Dickens Project Graduate Conference 2025

Schedule

Royce Hall 306 & 314, UCLA

Saturday, February 15

2:30pm–3:45pm
Arrival & Registration

4pm Keynote
Hilary Schor, University of Southern California
Bound By Law: Fiction, Legal Fictions and Great Expectations

6pm buffet dinner, Royce 314

Sunday, February 16

8:30am coffee & tea

9:00am–10:30am
Panel I

10:45am–12:15pm
Panel II

Lunch (provided)
12:30pm–1:15pm

1:30pm–3pm
Panel III

3:15pm–4:45pm
Panel IV

7:00pm–9:00pm
Conference Dinner, Professor Grossman’s home

Panels

Panel I: routes
chair
Helena Michie (Rice)

panelists
Kelsey Rall (Vanderbilt)
Fugitive Singleness in The Bondwoman’s Narrative

Gabriela Pires (SFSU)
From Weal to Woe in the Great Laboratory: The Victorian Kitchen as an Imperial Space in Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management

Sonal Rana (Rutgers )
Fanatic Freedoms and Masochistic Makings in Jane Eyre

Panel II: phantasmagoria
chair
Ji Eun Lee (SKKU)

panelists
Lindsey McClure (SMU)
Maids and Monsters: Sleeping (and Waking) Beauties in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Alexis Mitchell (Tennessee)
Between Fear and Fate: Bridging Gothic Dread and Speculative Futures in American Literature of the Long 19th Century

Jennifer Heine (USC)
Mesmerism and Trances: Later Dickens, Science, and the Supernatural

Panel III: philosophy & poetry
chair
Jason Rudy (Maryland)

panelists
Kaleigh Langston (SMU)
Suffering with Self-Respect: Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park

Lara Lee Meintjes (Berkeley)
Lyric Reading in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss

Mary Shannon (UCLA)
“Come, Brethren of the water, and let us all assemble”: England’s Fen Commons & John Clare’s Poetics of Estrangement

Panel IV: after publics
chair
Sara Hackenberg (SFSU)

panelists
Rachel Spencer (UT Austin)
Dickens’s Shakespeare: Paternal Canon-Building and the Illustrations of David Copperfield

Saron Song (SKKU/KNUA)
Sherlock Holmes and the Art of Adaptation: A Study in Enduring Appeal

Erin Temple (Ohio)
Enola Holmes and the Case of the Ideal Spectator

Faculty Readers & Advisors (in addition to those chairing panels)

Jay Clayton (Vanderbilt)

Renee Fox (UCSC)

Beth Newman (SMU)

David Russell (UCLA)

Erika Wright (USC)

Departures Monday, February 17

UCLA is hosting the Dickens Project‘s Graduate Conference in 2025.

Dates: February 15–17, 2025. President’s Day Weekend.
Location: Royce Hall 306 & 314, UCLA, Los Angeles

Thank you to our conference sponsors

contacts
graduate coordinator Mary Shannon, maryshannon@g.ucla.edu
faculty coordinator Jonathan Grossman, jhg@ucla.edu

Royce Hall

Participants will stay at the UCLA Guest House (parking not included). We have arranged your booking and, unless otherwise discussed, are footing the bill.
Free continental breakfast & coffee available Sunday & Monday mornings. Please take advantage!

UCLA Campus Map

Sunday, 7:30pm–9:30pm, Conference Dinner
Professor Grossman’s house
1218 Stratford Ave
South Pasadena, CA 91030

Carpools will be arranged at the conference.
Please let us know if you will have a car and can drive people.