CFP: BAVS 2012 conference: Victorian Value: Ethics, Economics, Aesthetics (3/31/2012; 8/30 - 9/1/2012)

BAVS 2012

University of Sheffield

Thursday 30^th   August – Saturday 1^st September

Victorian Value: Ethics, Economics, Aesthetics

I suppose the persons interested in establishing a school of Art for workmen may in the main be divided into two classes, namely, first those who chiefly desire to make the men happier, wiser and better; and secondly, those who desire them to produce better and more valuable work (John Ruskin)

The 2012 conference of the British Association for Victorian Studies will be held in Sheffield, the thriving heart of the Victorian Steel Industry. In 1875, on the outskirts of the city, John Ruskin established the Museum of St George, a collection of art objects and natural artefacts displayed for the aesthetic education of the city’s workers. Inspired by Ruskin, the theme of this year’s conference aims to explore the relationships between different kinds of value in the Victorian period, to return to the period’s central debates about how to measure, establish and uphold value in the emergent modernity of Victorian Britain, and to think about the representation and legacy of those values both in and beyond the field of Victorian Studies. 

Papers may address, but are not limited to, to following topics:

• The representation and circulation of different kinds of currency
• Aesthetes in the marketplace
• Critical/cultural evaluation, from Ruskin and Arnold to Leavis and beyond
• The ethical turn in Victorian Studies
• Political economy and the art of government
• The transmission of value at home and abroad
• Value rewritten, from Woolf to Waters
• Domestic economy and the aesthetics of the home
• Ethical dilemmas, aesthetic solutions
• Value on display: collection and exhibition
• New economies, from Cobden to Carpenter
• Commodity culture and the value of ‘things’
• Sincere characters: the ethics of self and text
• Work ethics: Madox-Brown, Marx and Morris

Please send the title of your paper and an abstract of around 250 words to bavs2012@gmail.com by 31st March 2012.

For more information, please see our website (http://www.victorianvalue2012.blogspot.com).

Job Posting: Lecturer in 19th Century Studies, King's College London

The Department of English at King's College London wishes to appoint an outstanding scholar in the area of 19th-century (post 1830) English Literature. We seek applications from strong candidates who work on any area of 19th-century (post -1830) literature, although candidates may have research expertise in any of the following: 19th-century poetry; the literature of the 1880s and 1890s; literature and its relationships to visual and material cultures; trans-national literatures of the 19th century; 19th-century media and print culture.

This is one of three new positions currently advertised, which form part of a strategy to ensure the Department's position as one of the top departments nationally. The current phase of hiring is the second in a planned expansion staged over 2011-2013. The Department is committed to research and teaching excellence in Anglo-phone literary and cultural studies, from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present day, across a broad sweep of geographical locations and national traditions, genres, styles, and media (including theatre and performance and creative writing). Through strategic investment, it builds on its growing reputation for dynamic and innovative research and teaching (in RAE 2008, 70% of outputs were judged 'world leading' or 'internationally excellent'), and a distinctive programme of collaborations with
institutions in the cultural sector.

Further information about the English Department http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/english/index.aspx

For informal enquiries, contact Professor Josephine McDonagh, Head of the Department of English,josephine.mcdonagh@kcl.ac.uk

CFP: Race, Nation and Empire on the Victorian Popular Stage (3/23/2012; 7/2012)

Race, Nation and Empire on the Victorian Popular Stage

https://sites.google.com/site/victorianpantomime/home/2012-conference

This conference will be the third in a series of three organised as part of our AHRC-funded project on the 'Cultural History of English Pantomime, 1837-1902'.

A number of studies, most recent of which is Marty Gould's Nineteenth-Century Theatre and the Imperial Ideal, have demonstrated ways in which Victorian theatres served as significant sites for the 'imperial encounter'. Across a variety of theatrical forms, particularly the non-canonical stage, the stage provided a series of visual narratives in which audiences were presented the landscapes, architecture, peoples, and religions of colonised territories.  Moreover, theatre often served as a site for propaganda, educating and enthusing audiences about Britain's vast empire.

On the one hand, we seek papers exploring theatrical representations of the landscapes, religions and peoples Britons encountered as part of their imperial project.  We are interested especially in discussing the ways in which popular entertainments brought the empire 'home' and how this affected patterns of popular culture, including the gendering of public imperial discourse, the formation of racial attitudes and the construction of national identities. Given recent scholarship on provincial theatre, we especially welcome proposals which investigate connections between the 'local' and the imperial and the role of performance cultures in promoting civic and municipal identities.

On the other hand, we seek proposals which engage the two-way traffic of imperialism: that is, how were Britons and their colonial project represented in overseas sites, both by Britons abroad and those people and landscapes who became the subject of the colonial gaze.

We welcome proposals which engage the following general themes and areas for exploration:

• The 'image' of empire: visual representations in performance (corporeal enactment; the movement of bodies and artefacts; costumes; props; set design and scene painting; etc) and print (playbills; posters; theatricalisation of visual metaphor in periodicals, literary and early film and radio culture)
• Variations and hybridisation of performance culture: intertextual crossovers between sites of representation (pantomime, melodrama, lantern shows, dioramas, minstrelsy, exhibitions, festivals, circus, zoos, etc)
• Performance cultures of celebrity, commemoration and exploration: representation of the military and the navy; of warfare, settlement and conquest; of adventure stories and the patriotic impulse
• Traffic - the mediation of cultural contact zones on the stage: touring companies; dynastic families; performance sites in the colonies; negotiation/subversion of dominant norms through performance.
• Race, Science and Identity: peripheral, metropolitan, national and global formations of culture and identity; stage engagements with evolutionary science and anthropology; gendering of theatrical discourse.

