Job Opening: Visiting Assistant Professor, Modern British Literature, 1800-1945 (3/15/2013)

University of California, Santa Cruz

Department of Literature

Visiting Assistant Professor, Modern British Literature, 1800-1945

The Department of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) invites applications for a Visiting Assistant Professor for the 2013-14 academic year, with the possibility of a one-year renewal. We are seeking a scholar of modern British literature (1800 to 1945) with wide-ranging research interests in nineteenth- and/or twentieth-century literature, preferably with competence in at least one additional language literature that is relevant to the field. Evidence of scholarly activity, such as publications, is required. We seek candidates whose research and teaching interests may include: Victorian studies, modernism, 19^th - and 20^th-century English, continental, and/or non-European literatures, transatlantic studies, postcolonial studies, studies in material and digital cultures, and gender, race, and sexuality studies. We have particular needs in fiction, but will consider candidates who work in other genres or across genres. The successful candidate will be expected to pursue research, to have clearly demonstrated university teaching skills at the undergraduate level, and to be able to teach large lecture courses as well as smaller classes. The applicant must be able to work with students and faculty from a wide range of social and cultural backgrounds. The campus is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community through their writing, research, teaching, and/or service. This position carries a teaching workload of four scheduled courses over three quarters with an expectation that the selected candidate will pursue an active program of research and writing and will perform significant departmental service.

Rank: Visiting Assistant Professor

Salary: $54,800 – $61,300, commensurate with qualifications and experience.

Minimum Qualifications: All candidates must have the Ph.D. in hand by June 15, 2013, or the equivalent of the Ph.D. in a relevant field of study, and demonstrated research and teaching excellence.

Position Available and Duration: To begin on July 1, 2013, for one year with the possibility of reappointment for a second year based on a successful performance review conducted after the first year. This position is contingent upon final budgetary approval.

To Apply: Applications are accepted via the UCSC Academic Recruit online system, and should include: an informative letter of application (clearly outlining your educational background, teaching experience, and publication record), curriculum vitae, a writing sample of no more than 25 doublespaced pages, and three letters of recommendation* (dated 2010 or later). Applicants are encouraged to submit a statement addressing their teaching philosophy and their contributions to diversity through their research, teaching, and/or service. Submit all documents/materials as PDF files.

Apply at https://recruit.ucsc.edu/apply/JPF00025

Refer to Position #JPF00025-13 in all correspondence.

*All letters will be treated as confidential per University of California policy and California state law. For any reference letter provided via a third party (i.e., dossier service, career center), direct the author to UCSC’s confidentiality statement at http://apo.ucsc.edu/confstm.htm

Closing Date:  Review of applications will begin on March 15, 2013. To ensure full consideration, applications should be complete and letters of recommendation received

by this date. The position will remain open until filled, but not later than 6/30/2013.

  

UC Santa Cruz faculty make significant contributions to the body of research that has earned the University of California the ranking as the foremost public higher education institution in the world. In the process, our faculty demonstrate that cutting-edge research, excellent teaching and outstanding service are mutually supportive.

The University of California, Santa Cruz is an Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunity Employer, committed to excellence through diversity. We strive to establish a climate that welcomes, celebrates, and promotes respect for the contributions of all students and employees.

Inquiries regarding the University’s equal employment opportunity policies may be directed to: Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064; (831) 459-2686. Under Federal law, the University of California may employ only individuals who are legally able to work in the United States as established by providing documents as specified in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Certain UCSC positions funded by federal contracts or sub-contracts require the selected candidate to pass an E-Verify check. More information is available here or from the Academic Personnel Office (APO) at (831) 459-4300. If you need accommodation due to a disability, please contact the Academic Personnel Office at apo@ucsc.edu (831) 459-4300.

Visit the Apo Web Site at: http://apo.ucsc.edu

Conference Schedule: The Moment of British Women’s History (2/8-9/2013)

The Moment of British Women’s History:

Memories, Celebrations, Assessments, Critiques

Columbia University  |  Room 1501, International Affairs Bldg.
8-9 February 2013

“The Moment of British Women's History” will be held at Columbia University, in the Kellogg Center, International Affairs Building, on February 8-9, 2013. The conference revisits the early paradigms and institutions that propelled the field in the 1970s, and the process of change and institutionalization since that time.  Some 30 speakers are coming, including a dozen or so from the UK.  The conference was organized by the historians Christopher L. Brown and Susan Pedersen (and by me). The conference is free and open to the public, although participants may want to reserve a seat by contacting Jonah Cardillo (jgc92@columbia.edu).

