This interdisciplinary conference is convened by Birkbeck’s Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, University of London, in partnership with the Department of English, University of Melbourne, and software developers Constraint Technologies International (CTI). It takes place 6-7 July 2007 at Birkbeck College, Malet Street, Bloomsbury.

The two-day conference will explore the relationship between minds, bodies and machines in the long nineteenth century. Its aim is “to explore the continuities and discontinuities in the imagining of the human/machine interface in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries.” Topics include: the virtual and the real; technologies of the sublime; evolution and machines; techniques of communication; technologies of travel; medical technology; miniaturisation; self-reproduction; and spiritualism. So, not strictly about motion pictures, but much more needs to be done to introduce film into Victorian studies (after all, the Victorians invented it).

More information from the conference website.