The deadline for proposals for 20 minute papers, up to but not exceeding 300 words, should be sent to Peter Yeandle (p.yeandle(at)Lancaster.ac.uk) by no later than 23 March 2012.


Keynote Speaker: John MacKenzie

Other confirmed speakers:

• Jeffrey Richards (Lancaster): Drury Lane - epitome of Empire?
• Kate Newey (Birmingham): Theatrical Utopias
• Marty Gould (South Florida): The Crusoe Tradition/ Anglo-African cultural exchange
• Jim Davis (Warwick): Dynastic theatrical families
• Veronica Kelly (Queensland): Australian star actors and pantomime
• Catherine Hail (V&A museum): W.S. Gilbert and the question of patriotism
• Ross Forman (Warwick): Exhibitions and Re-enactment
• Anne Witchard (Westminster): Representations of the Chinese on stage
• Joanne Robinson (Nottingham): Seeing the world from the provinces
• Marah Gubar (Pittsburgh): Transatlantic children's touring companies
• Stuart Currie (Worcester): Mid-century warfare on stage: set painting/scenography
• Simon Sladen (Winchester): Race-relations and 20thC pantomime's Victorianism
• Veronica Kelly (Queensland): Australia

Conference: Politics, Performance and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain (4/19-20/2012)

Politics, Performance and Popular Culture

in Nineteenth-Century Britain
University of Birmingham, 19-20 April 2012

You are invited to join us for a two-day symposium in Birmingham, at which we will explore the relationship between politics, performance and popular culture in nineteenth-century Britain. Our speakers have been confirmed, but we welcome participants for roundtable discussions and other contributions.

In what ways might popular culture have defined politics?  How might 'performance' be addressed as a concept by which better to understand crowd behaviour, whether for example at hustings or in protest?  How did politicians and others conceptualise their audience?  If, as Patrick Joyce argues, the late-Victorian audience in a context of political reform were 'rightful heirs to the democracy of pleasure' (Visions of the People, 1994, p. 309), how can we define the relationship between audience, politics and pleasure? Can we identify a discursive relationship between political and performance culture?

Speakers:

• Mike Sanders (Manchester): on Platforms, Correspondences and Theatrical Metaphor.
• Jim Davis (Warwick): Victorian pantomime and the Politics of Gender Variance
• Jane Pritchard (Victoria and Albert Museum): on Ballet, class and identity
• Jill Sullivan (Independent): on The Irish question in regional pantomime
• Marcus Morris (Lancaster): on Labour leaders, political rhetoric and performativity
• Richard Gaunt (Nottingham): on Peel as actor-dramatist (parliament itself as theatrical institution)
• Caroline Radcliffe (Birmingham): on Theatrical hierarchy and Cultural capital: East and West London
• Anselm Heinrich (Glasgow): on Gladstone, national theatre and contested didactics of theatre.
• Janice Norwood (Hertfordshire): on East End Socialism, performance techniques in protest/marches
• Peter Yeandle (Lancaster): on Christian Socialism and performing arts: politics, theology and theatricality

Costs: £35 (£20 postgraduate). Further information about local accommodation upon request. For further information, please contact Peter Yeandle at p.yeandle(at)lancaster.ac.uk

CFP: Robert Browning’s legacy(ies) and transition(s) (4/30/2012; 12/6-7/2012)

Proposals for papers are invited for an international conference to be held at Lyon 2 University (France) on December 6th and 7th 2012, as part of the commemoration of the bicentennial of the birth of Robert Browning.

Too often relegated to the Victorian shelves of neglected literature, too often identified exclusively as the inventor of the dramatic monologue — also known as the Victorian monologue —, too often considered to be a difficult, if not obscure, poet, the victim of the readers of his century, who discovered him late, Robert Browning was blamed by the Victorians precisely for what the Modernists treasured in his poetry. By turns Romantic, post-Romantic, Victorian, and post-Victorian, Robert Browning’s works spanned almost the entire Victorian era, looking backwards to rediscover the Romantic period, and forward to herald the arrival of the Modern period, through innumerable complex poems, which he himself questioned and reworked. The main question about such a legacy is the reason why his contemporaries rejected it whereas the poets and readers to come would be proud of it. What are the traces he left in Victorian poetry that would survive their author unexpectedly and in spite of him? How and why is it possible to say that Browning’s poetry is one of legacy(ies) and transition(s)?

Proposals (300 words max.) for 30-minute papers in English or French should be sent by April 30th 2012 at the latest, accompanied by a short cv, to the following e-mail address: Jean-Charles.Perquin@univ-lyon2.fr.

Job vacancy at Florence Nightingale Museum (2/6/2012)

Job vacancy at Florence Nightingale Museum

www.florence-nightingale.co.uk 

Job Title:                            Gallery Assistant
Line Manager:                  Front of House Manager
Salary:                                  £7.50 per hr (paid monthly through FNM BACS in arrears)
Hours:                                  8 hours with a 30 minute unpaid lunch break
Hours of work:                  9:00-5:00/9:30-5:30
Contract:                             Permanent

Background information
The Florence Nightingale Museum Trust was established as an independent charity in 1983 and opened to the public in 1989.  The museum is located in the grounds of St Thomas' Hospital at the heart of the cultural regeneration taking place on the South Bank.