Conference program: http://heymancenter.org/events/the-moment-of-british-womens-history/

CFP: MLA 2014 Victorian Division panels on Victorian Informatics & Victorian Temporalities (3/1/2013; 1/9-12/2014)

MLA 2014, Chicago, 9-12 January 2014

The Victorian Division seeks abstracts for a panel on Victorian Informatics. 

What were the properties of information in the Victorian period? Was there a Victorian culture of information? How did Victorians, amass, manage, propagate information? How did ideologies and economies of information shape forms of cultural expression—and vice versa?

Topics might include:

• Producing, organizing, or circulating knowledge
• Information taxonomies and technologies
• Economies and ecologies of information 
• Narrating information
• The poetics or aesthetics of information
• Wanting facts—or having too much information

500-word abstracts and brief cvs to Richard Menke (rmenke@uga.edu) by 1 March 2013.

**********

The Victorian Division also seeks abstracts for a panel on Victorian Temporalities. 

What distinguished the experience of time in the period, or the Victorian temporal imagination? How did the Victorians make sense of simultaneity; of different time scales; of discontinuity or mistiming?

Topics might include:

• Instantaneity
• Lived time, realtime
• Geological time or deep time
• Duration
• Synchrony and asynchrony
• Intermittence
• Spending, saving, or wasting time

500-word abstracts and brief cvs to Richard Menke (rmenke@uga.edu) by 1 March 2013.

CFP: NAVSA Panel "Finding the Hidden Adult in Victorian Children's Literature" (2/22/2013; 10/23-27/2013)

Panel for NAVSA 2013

"Finding the Hidden Adult in

 Victorian Children's Literature"

October 23-27, 2013, Pasadena, CA

The Victorian era embraced the notion that childhood should be set aside as a time of unbridled play and fantasy, separate from the adult world of work. Yet the worlds of childhood and adulthood were constantly blurring within and alongside books for both kinds of audiences: Catherine Robson notes the presence of men in Wonderland, and Claudia Nelson has recently shown that "precocious children" and "childish adults" populate Victorian literature.

In keeping with the "Evidence" theme of the NAVSA 2013 conference, this panel seeks presentations that search for evidence of the adult inhabiting the child's world or the child within the adult. Papers might consider child writers imitating adult-authored literature; adults writing for children or mimicking the child's voice; adult/child collaborations; case studies of texts that resist age-based audience conventions; and other instances of this boundary-crossing in the Victorian era, as well as the influence of personal history on literary production. Projects concerned with the exchange between different media forms-e.g., text and image; periodicals and bound volumes; "high" culture genres and "low"-are particularly welcome.

Please submit 500 word paper abstracts along with a one-page c.v. to A. Robin Hoffman at Robin.Hoffman@yale.edu and Meghan Rosing at mcr207@lehigh.edu by February 22, 2013.

CFP: Pre-Raphaelitism Past, Present and Future (3/31/2013; 9/13-14/2013)

PRE-RAPHAELITISM

PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

13–14 September 2013, Oxford

Keynote speakers

Dr Alison Smith (Tate Britain)

Professor Isobel Armstrong (Birkbeck)

Context and aims

In the wake of recent major exhibitions and publications such as Tate Britain’s Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde and The Cambridge Companion to Pre-Raphaelitism, this two-day conference will present new and innovative approaches to the study of Pre-Raphaelitism by bringing together established academics, museum curators and research students. This conference also seeks to examine Pre- Raphaelitism as a bridge between Romanticism and Aestheticism, and to engage with current critical work regarding its relationship to Modernism in literature.

The breadth and diversity of Pre-Raphaelite art, literature and design will be drawn on in order to consider major questions such as: What is Pre-Raphaelitism? Where does the movement begin and end? Who should be included or excluded? What are its major influences, and to what extent has it influenced other artists and movements? How have perceptions of Pre-Raphaelitism changed or remained the same since its nineteenth-century beginnings?

Format and themes

This will be a two-day conference, organized jointly by Professor Christiana Payne and Dr Dinah Roe (Oxford Brookes University), Colin Harrison (Ashmolean Museum) and Dr Alastair Wright (Oxford University). Academic sessions will be held at the Ashmolean Museum (Friday 13 September) and St John’s College (Saturday 14 September). A programme of guided walks and talks around Pre-Raphaelite sites in Oxford will be held on Sunday 15 September.

