CFP: Charles Dickens and the Mid-Victorian Press (1850-1870) (12/30/2011; 3/28-31/2012)

Charles Dickens and the Mid-Victorian Press (1850-1870)
28-31st March 2012, University of Buckingham UK

The School of Humanities at the University of Buckingham and the Victorian Studies Centre at the University of Leicester are delighted to announce an international Dickens Bicentenary conference, featuring the launch of the Dickens Journals Online project, and an exhibition of archive materials curated by Antony Burton. Our list of invited speakers currently includes:

Laurel Brake, John Drew, Holly Furneaux, Louis James, Patrick Leary, Hazel Mackenzie, Robert Patten, Joanne Shattock, Michael Slater, John Sutherland, John Tulloch, Cathy Waters, Tony Williams, and Ben Winyard.

Household Words and All the Year Round are key mid-century weekly journals, showcasing the work of over 350 contributors as well as that of their illustrious founder and 'Conductor.' Critical analysis of their contents is an increasingly diverse and dynamic field, soon to be assisted by an open-access scholarly online edition (see www.djo.org.uk) based at the University of Buckingham. To celebrate the Bicentenary of Dickens's birth, and the public launch of the website, you are warmly invited to an international conference that aims to position Household Words and All the Year Round within the broader context of nineteenth-century periodical culture, through invited papers and contributions from experts in these and a range of rival publications, and website workshops.

Submissions are invited, in three main areas relating to the conference theme:

• original close readings of one or more articles from Household Words and All the Year Round, or the work of an individual contributor. Many articles in the journals―whether by Dickens, a known contributor, or anonymous―repay close scrutiny, whether approached in stylistic, rhetorical, ideological, or historical terms. Yet the published literature in the field is small, and something that the conference seeks to redress.
• appraisals of the contribution made by either or both journals, more generally, to key areas of debate in the mid-Victorian press. Public health, social policy, science and technology, education, gender roles, the urban experience, imperial expansion, emigration and the law, are just some of these. Aesthetic and cultural analysis of the journals, as miscellanies, in terms of the dynamics of genre they present, or in terms of broad thematic or bibliographic concerns that the paper sets out to explore, will also be welcome.
• contrastive readings of other contemporary periodical publications―whether weekly, monthly or quarterly―in relation to Household Words and All the Year Round, that will assist us in positioning the latter in relation to the crowded mid-century marketplace. Such publications might include Chambers's Journal, The Examiner, Punch, Bentley's Miscellany, the Illustrated London News, The Cornhill Magazine, as well as political and literary reviews, and 'penny bloods.'

Submissions from graduate students and as yet unpublished scholars will be particularly welcome. 500-word proposals for 20-minute papers to reachDJO@buckingham.ac.uk by Friday 30 December 2011.

An edited selection of the Conference Proceedings, embracing the three main areas above, will be published by the University of Buckingham Press in 2012. A complimentary copy will be included with every conference booking. For further details, see www.buckingham.ac.uk/djo