Successful applicants will have the opportunity to join a new team in a modernized and redesigned museum, dedicated to promoting the Life and work of Florence Nightingale.

Florence Nightingale became a living legend as the 'Lady with the Lamp'. When she died in 1910, aged 90, she was famous around the world. But who was the real Florence Nightingale? The Florence Nightingale Museum follows her story and uncovers a woman of many talents, as well as flaws. The new museum opened in May 2010 after a £1.4million refurbishment. Visitors travel through three pavilions which take them on a journey through the life and times of Florence Nightingale, from her Victorian childhood to the Crimean War and on to her years as an ardent campaigner.

The Front of House is a small, enthusiastic and hardworking team.  Applicants are required to work a minimum of three days across a seven day week, with no fixed Rota, so flexibility is essential.   Demonstrate excellent interpersonal communication skills and experience in customer services, as well as an interest in the arts and cultural heritage.

For an application form and further details please email catherine@florence-nightingale.co.uk. Please telephone or email to request a hard copy application.

Catherine McGregor (Front of House Manager)
Florence Nightingale Museum
Gassiot House
2 Lambeth Palace Road
SE1 7EW
020 7620 0374

The closing date for applications is 9am on 6th February 2012. Interviews will be held at the Florence Nightingale Museum on 8th February 2012

Registration Reminder: W.T. Stead: Centenary Conference for a Newspaper Revolutionary (1/31/2012; 4/16-17/2012)

W.T. Stead: 
Centenary Conference for a Newspaper Revolutionary
British Library
16-17 April 2012

Plenary Speakers include: Laurel Brake; John Durham Peters; Tristram Hunt MP; Geoffrey Robertson QC; Roy Greenslade

Early registration closes on the 31 January 2012.  Up until the 31 January registration is £70 (£60 concessions) for both days, including lunch and a wine reception.  From the 1 February registration will be £85 (£75 concessions).  Registration closes on the 31 March 2012

Registration is via the British Library Box Office.  Unfortunately, the BL can only take bookings by telephone (+44 (0)1937 546546) or in person at the Box Office at St Pancras.

For more details about registration see the conference website: http://sites.google.com/site/stead2012/registration

The conference program is here: http://sites.google.com/site/stead2012/program

CFP: MLA 2013 Victorian Division panels on Victorian Attention and Victorian Distraction (3/1/2012; 1/3-6/2013)

The Victorian Division seeks abstracts for a panel on Victorian Attention.  Did Victorians attend to their world in particular ways?  Were their concepts of attention themselves distinct from those of other periods?  What does it mean to “pay” attention in the nineteenth century?  Were there Victoria attention disorders: according too much attention to something or someone, or too little; the wish for inordinate attention, or the inability to bear attention.

Topics might include:

• Attending to children, books, celebrities, clothing, etc.
• Absorption—in activities, thought, the self.
• Noticing, considering, focusing.
• Publicity, celebrity, scandal.
• Learning, memorization, retaining knowledge.
• Caring for and comforting others; forms of courtesy.
• Disorders of attention: Victorian attention spans, attention deficits, attention seeking, shyness, etc.

The Victorian Division also seeks abstracts for a panel on Victorian Distraction.  What are the peculiarly Victorian modes by which attention goes astray?  Why has the nineteenth-century continuum of distraction—from mild absent-mindedness to full-on madness—become so foreshortened?  Who or what drives literary characters to distraction and why?  What is the precise quality of a beneficial distraction?  When does attention become distraction, or vice versa?  What does Victorian psychology have to say about any of these topics?

Topics might include:

• Diversion: hobbies, leisure activities.
• Getting lost, wandering, going astray, traveling, fugue states.
• Madness, temporary or permanent.
• Absent-mindedness, mild confusion, poor attention.
• Narrative and/or theoretical implications of distraction.

500 word abstracts and CV to Elaine Freedgood (ef38@nyu.edu) by Mar 1 please.

Charles Dickens and the Mid-Victorian Press, 1850–70 (3/28-31/2012)

Charles Dickens and the Mid-Victorian Press, 1850–70
Wednesday 28th March–Saturday 31st March 2012
Department of English, University of Buckingham, 

Buckingham MK18 1EG

In conjunction with the Victorian Studies Centre at the University of Leicester, the University of Buckingham is delighted to announce an international Dickens Bicentenary conference on 28-31 March 2012, featuring the launch of the Dickens Journals Online project (www.djo.org.uk). Our list of speakers includes: Laurel Brake, Iain Crawford, Judith Flanders, Holly Furneaux, Louis James, Gail Marshall, Robert Patten, Joanne Shattock, Michael Slater, John Sutherland, John Tulloch and Cathy Waters.

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. This international conference 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.

For further information and a draft programme, and to book full conference or individual day tickets, please visit: http://www.buckingham.ac.uk/djo

If you have any queries then please contact John Drew, Ben Winyard or Hazel Mackenzie atdjo@buckingham.ac.uk. 