We invite proposals for papers on all aspects of Pre-Raphaelite work, especially with a crossdisciplinary focus. Papers by current or recently graduated research students are welcome, as well as those by more established scholars. Topics for discussion might include, but are not limited to:

• The interaction of word and image in Pre-Raphaelite painting, writing and design
• Reactions to the exhibition, Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde
• The events of 1848-50, and the original aims of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
• The importance of science and technology
• International contexts, reception and influences
• Pre-Raphaelitism and religious and intellectual history (for example, the ideas of Carlyle,
• Ruskin, the Oxford Movement)
• The Pre-Raphaelites and Oxford, including new research on paintings and drawings in the
• Ashmolean Museum
• The relationship between painting and photography
• Music in Pre-Raphaelite art and literature
• The Pre-Raphaelites as art and literary critics
• The significance of collectors and patrons of the Pre-Raphaelites
• Women in Pre-Raphaelitism, as objects of representation and/or as artists and writers
• Urban and natural landscapes in Pre-Raphaelite art and literature
• Poetic innovations of the Pre-Raphaelites
• Developments in technique (painting, materials, sculpture and frames)
• The influence of Pre-Raphaelitism on architecture and public space
• Portrayals of Pre-Raphaelites in biography, fiction, film and television
• Print culture and journalism
• The effect of digital culture on the study of Pre-Raphaelitism

Contact us

Professor Christiana Payne, cjepayne@brookes.ac.uk

Dr Dinah Roe, d.roe@brookes.ac.uk

If you are interested in attending as a delegate please email to reserve a place.

Booking details

Conference booking opens in May 2013

Call for papers

Please submit abstracts of 300 words for 20 minute papers with a CV to: Dr Dinah Roe

(d.roe@brookes.ac.uk) and Professor Christiana Payne (cjepayne@brookes. ac.uk) no later

than 31 March 2013.

http://www.english-languages.brookes.ac.uk/conferences/2013/pre-raphaelitism/

Lecture: Lauren Goodlad "The Way We Historicize Now" (2/1/2013)

Lauren Goodlad: The Way We Historicize Now

Friday 1 February, 2013
4 - 6pm, $0

The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Room 4406

This lecture draws on a forthcoming study, The Victorian Geopolitical Aesthetic: Realism, Sovereignty and Transnational Experience, to reflect on the emergence of neoformalist, “descriptive,” and “surface” approaches to reading literature and culture, inspired partly by Bruno Latour’s ontological turn to actor-network theory. As a study of realism, The Victorian Geopolitical Aesthetic is itself a species of neoformalism but one that resists the idea that contextualization is a fatal distraction from “what is in plain view” (Felski). Both deeply synchronic and invested in the importance of elucidating globalization’s longue durée, The Victorian Geopolitical Aesthetic looks at serialized realism in its nineteenth-century as well as present-day instantiations. Although Victorian liberalism and today’s neoliberalism differ substantially, both share a fascination with the trope of the racialized alien within, a figure conducive to the realist narratives of capitalist globalization of Gustave Flaubert, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, and today’s “quality” television. The call for an ethically and aesthetically attentive critical practice is most welcome; but, like a swing of the pendulum, a too adamant rejection of “suspicious reading” reproduces a new "paranoia" without attending the substance of Eve Sedgwick’s judicious mid-90s critique. By helping both to form histories and historicize forms across spatial networks and long and short durations of time, the notion of the geopolitical aesthetic works against the critical stalemate that pits a surface-focused ethics of reading against a depth-focused politics of reading.

http://www.gc.cuny.edu/Home

http://platformed.org/2013/02/lauren-goodlad-the-way-we-historicize-now

Reminder: Neo-Victorianism and Feminism: New Approaches (2/28/2013)

Special Issue 2013

Neo-Victorianism and Feminism: New Approaches

Guest Editors: Tara MacDonald and Joyce Goggin

Neo-Victorianism and feminism have been linked since the appearance of novels like Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969). Feminist theory has, furthermore, offered critics tools with which to understand and evaluate the tendency for neo-Victorian texts and media to rewrite women’s history or, simply, to write women (back) into history. Yet, as Marie-Luise Kohlke and Christian Gutleben have noted, “certain neo-Victorian perspectives – the nineteenth-century fallen woman, medium, or homosexual, for instance – have become rather over-used, tired, and hackneyed” (Neo-Victorian Tropes of Trauma, 23). Indeed, many neo-Victorian texts have followed in the footsteps of Rhys and Fowles in re-writing the story of the fallen woman or madwoman, and it remains to be seen if this impulse to redress the ignored histories of nineteenth-century women still has currency in the twenty-first century. Or has, rather, the repeated characterisation of these now standard figures ironically made them into clichés that reinforce unproductive stereotypes rather than giving voice to women as distinctive subjects?

