Brandeis Novel Symposium
The Brandeis Novel Symposium will be held on Friday, October 17, 2025 from 1-6pm in the Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall at the Women's Studies Research Center. This year's conference will feature The Bostonians (1886) by Henry James. Registration for the conference is now open.
Welcome to the Brandeis Novel Symposium. Each year, this one-day conference chooses a single novel as a point of focus for salient theoretical, historical, political, and narratological questions about the novel as a genre. This year's featured text is The Bostonians (1886) by Henry James. Set in the aftermath of the Civil War, in a nation still torn by regional and ideological division and beginning to realize the terrifying power of new kinds of media, The Bostonians is Henry James's most political novel, and offers up some of his most startling depictions of same-sex sociability, solidarity, and sexual desire.
The event is free and open to the public, but requires registration. A livestream link will also be available and will be sent out the morning of the conference to those who have registered.