CFP: Wounded Bodies, Tortured Souls: Narratives of Victorian and Neo-Victorian Trauma (3/16/2012; 6/14/2012)

Wounded Bodies, Tortured Souls: 
Narratives of Victorian and Neo-Victorian Trauma

Postgraduate Conference, University of Portsmouth, 14th June 2012

Keynote Speaker: Dr Marie-Luise Kohlke, University of Swansea

In recent years the study of trauma has become central to contemporary conceptualisations of personal and collective narratives of pain and loss. Often identified as a ‘modern’ phenomenon, a product of industrialisation and modernisation, trauma emerged as a distinct pathology alongside the rise of a middle-class readership, and accounts of physical and psychological wounds abound in Victorian fiction. In turn, Victorian tropes of trauma have been appropriated by the neo-Victorian novel, often in ways which offer a self-conscious or critical engagement with past representations.

This conference seeks to examine the intersection between the physical and psychical representation of trauma in both Victorian and Neo-Victorian literature. It aims to explore the importance of the relationship between the mind and the body, as well as the relationship between Victorian literary representations and neo-Victorian appropriations. We welcome papers examining representations of trauma in Victorian and neo-Victorian fiction, as well as contributions from the fields of literary theory, cultural studies, and the visual arts.

Possible areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Victorian trauma narratives
•  Pain in Victorian art, literature and culture
• Neo-Victorian traumatic appropriations
•  ‘Wound Culture’
• Traumatic performances (race/gender/sexuality, etc.)
•  Imperial trauma

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words for papers lasting 20 minutes, and a brief biographical note (100 words), to Emily Hunt (emily.hunt@port.ac.uk) or Alex Messem (alexandra.messem@port.ac.uk) by 16 March 2012.

CFP: Print and Beyond: Publishing Rossetti, Morris and the Aesthetes (3/15/2012; 1/3-6/2013)

SHARP and William Morris Society at MLA 2013

As in 2012, SHARP and the William Morris Society in the United States are proposing a joint panel for the Modern Language Association's 2013 conference to be held January 2013 in Boston.

"Print and Beyond: Publishing Rossetti, Morris and the Aesthetes"

This proposed joint session with the William Morris Society will consider material presentations of Pre-Raphaelite works in a variety of media.

Abstracts to Greg Barnhisel (barnhiselg@duq.edu) by March 15.

Event: News of the World: A Study Day (2/24/2012)

News of the World: A Study Day
King’s College London
24 February 2012
All Welcome - Free

Founded in 1843, the News of the World was one of the UK’s longest-running Sunday newspapers when it came to its inauspicious end in the summer of 2011. Gone, but not forgotten, the paper continues to be of interest as the full ‘story’ of the hacking scandal is revealed in the wake of parliamentary and other investigations.

Initially a broadsheet transformed into a tabloid by News International only in 1984, the News of the World has always been one of the most read newspapers in Britain. During the Victorian period, it had one of the largest circulations, catering, in particular, for the working classes, and at the time of its closing, it was the highest selling newspaper of any kind in the UK. Its history has always been lively and controversial, with sensational and investigative journalism a mainstay of its news. As one media historian has claimed, the paper always had something of the ‘saucy seaside postcard’ about it, and as such, it may have had a unique place within British news culture.

News of the World: A Study Day seeks to stimulate discussion of the paper by taking an historical view that understands the title within the framework of media history. This day of lectures, roundtable discussion and seminar considers a range of issues related specifically to the title, since its launch in the nineteenth century.

10.15-11.15 – Welcome and LectureMartin Conboy (Univ. of Sheffield) 'Residual Radicalism and the Novelty of the Nation: Circumstance Beyond our Control'

11.15-11.30 – Coffee

11.30-1.00 – Roundtable: Victorian BeginningsClare Horrocks (Liverpool John Moores Univ)
Andrew King (Canterbury Christ Church)
Jim Mussell (Univ of Birmingham)
Melissa Score (Birkbeck, University of London)

1.00-2.00 – Lunch

2.00-3.00 – Seminar: ‘Sex on Trial: Wilde and Montagu’ led by Prof. John Stokes (King’s College London)

3.00-3.15 – Tea

3.15-4.15 – PanelAlison Oram, (Leeds Metropolitan Univ),  ‘“Another Man-Woman…”: Sexuality and Modernity in the News of the World 1914-1960’
James Rodgers (London Metropolitan Univ), ‘The decline of the English newspaper: the double-edged sword of technology, and the downfall of the News of the World’

The Study Day, organized by Laurel Brake (Birkbeck) and Mark Turner (KCL), is open to all and admission is free, though places are limited. Please email Mark Turner (mark.2.turner@kcl.ac.uk), by 15th February, to reserve your place. Venue: The Council Room, King’s College London, Strand Campus. The Study Day is made possible through support from the journal Media History and the Department of English, King’s College London.

Symposium: Celebrating Mr. Dickens (2/18/2012)

"Celebrating Mr. Dickens"
Saturday symposium, February 18, 2012
University of Delaware, Newark, DE

The University of Delaware will hold a special Saturday Symposium on Feb. 18 in honor of the 200th anniversary of the birth of novelist Charles Dickens.

The "Celebrating Mr. Dickens" program includes talks on Dickens and his world by faculty members, a tour of two exhibitions in the University of Delaware Library, and a performance of the author's most celebrated public reading, "Sikes and Nancy."

The Symposium will begin at 10:30a a.m. in Gore Hall, room 103, on the UD campus. Following coffee, participants will first hear Margaret D. Stetz, the Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and Professor of Humanities, speak on "He wanted a wife and a family: Charles Dickens and Women."

The second speaker will be Thomas Leitch, Professor of English and Director of the Film Studies Program, who will speak on "Dickens, Dickens, and Adaptation."

Following the two morning sessions, a buffet lunch will be served.

