Event: Orality and Literacy (London C19 Studies Seminar) (Spring 2012)

London Nineteenth-Century Studies Seminar
Spring Term 2012: Orality and Literacy
Saturdays, Room G37, Senate House (South Block), University of London

The series marks the thirtieth anniversary of the appearance of Walter Ong’s influential Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. Over three days in January, February, and March, speakers will explore a range of issues relating to the interactions between voice and text in the Anglo-American long nineteenth century: philology and acoustic nostalgia, melody and poetic form, laughter, and more. All sessions take place in Room G37 (Ground Floor, Senate House, Malet St., London WC1E 7HU, map). All welcome, but please note: these seminars are very popular and the meeting rooms are often very full. Please RSVP to jon.millington@sas.ac.uk if you would like to attend.

Abstracts for the talks will be made available as the term proceeds at http://oralityandliteracy.org/.

Saturday 14 January, 11:00–13:00

• Herbert Tucker (Virginia): ‘Unsettled Score: Structure and Play in Browning’s “A Toccata of Galuppi’s”’
• William Abberley (Exeter): ‘Voices of Nature: The Oral Past in Victorian Historical Fiction’

Saturday 25 February, 11:00–13:00

• Matthew Bevis (Oxford): ‘Poetry for Laughs’
• Louise Lee (KCL): ‘Shattered Articulations: Darwin’s Evolutionary Jokes and the Deferral of Cognition’

Saturday 17 March, 11:00–17:00 — extended final day
Session 1

• Jason Camlot (Concordia) on early literary recordings and digital analysis
• James Mussell (Birmingham) on nineteenth- and twenty-first-century media and digital literacy

Session 2

• Claire Potter (U Paris Diderot): ‘The Weight of the Voice/The Slant of the Word: Circulations of Melancholia in Hardy’
• Roisin Quinn-Lautrefin (U Paris Diderot): ‘Giving Utterance: Mary Barton and the Language of the Working Class’
• Mary L. Shannon (KCL): ‘Spoken Word and Printed Page: G. W. M. Reynolds and the London Riots, 1848’

Final Session

• Sandra M. Gustafson (Notre Dame) on public speech and nonviolence in the nineteenth-century United States

Strand Organisers, Spring Term 2012: James Emmott (Birkbeck) and Tom F. Wright (UEA)
For more information about the London Nineteenth-Century Studies Seminar, contact Ana Vadillo (Birkbeck) (a.parejovadillo@bbk.ac.uk).

http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/seminars/19C/