Syllabi

Overview

These peer-reviewed syllabi are organized around specific themes that seek to challenge and expand traditional ideas of Victorian Studies. Introducing each syllabus is a short essay that expounds upon the critical framing of the syllabus to make explicit how an undisciplined approach to teaching Victorian Studies informs course design, the selection of materials, assignment construction, and pedagogical practices.

Call for Syllabi and Syllabus Clusters (Open)

A work made of wool, dovetailed tapestry weave; twined edges; (remnants of) corner knotted tassel.

The Nineteenth-Century Religious Other

A black and white print of two sphynxes looking up, surrounded by symbols.Identity and Belief in Victorian Britain

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Religion, Secularism, Empire

Woodcut of shore with houses and body of water with ships on it.Constructing Religion and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Literature

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Religion, Secularism, Empire

Sepia image of a two people. Woman is reclining and man is leaning over her.Empire of Religion

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Religion, Secularism, Empire

Painting of dancers in a large ballroom.Religion and the Transimperial

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Beyond “Victorian” Literature

A cityscape featuring a large, complex clock in the background and a hot air balloon flying above.Multiethnic Literature: Global Neo-Victorians

Beyond “Victorian” Literature

Black and white photograph of the Battersea Power Station in London.British Literature II: A Representative Survey

The Nineteenth-Century Religious Other

Left: XXX. Right: Woman in Red Hijab and Black Robe.The Muslim “Other” in Nineteenth-Century British Literature

The Nineteenth-Century Religious Other

A burning orange candle against a black background.Nineteenth-Century Jewish British Literature

The Nineteenth-Century Religious Other

Map showing British empire in 1909 with color coding for regions with different religious groups.Hinduism and Imperial Interventions in Victorian Literature

Deconstructing the Literary Canon

Gate of Jadavpur University with name written above and with one of two gate doors open.UVC in India: Case Study of JUDE

Deconstructing the Literary Canon

Left: Man with long beard and hair sitting cross-legged over manuscript book, writing with both hands. Right: Man with long beard and hair, sitting with arms extended, surrounded by various apparitions.Capital L-Literature: Intro to Grad Studies

Deconstructing the Literary Canon

Series of tall library bookshelves receding into background.Canon Fodder: What Should We Read?

Centering Black Studies

Left: Ignatius Sancho aka Olaudah Equiano in quarter profile looking forward. Right: Sarah Forbes Bonetta in full profile, seated and facing forward.Race, Trans-Atlantic Slavery, and the Empire

Centering Black Studies

African American men and women, some with bundles on their heads, running across a wooded landscape.Black (Im)mobilities

Centering Black Studies

A series of upright skeletons (left to right) of a gibbon, orangutan, chimpanzee, gorilla, and man.The Victorian and the Human

Gender and Empire

Left: Hiawatha and Minnehaha standing in a close, but open pose, holding hands and looking at one another. Right: Edmonia Lewis, seated, with wrap over her shoulders, in three-quarters profile facing to her right.Victorian Women of the World

Gender and Empire

Left: Toru Dutt standing in three-quarter profile to her right with hands on chair, but facing the viewer. Right: Head and shoulders portrait of Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati.Nineteenth-Century Women Write the Empire

Recontextualizing the Victorians

Interior scene with a large group of women seated around a table, many of them looking at documents.Reintroducing the Victorians

Recontextualizing the Victorians

Small body of water with evergreen trees, green hills, and snow-capped mountains in distance.Unsettling Victorian Literature