Participants will then visit the University of Delaware Library to tour two exhibitions of rare books and Dickensiana: "Dickens at 200: 1812-2012," in the Special Collections Gallery, 2nd floor, Morris Library, on view January 24, 2012-June 8, 2012 and "Dickens and the Late Victorians," an exhibition in the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, Morris Library 115A, on view January 24, 2012-March 1, 2012

The third talk of the day will be by Heidi Kaufman, Associate Professor of English and Jewish Studies, who will speak on "The Fagin Myth."

Following Professor Kaufman's talk and a break for coffee and tea, Iain Crawford, Acting Chair of English, will discuss Dickens's public readings and introduce a performance of "Sikes and Nancy" by Mic Matarrese, who is a member of UD's professional acting company, the Resident Ensemble Players (REP).

The cost is $50 per person, including lunch. Registration for the first 25 University of Delaware students or staff is free, with lunch not included. Space is limited.

To buy tickets, see the UD Connection Saturday Symposium website: http://www.udconnection.com/saturdaysymposium

The symposium has been made possible through the support of the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library.

Dickens at the University of Massachusetts Lowell: exhibition and conference

On January 22, in 1842, Charles Dickens and his wife, Catherine, arrived in America for their tour of the young republic. The battered steamship Britannia had weathered a terrifying Atlantic hurricane and put into port in Boston, MA (dubbed "Boz town") with shattered lifeboats dangling from its sides.

In this, the bicentenary year of Dickens's birth, the University of Massachusetts Lowell is celebrating this author's connection to the United States with several months of programming and a major exhibit: "Dickens and Massachusetts: A Tale of Power and Transformation"  (Mar. 30 - Oct. 20, 2012).  We are also hosting a Dickens Society Symposium 13 - 15 July 2012 here in Lowell and invite scholars at all stages of their career to submit proposals for paper presentations.


The University of Massachusetts Lowell  would like to announce the launch of its new website: http://www.uml.edu/dickens.  Please check out our CFP for the symposium, the description of our major exhibition, and a schedule of some of our 75+ planned programs.  Dickens in Lowell is the culmination of three years of work and collaboration among many scholars, including Joel Brattin, Lillian Nayder, Natalie McKnight, and others.

Please check us out and consider a trip to Lowell to see artifacts such as the 1842 Francis Alexander portrait of Dickens (not shown in public for over 30 years), the Maclise drawing of the Dickens children (a portrait brought by the Dickenses to American when they had to leave their family at home), first editions and original letters, a rare Boston Line Type raised letter edition of The Old Curiosity Shop commissioned by Dickens as a gift to the American blind in 1968, and other rare artefacts and interesting interactive elements such as our phrenology display.  If you teach in the area, please consider bringing your students. We'd be happy to arrange docent tours if desired.

Last Call: Victorian Thresholds: Between Literature and Anthropology (1/28/2012; 4/28/2012)

VSAO 45th Annual Conference, 28 April 2012, York University

"Victorian Thresholds: Between Literature and Anthropology"

Plenary adresses by Kathy Psomiades and Audrey Jaffe.

The Victorian Studies Association of Ontario executive invites abstracts of 20-minute papers papers to be presented at this year's conference.  The theme will be "Victorian Thresholds: Between Literature and Anthropology" and the conference date is April 28 2012. Please send electronic copies of proposals (300-500 words) and a brief biographical statement to Matthew Rowlinson (mrowlins@uwo.ca) by 28 January 2012. Alternatively, hard copies can be sent by mail to Matthew Rowlinson, Department of English , University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada  N6A 3K7.

For more information on the conference, visit the Victorian Studies Association of Ontario.

Event: Celebrating Dickens in Southwark (2/7/2012)

Celebrating Dickens in Southwark

Southwark Cathedral are proud to announce that award-winning biographer Claire Tomalin, author of Charles Dickens: A Life will be speaking at the Cathedral as part of their celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary of Dickens' birth on Tuesday 7 February.

Exhibition and other events -- full details here: http://cathedral.southwark.anglican.org/news/Dickens

Event: Shared Visions: Art, Theatre and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century (2/11/2012)

Shared Visions:
Art, Theatre and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century

Saturday 11th February 2012, 9.30am to 6.00pm (Registration from 9.00 am)

School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies, Millburn House, Warwick University

This one-day conference, held in conjunction with Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, will explore the connections between art, theatre, and visual culture in the nineteenth century. During this period, the ‘art of seeing’ challenged the traditional dominance of the written word. Vision, previously denigrated as deceptive, became considered as a universal language, accessible to all, and more authentic than text. Popular theatre, especially melodrama, led the way in exploring the possibilities of the new visuality. This conference will explore the visual culture of theatre and exchanges between theatre and the visual arts.

Conference fee: £20 (£10 for postgraduate students)
Tea and coffee, sandwich lunch, and an evening wine reception (6.00pm–7.30 pm) are all included.

Registration is now open: www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/staff/jim_davis/sharedvisions.

Although the registration fee may be paid on the day of the conference, we would be grateful if delegates would register in advance, preferably by the 8th February, so that we have a sense of the numbers intended for catering purposes.

For further information on the conference, please visit http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/staff/jim_davis/sharedvisions/, or contact Jim Davis: Jim.Davis@Warwick.ac.uk, or Patricia Smyth:patricia.smyth@nottingham.ac.uk.

