I am pleased to invite you to the annual Midwest Conference on British
Studies, 12-14 October 2012.   Our meeting is at the Delta Chelsea Hotel
(33 Gerard St. West) in downtown Toronto.  Our host is the University of
Toronto.  The Delta Chelsea Hotel is offering a discounted conference rate
for MWCBS attendees.

As with last year’s conference, high levels of interest in the conference
and the quality of the proposals mean that we will run four simultaneous
panels instead of three.  And, like last year, our registration process is
now online.  That way, if you wish to register using your credit card, you
can.  We are using the same system as the North American Conference on
British Studies, so for many of you, the interface should be familiar.

We will hold our annual Friday reception, and our plenary speaker will be
Professor Ian Gentles of Glendon College who will speak on “English
Revolution Studies: The State of Play.”  Professor Gentles has written
many articles and three books on the English Revolution: The New Model
Army in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1645-1653 (1992); Soldiers, Writers
and Statesmen of the English Revolution (1998) and The English Revolution
and the Wars in the Three Kingdoms, 1638-1652 (2007). Professor Gentles is
a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and recipient of several major
research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada.

Our Saturday luncheon keynote speaker will be John Gillis, Professor
Emeritus of Rutgers University who will speak on “The Rise and Fall of the
Island Race.”  In addition to his many articles, Professor Gillis is the
author of six monographs: The Prussian Bureaucracy in Crisis, 1840-60
(1971); Youth and History: Tradition and Change in European Age Relations,
1750-Present (1975); Development of European Society, 1770-1870 (1977);
For Better, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the present (1985); A
World of Their Own Making: Myth, Ritual, and the Quest for Family Values
(1996); Islands of the Mind: How the Human Imagination Created the
Atlantic World (2004).  He has been a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, the Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced
Study in the Social Sciences.

If you would like to see the MWCBS 2012 program, you can download it as a .pdf.  Please keep in mind that while the schedule is confirmed, the program is a draft and there may be a few slight adjustments in the coming weeks.

To register for the conference, please visit the Regonline interface.*
The conference fees are as follows:

Early Registration (through 14 September): $100.00
Regular Registration (after 14 September): $120.00
Early Registration for Graduate Students (through 14 September): $70.00
Regular Registration for Graduate Students (after 30 September): $85.00

Luncheon: $20.00
The reception is open to registered MWCBS attendees

* all panelists are required to register

To reserve a hotel room at the discounted MWCBS rate, call the Delta Chelsea hotel Reservations Department at 1-800-CHELSEA (1-800-243-5732). Be sure to identify yourself as being with the Midwest Conference on British Studies and call before September 11, 2012. The rates in CAD are as follows:

Single OR Double, $119.00 per night
Triple, $139.00 per night
Quad, $159.00 per night

Note that each extra person sharing a room will be charged an additional $20 per
night. There is no charge for children under 18 sharing with parents.

Airport Shuttle Service: http://www.torontoairportexpress.com/schedule.php

As you can see, the MWCBS 2012 will be full of interesting panels.  This
is due to the hard work of our Program Committee.  For their work in
putting together a stellar line-up of panels, I would like to thank Lia
Paradis, Chair of the Program Committee, and the Program Committee
members, Eugene Beiriger, Phil Harling, Robin Hermann, Isaac Land, Jennifer McNabb, and Lisa Sigel.

I would also like to thank our Local Arrangements Chair, Jennifer Mori,
who has accomplished the difficult task of finding a good location,
keeping our registration costs down, and managing the day-to-day logistics
of organizing the conference.  It’s a lot of hard work, so be sure to
thank her when you see her in Toronto.

I very much look forward to seeing all of you in Toronto in October.
Please be sure to contact us if you have any questions.

Best wishes,

Jason

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