Collecting, Collected, Collective:

Working With Hopkins

June 10 to 12, 2027

Proposals due: 26 October 2026

By 2027, all nine volumes of The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins will be published, including the much-anticipated final volume in the series, Poetry. The 2027 international Hopkins conference will focus on the new research possibilities and provocations afforded by the texts. Hopkins 2027 will be held at Università degli Studi “G. d’Annunzio” Chieti-Pescara, Italy. Chieti-Pescara is on the Adriatic coast of Italy, about a two-hour drive through the Apennines from Rome.

Topics could include:

• How to reassess Hopkins’ texts because of newly available materials.
• Hopkins the collector (of inscapes; of sensations; the writings of others).
• Collecting in Victorian poetry and fiction (Hopkins and other authors)
• How to rethink Hopkins’s position in the “collectivity” of Victorian writers.
• Working across genres in Hopkins’s canon: the interdisciplinary possibilities (for example, classical studies; diaries and autobiografiction; philosophy; music; poetry; spiritual writings; sermons; theology; visual art).
• How can we locate Hopkins in the Victorian practice of keeping commonplace books, albums, and the collection of ephemera? 
• Revisiting his sketches: was he really a Pre-Raphaelite artist?
• “To collect” also means to form a conclusion, draw an inference, or conclude. What new inferences emerge in your Hopkins work based on new research priorities, or changes in the field of Victorian studies?
• Changing research directions in the study of Victorian poets (Hopkins and others)
• Archiving Hopkins.

(While we would prefer some engagement with the new volumes, you are not obliged to do so.)

We welcome proposals from faculty, independent scholars, and doctoral candidates for 20-minute presentations. 

☙ Proposal details

Submit an abstract (300 words) and a brief biographical note (100 words) to Lesley Higgins (19higgins55@gmail.com) no later than 26 October 2026. For those who submitted an abstract earlier, please email us to say whether you’d like the same abstract considered for this new date and location.

☙ Final notes

We are planning to pursue publication of the proceedings in at least three possible journals.

More information will be forthcoming on the conference website.

Please e-mail us if you have any questions.

☙ Organizers:

Mariaconcetta Costantini, Jude V. Nixon, Lesley Higgins, Amanda Paxton