Directions: The department is located in Milburn House located in the University Science Park.  It is about 10 minutes walk from the main campus by footpath, but there is no direct road access from the campus itself. The closest railway station is Coventry. If you are arriving by train, either take a cab to Milburn House directly or take a bus to main campus and walk. If you are driving, you will need to access Milburn House via Lynchgate Rd and the Science Park, as shown on the campus map. There are parking spaces for visitors at the front of the building. The main entrance to the building is at the side, facing right. Campus maps may accessed via http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/about/visiting/maps.

Accommodation: For any delegate who requires accommodation on campus on Friday 10th or Saturday 11th, accommodation is currently available starting from £60 per night at Scarman House and Radcliffe House, which may be contacted throughreservations@warwick.ac.uk. Early booking is advisable.

Plenary Speaker: Shearer West, University of Oxford, ‘Benjamin Robert Haydon’s “Punch or May Day”’

Confirmed papers:

History and Narrative:

• Peter Cooke, University of Manchester, ‘Gustave Moreau: The Theatre, Theatricality, and Anti-Theatricality’
• Cathy Haill, Victoria & Albert Museum, ‘“Hold it! What a Picture!” - Art, Living Pictures and Poses Plastiques on the Nineteenth-Century Stage’
• Annabel Rutherford, York University, Toronto, ‘Drama in Art in Drama: The Interweaving of Visual Art and Theatre’

Stage Adaptation:

• Barbara Bell, Edinburgh Napier University, '“...taken from the original”: Word, Image and the Drive for Authenticity in Early Stagings of the Works of Sir Walter Scott’
• Karen Laird, University of Manchester, ‘Reconstructing J. Ware's “The Woman in White: A Drama in Three Acts” (1860)’
• Melissa Dickson, Kings College, London, ‘Visions of the Orient: Manufacturing the Arabian Nights on Early Nineteenth-Century London Stages’

The Art of Theatre: Lights, Costume, Scenery

• Veronica Isaac, Victoria & Albert Museum, ‘The “Art” of Costume in the Late Nineteenth Century: Highlights from the Wardrobe of “The Painter's Actress”’
• Janice Norwood, University of Hertfordshire, ‘Posing Questions: The Iconography of Two Female Theatrical Impresarios’
• Jane Pritchard, Victoria & Albert Museum, ‘The Iconography of the Ballet at the Alhambra, 1884 – 1912’

Religious Spectacle:

• Peter Yeandle, University of Lancaster, ‘Spectacles of Sin or Performances of Divine Grace? Seeing the Ballet Through Anglican Eyes, c. 1880 – 1900’
• Anjna Chouhan, University of Leicester, ‘Performing Religion in Shakespeare on the Late Victorian Stage'
• Leanne Groenveld, University of Regina, '“I felt as never before, under any sermon that I ever heard preached”: English and American Responses to, and Representations of, the Oberammergau Passion Play, 1840 – 1900’

Dramatizing the Environment:

• Viv Gardner, University of Manchester, ‘The Image of a Well-ordered city: Manchester Theatre Architecture, 1880 – 1910’
• Trish Reid, Kingston University, ‘Ah, my own village home before a palace”: Nostalgia and the Rural Idyll in Melodrama of the 1830s and 40s’
• Mary Jane Boland, University of Nottingham, ‘Through the Eyes of Others: Reassessing Audience Engagement with Joseph Peacock's Pattern Day at Glendalough’

Stage Spectacle:

• Hayley Bradley, University of Manchester, Delighting the Eye Rather than the Ear: The Triumvirate's Autumn Dramas at Drury Lane
• Jane Jordan, Kingston University, ‘From Popular Novel to “Sensational Equestrian Drama”: Late Nineteenth-Century Theatrical Adaptation for “an amusement loving public”’
• David Mayer, University of Manchester and Cassie Mayer, Independent Scholar, ‘Exit with Dead Horse’

Seminar Series: Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies (Spring 2012)

Birkbeck's Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies is pleased to announce the launch of a new lecture and seminar series, the Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies, to which all are welcome.

The Forum will be inaugurated at 6.00 pm on Thursday 26 January with a lecture on '"A Case of Metaphysics": Counterfactuals, Realism, Great Expectations' by Professor Andrew H. Miller, director of the Victorian Studies programme at Indiana University, and co-editor of Victorian Studies.

The lecture, which will be held in the Keynes Library (Room 114, School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD), will be followed by a party to celebrate the launch of the Forum and an exciting new programme of events in interdisciplinary nineteenth-century studies.

This term's visiting speakers include, in February, Tom Mole (2 February), Mary A. Favret (9 February), Susan Matthews (16 February), Thomas Dixon (23 February), and in March, Sophie Levie (15 March), and Matt ffytche (19 March).

Look out for announcements about forthcoming Forum events, and meanwhile email birkbeckforum@gmail.com to join our mailing list.

CFP: anthology chapter on A Christmas Carol, It's A Wonderful Life, or Groundhog Day (2/22/2012)

Dr. Marc DiPaolo is looking for an essay that examines the contemporary relevance of It's a Wonderful Life - and the text that inspired it, A Christmas Carol - in light of recent religious, economic, and political events, including the "war on Christmas" and the continuing commercialization of Christmas, Occupy Wall Street, and Banxodus, and that consider the characters of Scrooge and Mr. Potter as examples of modern American capitalist amorality. This contemporary, ahistorical analysis should, naturally, include a serious study of the works in their original socio-political context, as well as consider issues of authorial intent.

