This graduate student conference will examine how conceptions of the natural and the unnatural fundamentally shape cultural expression in 19th-Century Britain. From Charles Darwin’s theory of ‘natural selection’ to John Ruskin’s treatise on the ‘Nature of the Gothic,’ the language of ‘nature’ as inevitable and inherent identity is a formative trope that appears in everything from discussions of politics to theories of painting. Bridging conceptions of essence and expression (genetic to aesthetic) to early environmentalism, the question of “what is un/natural?” lies at the heart of the Victorian era’s major spiritual, artistic, and social inquiries. Co-organized by the Victorian Colloquium and the Rutgers Nineteenth-Century Group, the Victorian Symposium is supported by the Princeton Humanities Council.