This special issue of Neo-Victorian Studies will explore the relationship between feminism and neo-Victorian texts, objects, and media in the twenty-first century. Papers dealing with late-twentieth century texts will also be considered, but the issue will primarily address recent developments in neo-Victorianism, in an attempt to offer new ways in which to understand neo-Victorianism as a feminist discourse (or not). For instance, what figures have been obscured in the focus on the fallen or mad woman? How has the Victorian woman remained a figurehead for contemporary feminism? Can the neo-Victorian impulse be most clearly associated with second-wave, third-wave, or post-feminism? And what forms of feminist dialogues exist between neo-Victorian critics and authors?

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

• feminist characters in neo-Victorian literature and film
• the utility of feminist theory in reading neo-Victorian texts
• ‘ancestors’ of contemporary figurations of the fallen woman, madwoman, medium, etc.
• notions of time and history in relation to neo-Victorianism and feminism
• neo-Victorian understandings of the family and marriage
• TV/film adaptations of proto-feminist Victorian texts
• the performance of Victorian femininity in music, theatre, performance art, etc.
• intersections of queer theory and feminism in neo-Victorian fiction and criticism
• postcolonial discourse and  representations of neo-Victorian womanhood

Please address enquiries and expressions of interest to the guest editors Tara MacDonald at T.C.MacDonald@uva.nl and Joyce Goggin at J.Goggin@uva.nl. Completed articles and/or creative pieces, along with a short biographical note, will be due by 28 February 2013 and should be sent via email to the guest editors, with a copy to neovictorianstudies@swansea.ac.uk. Please consult the NVS website (submission guidelines) for further guidance.

Registration open: Queer London Conference (3/23/2013)

Queer London Conference

Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies

University of Westminster

Saturday 23rd March 2013

Keynote Speaker:

Dr. Matt Cook (Birkbeck College, University of London)

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

This one-day conference is dedicated to a consideration of London and its role in creating, housing, reflecting and facilitating queer life. It will bring together scholars from a variety of different disciplines and backgrounds to examine representations of queer London and how London itself represents queers.

That London is a focus and centre for queer life and culture can be seen on its stages; in its bar and club scenes; in its film festivals and its representations in film; in its performance art; in its political life; in its gyms; in its history; in its book groups and book shops; and in its representations in the contemporary queer fiction of writers like Alan Hollinghurst and Sarah Waters. That London is a hub and an axis goes without saying. What the ‘Queer London’ conference offers is an opportunity for further analysis and investigation of these representations/representational platforms and consideration of the socio-cultural role that London plays in queer life.

The conference focuses on the period 1885 to the present and includes papers on topics as diverse as 1920s lesbian London; modes of queer activism; the art and photography of Francis Bacon; London’s drag scenes; Alan Hollingshurst’s queer London; queer Soho; and London’s queer sex work.

The conference programme will shortly be posted here – http://queerlondonconf.wordpress.com/

The conference will be from 10.30am until 7pm and will be held in the University of Westminster’s building at 309 Regent Street.

The conference will be FREE to attend but places are limited. In order to reserve a place, please emailqueerlondonconf@gmail.com, including your name, contact details and affiliation.

If you have any questions, please get in touch with Dr. Simon Avery (s.avery@westminster.ac.uk) and Dr. Katherine M. Graham (k.graham1@westminster.ac.uk).

Reminder: NAVSA Best Book of the Year, call for submissions (1/31/2013)

The North American Victorian Studies Association is pleased to announce a new annual prize for the best book of the year in Victorian studies. In addition to receiving complementary registration and up to $1000 for travel, the winner of the NAVSA Best Book of the Year will be honored with a special round table devoted to the book at the annual NAVSA conference. Books may be on any topic related to the study of Victorian Britain and/or its empire. To nominate a book that was published in the 2012 calendar year, the deadline is 31 January 2013 (that’s a receipt deadline, not a postmark deadline). Please see the NAVSA website for details: http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/navsa/Prizes/BookPrize.cfm

Feel free to contact Melissa Gregory if you have questions: melissa.gregory@utoledo.edu

In the Steps Of William Morris: Society Trip To Iceland (18-27 July 2013)

In the Steps Of William Morris: Society Trip To Iceland 2013

18-27 July 2013 (10 days, nine nights)

The William Morris Society is pleased to announce that in association with Excellentia Global Travel Consultants of Reykjavik, it is proposing to organise a visit to Iceland for both Society members and non-members in 2013, the 140th anniversary of Morris’s second and final trip there.