The essay would be due in mid-February but would be included in a contracted book that will be published by McFarland at the end of 2012 or the start of 2013. The writing style should be intellectually rigorous enough to be considered solid scholarship, but written in an accessible style for undergraduate readers and a possibly broader-than-academic readership. References to another "religious" reform story, Groundhog Day, are welcome, but not necessary.

Length of Contribution: 6,000 – 8,500 words (including notes)

Citation Style: Modern Language Association

Please contact Dr. Marc DiPaolo at captainblackadder@hotmail.com. 

CFP: Carlyle Conference (2/1/2012; 7/10-12/2012)

Carlyle Conference

University of Edinburgh

10-12 July, 2012

http://www.lifelong.ed.ac.uk/carlyle/

The 2012 conference will celebrate the publication of 40 volumes of the Duke-Edinburgh edition of The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2012 (volume 40 forthcoming November).

Call for Papers

Papers are invited on Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh Carlyle and related subjects.  They can reflect current research interests in either Carlyle.  We would also welcome papers relating the Carlyles to other authors and fields.

How to Submit a Paper          

Email your abstract to Carlyle@ed.ac.uk before 1 February 2012.

Abstracts will be reviewed and a decision sent by 1 March 2012.

Reminder: NAVSA 2012 Conference "Victorian Networks" (3/1/2012; 9/27-30/2012)

The North American Victorian Studies Association Conference for 2012, in Madison,  Wisconsin, September 27-30, invites papers on the theme of networks. Keynotes include  Amanda Anderson, Adam Phillips, and a visual networks panel with Caroline Arscott, Tim Barringer, Julie Codell, and Mary Roberts.  Participants will also be able to sign up  for networks seminars of 15 presenters of  precirculated 5-page position papers on the  topic.

March 1, 2012 is the deadline for electronic submissions of proposed papers and panels. We welcome proposals of no more than 500 words for individual papers; for panel  proposals, please submit abstracts of 500 words per paper and a panel description of 250 words. Please include a one-page cv and submit all files in .pdf format to english.wisc.edu/navsa.  Conference threads might include:

• Networks of artists, critics, consumers, scholars
• Networks of print (books, chapbooks, newspapers, magazines, letters, pamphlets), including relations among publishers, printers, editors, writers, readers
• Commodity culture networks and the circulation of things and bodies
• Networks of discourse (such as science, religion, nature, politics)
• The science of networks, then and now
• Textual networks (characters, plot, language, intertextuality)
• Networks of influence, production, reception
• Networks of display or exhibition
• Fashioning networks among otherwise unconnected authors and historical figures
• Transnational and other migrations: geographic, cultural, ideological, rhetorical
• Borders and "borders" – theorizing cultural connection, separation, entanglement
• Diasporic networks: cosmopolitanism, wandering, exile
• Clandestine networks such as spies, secret agents, and detection
• Networking technologies
• Network arts
• Social networks including leisure clubs and professional societies
• Family and kinship networks
• Victorian cities: streets, arcades, parks, or other networks of urban space
• Imperial networks
• Network forms: gossip, blackmail, suspense, serials,, periodicals, or other genres
• Psychic and supernatural networks: seances, spiritualism, mediums
• Digital networks and twenty-first century reading practices
• Networked periodization: romantic/victorian/modernist
• Networks of resistance: feminist, ecological, queer
• Networks of iteration and translation (between image, text, adaptation)

SHARP Call for Reviewers: Digital Projects

The SHARP (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing) newsletter has been running a regular feature review of digital projects (subscription & open access). At this point, we're looking for reviewers and projects to be reviewed. We've amassed a queue of projects below. Also below are the deadlines.

Potential Projects to be Reviewed:

• The Vault at Pfaff's
• Salani Project
• 19th-Century American Children's Book Trade Directory
• America's Historical Imprints
• America's Historical NewsPapers
• ARTFl
• London Lives: 1690-1800
• Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture
• Waterloo Directory of Periodicals

Deadlines:
Winter (Nov 1 deadline)
Spring (Feb 1 deadline)
Summer (May 1 deadline)

If interested, please choose a project from above or suggest one outside the list and contact Dr. Katherine D. Harris at katherine.harris@sjsu.edu. The only caveat is that it can't be a project that you've worked on yourself. Please also choose a deadline. Dr. Harris will send further information (style sheets, etc).

SHARP: http://www.sharpweb.org/

CFP: Emblems of Nationhood: Britishness 1707-1901 (3/1/2012; 8/10-12/2012)

Emblems of Nationhood: Britishness 1707-1901

10-12th August 2012

University of St Andrews

National identity is a central point of enquiry that is repeatedly called upon in contemporary social and political rhetoric. Our conference, ‘Emblems of Nationhood, 1707–1901’, will address the roots of this theme by discussing depictions of Britain and Britishness in literature, philosophy, and art between the Act of Union in 1707 and the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. Over the course of this multidisciplinary conference, we aim to explore how expressions of nationalism have moulded both critical perspectives on national identity and their creative products.

Discussing emblems of nationhood in 2012 is a fitting way to mark the twentieth anniversary of Linda Colley’s seminal account of Britishness, Britons: Forging the Nation, and coincides with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Several broad questions could potentially  be explored in the course of the conference: What did Britishness mean in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and how was it represented and perceived? To what extent is nationalism tied with military events and empire building? How “British” was Britain before the launch of the Empire? How did concepts of nationalism enter the public consciousness, both within the British Isles and abroad? What is the impact of artistic and cultural depictions of Britain and Britishness in domestic and international contexts? How can these historical ideas of Britishness enhance our contemporary understanding of the concepts of nationalism and national identity?

