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Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium

52nd International & Annual NCFS Colloquium - La Voix, Le Silence

52nd International and Annual NCFS Colloquium
November 5 - 7, 2026
Voice / Silence          La voix / Le silence

En Français

The conference welcomes papers on the many forms of expression and repression in the long 19th century. Whose voices are heard, listened to, and privileged? Whose voices are silenced, censured, muted or hushed in literary and non-literary texts? In our disciplines or colleges? What creates conditions of expression? How do voices or sound become overvalued? How are they perceived: through which tonalities, visual markers, typographies or technologies? What creates silences, devalues silences or makes certain voices less than to become muted, un-spoken or unvoiced:  Trama? Enslavement? Technology? How do we perceive silence: through the senses or through visual, textual or musical markers? Which is more significant, evocative, or speaks louder for others---voice or silence? How do they evolve? Shift? How are they felt and comprehended: through the senses? the body? the mind? These questions and the paper topics below hope to spark ideas for possible paper, panel or roundtable contributions to the 52nd annual NCFS 2026 Colloquium.

Click on the link below to submit an abstract proposal for an individual paper, a panel session, or roundtable session. If you are the chair of a panel or roundtable session, you will need to fill out the information for each of the proposed presenters (title, email) and provide an abstract for each.

Submit an abstract to NCFS 2026

Deadline for submission is March 15, 2026. We will, however, consider proposals after that date on a case-by-case basis.

Voice

  • Poetic voice
  • Narrative voice
  • Change of voice
  • Voicing arguments/polemics/warnings
  • Voice as sound
  • Voice as song
  • Street voices : hawking, singing
  • Voice, agent of speech/language
  • The voice of the people
  • The voice of the press
  • Noise
  • Spokesperson
  • To lose one’s voice
  • Heavenly voice, human voice, animal voice
  • Voice and voting rights
  • Voicing that silences
  • Voicing emotions
  • Voices of the reader in the press
  • Voices on stage
  • Voices of the enslaved/voices of freedom
  • Speaking up and speaking out

 

Conferences organizers:
Sharon Johnson and Richard Shryock

Silence

  • Silence that speaks silence and the senses
  • Textual or musical silences—ellipses, breaks, pauses, sighs
  • Pregnant pauses
  • Silence and taboos
  • Silence and trauma
  • Absence/silences in literature / in culture
  • Absence/silences/omissions in the humanities or the social sciences
  • Silence in law or the penal / civil codes
  • Who does not speak?
  • Censorship
  • The law of silence
  • Secret societies
  • The silence of the law, of the code. 
  • The unspoken
  • The whisper
  • The absence of noise
  • Silences on stage/pantomime/silent films
  • A deathly silence

 

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For questions regarding lodging, contact Jodeci Houston, 
Continuing and Professional Education, Virginia Tech. Email: jhouston@vt.edu

For questions concerning conference papers, contact ncfs2026@vt.edu