Cost: In Iceland: £1,690 per person (two sharing) – single person supplement £376.

Flights: approx £325 per person London – Reykjavik return.

Participants are free to make bookings from other airports if more convenient. Those wishing to journey to Iceland by sea are free to do so, and advice on ferry routes and connections is available. Accommodation will be in local hotels, farmsteads and cottages as appropriate to the location. All travel in Iceland will be by minibus.

What is included:

• Accommodation 9 nights including breakfast: 1 night at Icelandair Marina Hotel, 2 nights at hotel Stykkisholmur, 1 night at Hofstadir farmhotel, 2 nights at Dimmuborgir cottages, 2 nights at hotel Laki, 1 night at Icelandair hotel Marina
• 5 lunches and 1 box lunch, 7 dinners including a farewell dinner in Reykjavík, drinking water, coffee/tea.
• First class coach transfers to and from the airport
• First class coach and English speaking driver the entire time.
• Specialist local guide knowledgeable about the sagas, William Morris and natural history etc.
• All museum entrances, entrance to the Blue Lagoon, boat trip to Drangey, glacier lagoon boat trip

 What is not included:

• Meals other than mentioned in the program
• Drinks other than water and coffee/tea and meals other than mentioned
• All items of a personal nature i.e. additional meals, drinks, activities specified as options like horse riding
• All gratuities
• Travel Insurance (your own)

If interested, please contact the Society office. Non-members are welcome. Once confirmation of your participation is received, we will require a £250 deposit per person. Deposit payments are refundable apart from a booking fee of 25 pounds. To register and for details of the itinerary and accommodation and information on booking conditions, insurance, health requirements, documentation etc, contact Carol Henrey at the Society office on

tel: 0208 741 3735

email: admin@williammorrissociety.org.uk

Reminder: On Liberties: Victorian Liberals and their Legacies (2/27/2013; 7/3-5/2013)

We are delighted to confirm the keynote speakers for On Liberties as Professor Regenia Gagnier (Exeter), Professor Michael Wheeler (Southampton), and the Right Hon. Sir Alan Beith MP. The deadline for proposals of between 205-300 words is Wednesday 27th February 2013, and we would encourage all scholars with a perspective on Victorian or contemporary liberalism (or liberties...) to submit. 

Call for Papers

On Liberties: Victorian Liberals and their Legacies

Gladstone’s Library, 3rd-5th July 2013

Keynote speakers

Professor Regenia Gagnier (Exeter)

Professor Michael Wheeler (Southampton)

Right Hon. Sir Alan Beith

What did it mean to be liberal, or even ‘a’ liberal in the Victorian period? Lord Rosebery said he called himself a liberal because he wanted to be associated with ‘the best men in the best work’; but this rather Arnoldian ideal of ‘the liberal’ wasn’t even shared by Arnold himself, who qualified his own position by calling himself a liberal, but a liberal ‘tempered by experience, reflection and renouncement.’ The nineteenth-century may have seen the publication of one of political liberalism’s ur-texts in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, and the founding of the modern Liberal party, but the Victorian idea of the ‘liberal’ was always wider, more conflicted, more capacious, more difficult. Religious liberals, for example, were re-defining the fundamentals of belief; writers and poets used a devotion to ‘liberty’ to support various radical causes at home and abroad; some like Swinburne were rendering a devotion to liberty and an avowed sexual libertinism uneasily indistinct.

Liberal impulses remain firmly with us. Indeed, it is worth asking why the Victorians still to some extent remain the benchmark against which we measure our own liberation, our own modernity; when we look to see how far we’ve come (or not), and what liberties we’ve secured (or not), it is to the nineteenth-century that we frequently look - often to the Victorians’ disadvantage. Or, conversely, we might ask whether we perhaps ‘take liberties’ with the Victorians when trying to re-positioning them against this myth - are we simply re-writing, revising and re-fashioning them in our own ‘liberal’ image?    

Hosted at Gladstone’s Library on 3rd-5th July 2013, and part of Gladstone’s Library’s broader ‘Re:defining liberalism’ project over 2013, this two day conference (presented by Gladstone’s Library in association with the Gladstone Centre at the University of Liverpool) intends to explore the various implications of the idea of the ‘liberal’ in the Victorian period, but also its multifarious legacies: its legacies for modern politics, for the ways we conceptualize the Victorian period today, and most fundamentally for our notions of broader categories and concepts we still associate with ‘the liberal’ and with liberalism: knowledge, licence, education, and human freedom.     

