanted the conference itself to be just and equitable as much as possible,” Servitje said. “Every decision we made choosing our speakers, budgeting and allocating money is all centered around supporting our young scholars, like our graduate students and non-tenure track faculty.”

Servitje said it was important to think in terms of equity, sustainability and epidemiological footprints when planning the conference, including cost of attendance and use of a mobile app to cut down on paper usage. He said the medium is part of the message.

Servitje said the team also consulted epidemiologists and public health professionals to help them navigate COVID concerns.

He said the team is committed to making the conference as safe as possible for the attendees and the Bethlehem community and plans to conduct research on which efforts were most effective.

He said he hopes the work they are doing, both academically, logistically and health-wise, is generalizable beyond Victorian studies conferences to other conferences and social gatherings.

“We want to change the culture of conferences where they really become an opportunity,” Servitje said. “When we spoke to other programs about supporting us, we said, ‘We're not asking you just to support a paper on Charles Dickens or a panel about Alfred Tennyson’s poetry. We're asking that you support this conference about justice, support graduate students, support the development of models for accessibility, sustainability and public health."

Story by Christina Perrier '23