Alongside panel sessions and a roundtable discussion on national identity in the period, public expressions of nationhood will also be represented: we are planning an exhibition of pictorial representations of Britishness in the form of cartoons, banknotes, war-landscapes, et cetera, as well as an evening of patriotic entertainment from the period.

Suggested topics for papers might include, but are not limited to:

• Britannia and definitions of Britishness
• Liberty and Empire
• Four nations, archipelago and Britishness
• The Auld Alliance
• British history and histories of Britain
• Foreign and British taste
• Mother-nation and Commonwealth
• The Gothic revival, Gothic novels, and the ancient Gothic constitution
• Foreign perceptions of Britain and Britishness
• National anthems
• Expressions of Britishness in applied arts, satirical prints and cartoons
• The Great Exhibition of 1851
• The iconography of British institutions
• Positive and negative forms of national identity

We seek 250-word proposals for 20-minute papers from postgraduates and established scholars from across the Arts and Humanities. The deadline for submission is 1st March 2012. Please email submissions to EmblemsOfNationhood@gmail.com. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact the conference organisers, Dr Kristin Lindfield-Ott (mko4@st-andrews.ac.uk) and Jennifer Whitty (jw836@st-andrews.ac.uk).

http://www-ah.st-andrews.ac.uk/Emblems_of_Nationhood/Home.html

CFP: 2012 M/MLA: Permanent Section: English Literature 1800-1900 (5/7/2012; 11/8-11/2012)

The English Literature 1800-1900 panel seeks papers for the 2012 Midwest Modern Language Association Convention to be held on November 8-11, 2012 in Cincinnati, Ohio.

In keeping with the informal theme of “debt” for the M/MLA 2012 convention, the English II: English Literature 1800-1900 panel seeks to present discussions of works and writers that deal in some fashion with that nineteenth-century juggernaut, debt. Possible themes include  indebtedness and influence, borrowers and lenders, bonds and contracts, economics of lack, states of debt, oaths and promises, gift-giving, cultures of expenditure, occupy literature, trans-cultural capital, deferring, symbolic economics, ecological materialism, rethinking civic missions/practices, forgiveness, gratitude, literature of demand, emotional obligation, debts of affect, and student loans. Papers on any form or genre of British literature between 1800 and 1900 are welcome. Proposals of 200 to 400 words should be sent by May 7th to Nancee Reeves, Purdue University, nreeves@purdue.edu. Selected presenters will be informed by June 1st, 2012 and must register for the conference by July 1, 2012.

Call for Contributors: Journal of Victorian Culture online

The Journal of Victorian Culture online is looking for contributors for their blog. Now that Christmas is over, we would love to hear your musings for our blog 'Victorians beyond the Academy'. Have you watched a Victorian period drama on TV, rediscovered a Victorian classic or stumbled upon the Victorians in an usual place? Why not tell us about it? Contributions can be of any length and any topic.

If you have any questions you can email Lucinda Matthews-Jones at l.matthews-jones@swansea.ac.uk; Lisa Hager at lisa.hager@uwc.edu or Ryan Fong at rdfong@ucdavis.edu.

To see past posts take a look at our website http://myblogs.informa.com/jvc/. You can also like us on Facebook at the Journal of Victorian Culture or twitter @JofVictCulture for regular updates.

CFP: Spatial Perspectives: Literature and Architecture, 1850 – Present (3/2/2012; 6/22/2012)

Spatial Perspectives: Literature and Architecture, 1850 – Present
Friday 22nd June 2012
University of Oxford, Faculty of English Language and Literature
Website: http://spatialperspectives.wordpress.com/

Keynote: Professor Douglas Tallack will deliver a keynote on “Tall Stories:  New York Skyscrapers in Art and Literature” and will discuss Hardy's reaction to “giants of the mere market” in The American Scene.

“I’ve felt that a book is like a building, and a building is like a book” -Steven Holl.

“Architecture will no longer be the social, the collective, the dominant art. The great poem, the great building, the great work of mankind will no longer be built, it will be printed” -Victor Hugo

“Perhaps because literature and architecture are the two most "visible" arts, since they organize both the everyday practices of reading and the everyday necessities of shelter, the crises and tensions that affect them seem strikingly parallel” -Philippe Hamon

This interdisciplinary conference seeks to foster a dialogue between literature and architecture by bringing together papers that encompass the diversity of thinking about these two disciplines and the ways in which they engage and interact. This will be the first conference to examine the intersections of architecture and literature globally over a broad timeframe.

We warmly encourage contributions from practising architects, architectural historians, creative writers, and scholars of literature. An edited collection of conference proceedings is planned. Papers are invited that address, but are not limited to, the following broad themes:

• Textual spaces / spatial texts The language of built space / narrative and architecture
• Mapping the city Icons and meaning
• Interart analogues Visual cultures
• Literature and architectural discourse Form, representation, and poetry
• Writing the architect Writers that build
• Interiors and design Architecture and Utopias / dystopias

 Please send abstracts of 300 words for 20 minute papers to literature.architecture@gmail.comby Friday 2nd March 2012. We look forward to receiving your proposal.

The conference is organised by Nicole Sierra (University of Oxford) and Terri Mullholland (University of Oxford).