Papers may consider:

• sexual liberation in the Victorian period
• religious and theological liberalism, then and now
• Literary liberalism – the political purposes of contemporary literature
• Liberalism with a big ‘L’, the Liberal Party and its politicians
•  ‘Victorian values’ in political discourse today
• The modern Liberal Democrats and nineteenth-century ideas of liberalism
• liberal enactments: what does it mean to be liberal today?
• John Stuart Mill
• Campaigns for ‘liberty’ abroad in the Victorian period
• The figure of the libertine in the Victorian period
• Limited liberalism – problems of liberal representation and subjectivity

Please send proposals of between 250-300 words to Dr. Matthew Bradley (matthew.bradley@liverpool.ac.uk) or Dr. Louisa Yates (louisa.yates@gladlib.org), by Wednesday 27th February 2013. Completed papers should be approximately 20 minutes in length.  

CFP: Connected Histories of Empire (1/25/2013; 7/15-16/2013)

Connected Histories of Empire Conference – Second Call for Papers

Centre for the Study of Colonial & Postcolonial Societies, 

University of Bristol, 15-16 July 2013

Please note the closing date for proposals is 25 January 2013

Over the last two decades, scholars have begun to characterise the British Empire as a complex patchwork of interacting and dynamic agencies, rather than as a homogenous monolith. As a result, the traditional spatial framework based on a stable division between the metropole and the periphery seems increasingly outmoded. Instead, historians, literary critics, scholars of globalisation, and philosophers have been writing about the webs, networks, and circuits in which people, objects, and ideas moved. This conference will interrogate the idea of an empire of connections, considering the possibilities opened up by thinking in terms of global interaction, as well as the challenges of incorporating the myriad interconnections of empire into coherent historical narratives.

The conference is the culmination of a year of events at the University of Bristol which have focused particularly on the memorialisation and commemoration of the British Empire. As scholars have begun to uncover the intricately woven interconnections of empire, a central concern of the conference will be to consider how this might influence how empire has been, and is, remembered and memorialised in Britain and elsewhere.

We would like to invite proposals for papers and panels that speak to the following broad themes:

• The commemoration and memorialisation of different imperial sites, events and phenomena
• Links between imperial port-cities/global cities
• Flows of people, goods (physical and cultural), and cash
• The movement, preservation and display of imperial artefacts and archives
• Imperial networks and imperial careering
• Imperial audiences and public spheres
• The links between global history and imperial history

We would like to encourage broad discussion of connections and comparisons between different modern empires: proposals need not be restricted to the British empire.

We welcome papers from a range of academic disciplines.

To apply please send a 250 word abstract to the organisers at connectedhistoriesofempire@yahoo.co.uk.

Conference organisers:

• History: Ms Emily Baughan, Prof Robert Bickers, Prof Peter Coates, Prof Tim Cole, Dr Simon Potter, Dr Jonathan Saha, Dr Rob Skinner
• Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies: Dr Matthew Brown, Dr Joanna Crow
• English: Dr John Lee
• Archaeology & Anthropology: Prof Mark Hortonl networks and imperial careering

Call for Applications: PhD Studentship in Comparative Literature (2/28/2013)

A PhD position in Comparative Literature is available at Ghent University, Belgium. Since the project has a Victorian component, it may be of interest to you or someone you know.

PhD Studentship in Comparative Literature:

Painting Themselves: A Transnational Approach to National Self-Portraiture

Ghent University -Faculty of Arts and Philosophy

Applications are invited for a fully funded PhD fellowship in the Department of Literary Studies at Ghent University, tenable for a period of up to four years. The successful candidate will participate in the project “Painting Themselves: A Transnational Approach to National Self-Portraiture”, which is sponsored by a grant from the Special Research Fund (BOF) of Ghent University and which will be directed by Prof. dr. Elizabeth Amann and Dr. Marianne Van Remoortel. This project proposes a transnational approach to the national self-portraits published in the 1840s in Europe. National self-portraits were collaborative essay anthologies that attempted to capture the essence of a nation through the representation of its constitutive types or scenes.

Examples of the genre include:

Heads of the People, Les français peints par eux-mêmes, Les belges peints par eux-mêmes, Nederlanders door Nederlanders geschetst, Los españoles pintados por sí mismos.

