What was “Victorian Taste?” How did British Victorians at home and abroad discuss, theorize, market, and judge taste? How was taste imagined and envisioned in relation to literary, visual, and musical arts? How did the new knowledge of Britain’s historical and aesthetic past impact tastes of contemporary Victorians?

Midwest Victorian Studies Association 2017 Conference will reflect fresh and current thinking about taste and the Victorians. This includes topics with new perspectives on musical taste in public concert hall and in the domestic parlor, defining good taste, how the Victorians tasted food, the literary consumption of taste, the differences between “authentic” and “imitated,” the exotic within domestic tastes, instilling taste through education, women’s taste as an expression of social and political power, and religion and taste.