This project will examine how the intertextualities and international dialogue among these collections helped to shape the definition of national identities in the years leading up to the Revolutions of 1848.

Candidates should have:

• a Master’s degree or equivalent qualification in a relevant discipline, such as English, Dutch, French, German, Spanish, Comparative Literature or History (candidates near to completion may also submit applications, indicating the expected date of the degree)
• an outstanding academic record
• aptitude for original, independent, and creative work
• excellent writing and speaking skills in English
• reading knowledge of French
• reading knowledge of either Spanish or Dutch would be considered a plus.

Conditions of employment:

• The position must begin before December 1, 2013.
• The applicant will be based at Ghent University (Belgium).
• The net salary will be approximately 1800 EUR per month, gradually rising to approximately 2000 EUR per month in the fourth year.
• The fellow will complete the doctoral training programme (http://www.ugent.be/doctoralschools/en/students/doctoraltrainingprogramme.htm)

Offered by the Doctoral School of Arts, Humanities and Law (http://www.ugent.be/doctoralschools/en/ahl/).
The fellow will be given a personal computer and office space and will be guided by a committee of experts in the field.

The Department of Literary Studies at UGent (http://tinyurl.com/d4c34nb) is a vibrant community of 168 people (including some 50 fully funded PhD-students and 20 postdocs) specialising in nine languages as well as General and Comparative Literature. Ghent is an attractive medieval town, with a strong economic base and lively cultural scene. Just 30 minutes by train from Brussels, two hours from Paris and Amsterdam and two and a half hours from London, it is moreover ideally situated at the heart of European intellectual life. Ghent University is committed to
internationalization and welcomes applications from foreign students. Knowledge of Dutch is not necessary to apply.

Applications should include:

• a cover letter, in which you specify why you are interested in the project and why you consider yourself a suitable candidate
• a current CV
• transcripts of your qualifications to date (degrees and grade lists)
• a writing sample (excerpt from your Master’s thesis, article, etc.)
• names and full contact details of two referees

The application deadline is February 28, 2013 or until a suitable candidate is found.

Further information about the project and/or position can be obtained from prof. dr. Elizabeth Amann (elizabeth.amann@ugent.be) or Dr. Marianne Van Remoortel
(marianne.vanremoortel@ugent.be).

Applications should be submitted as PDF files via email to: elizabeth.amann@ugent.be.

CFP: Woolf and the Common(Wealth) Reader (1/30/2013; 6/6-9/2013)

Victorian Panel for 

Woolf and the Common(Wealth) Reader: 

The Twenty-Third Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf

Simon Fraser University, June 6-9, 2013

  

This panel aims to contribute to ongoing critical discourses on the points of contact between Victorian and modernist literary cultures. Papers will explore the varied connections between nineteenth-century literary/artistic networks and those created by Woolf and her contemporaries. Organized around the theme of ‘Victorian Commonwealths,’ possible topics include:

communities of authors, artists, and their audiences

cross-generational streams of creative influence

women and common wealths of knowledge

public institutions for literature and art in Britain and abroad

representations of the British Commonwealth (first called the ‘Commonwealth of Nations’ in 1884) as a political and cultural entity

Please submit 250-word abstracts of papers as attachments in .doc format, by 30 January 2013 to:

Kathryn Holland

Panel Organizer and Chair

MacEwan University

Hollandk5@macewan.ca

Woolf Conference website: http://www.sfu.ca/woolf/

CFP: Romanticism at the Fin de Siècle (1/15/2013; 6/14-15/2013)

Romanticism at the Fin de Siècle

an international conference on collecting, editing, performing,

producing, reading, and reviving Romanticism at the Fin de Siècle

Trinity College Oxford, 14-15 June 2013

Keynote Speaker: Professor Joseph Bristow (UCLA)

Call For Papers:

This conference places Romanticism at the core of the British Fin de Siècle. As an anti-Victorian movement, the British Fin de Siècle is often read forwards and absorbed into a ‘long twentieth century’, in which it takes the shape of a prehistory or an embryonic form of modernism. By contrast, Fin-de-Siècle authors and critics looked back to the past in order to invent their present and imagine their future. Just at the time when the concept of ‘Victorian’ crystallized a distinct set of literary and cultural practices, the radical break with the immediate past found in Romanticism an alternative poetics and politics of the present.

The Fin de Siècle played a distinctive and crucial role in the reception of Romanticism. Romanticism emerged as a category, a dialogue of forms, a movement, a style, and a body of cultural practices. The Fin de Siècle established the texts of major authors such as Blake and Shelley, invented a Romantic canon in a wider European and comparative context, but also engaged in subversive reading practices and other forms of underground reception.

The aim of this conference is to foster a dialogue between experts of the two periods. We welcome proposals for papers on all aspects of Fin-de-Siècle Romanticism, especially with a cross-disciplinary or comparative focus. Topics might include:

• bibliophilia and bibliomania
• collecting
• cults
• editing
• objects
• performance
• poetics
• politics
• print culture
• sociability
• continuities and discontinuities
• Romanticism and Decadence
• Romantic Classicism
• European Romanticism and the English Fin de Siècle

Deadline for abstracts: 15 January 2013

Please email 300-word abstracts to romanticfin@bbk.ac.uk

Conference organisers: Luisa Calè (Birkbeck) and Stefano Evangelista (Oxford)

This conference is co-organised by the Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies and the English Faculty of Oxford University with the support of the MHRA.

Lecture: Oscar Wilde in the Market Place (1/31/2013)

UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th- Century Studies presents:

The William Andrews Clark Lecture on Oscar Wilde:
Oscar Wilde in the Market Place

(a lecture at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library)

—given by Dr. Rick Gekoski, Rare-book dealer and Writer

Thursday, January 31, 2013, 4:00 p.m.

From the very start of his career, Oscar Wilde wanted to be noticed. He was the leading literary celebrity of his day, honed his epigrams, and ensured that his books were issued in beautiful limited editions, which would be attractive to collectors. Following his death an enormous market in Wilde books, manuscripts, letters and memorabilia developed, and a number of unscrupulous forgers took advantage of the burgeoning market for Wilde items. In the 1920s and 1930s a number of major collections were formed, of which William A. Clark's holdings were the most significant. Oscar is still avidly sought after, and, as a rare book dealer, Dr. Gekoski has been able to help several collectors put together noteworthy collections.

Dr. Rick Gekoski is one of the world’s leading bookmen: a writer, rare-book dealer, broadcaster and teacher. He is the author of three books which trace his major enthusiasms, Staying Up: A Fan’s View of a Season in the Premiership, Tolkien's Gown and Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books and Outside of a Dog: A Bibliomemoir, as well as a critical study of Joseph Conrad and a bibliography of William Golding. An American who left for England in 1966, he was for some years a member of the English Department at the University of Warwick, and chair of their Faculty of Arts. He has established two private presses, The Sixth Chamber Press and The Bridgewater Press, which issue finely printed editions of leading writers, novelists and poets. As a broadcaster, he has written and delivered two series for BBC Radio 4: Rare Books, Rare People and Lost, Stolen, or Shredded: The History of Some Missing Works of Art.

This biennial lecture on Oscar Wilde is made possible by a generous endowment founded by Mr. William Zachs.

Please fill out a registration form on our website: http://www.c1718cs.ucla.edu/wilde12-r.htm

Reminder: “Tradition and the New”—RSVP conference (2/1/2013; 7/12-13/2013)

"Tradition and the New"

The 45th Annual Conference 

of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals
12-13 July, 2013
University of Salford
Manchester, UK

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) will hold its annual conference at the University of Salford, on 12th and 13th July 2013.  As always, proposals for papers that address any aspect of nineteenth-century British magazines or newspapers will be considered. However, this year, we particularly encourage proposals on ‘tradition and the new’ in the nineteenth-century press.  Possible topics might include:

• Tradition, custom, or convention in  journalism;
• Histories, representations of antiquity, nostalgia;
• Innovation, novelty and fashion;
• Modernity, Victorian futures;
• Evolution, chronology, or temporality;
• Continuity or disruption in periodical publishing and editing;
• Old and new printing technologies and readerships;
• News; new modes of communication; innovation in finance and business models
• New methods in research and teaching periodicals; the role of the archive.

Please e-mail two-page (maximum) proposals for individual presentations or panels of three to RSVP2013@rs4vp.org. Please also include a one-page C.V. with relevant publications, teaching, and/or coursework. Several merit-based travel grants will be made available
to students; please indicate if you would like to be considered for one of these. Final papers should take 15 minutes (20 minutes maximum) to present. The deadline for submissions is February 1st, 2013.

For more information about the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, visit RSVP's website at http://rs4vp.org

CFP: Victorian Play(s): Excess and Expression (1/30/2013; 4/27/2013)

Victorian Play(s): Excess and Expression

46th Annual Victorian Studies Association of Ontario Conference

27 April 2013, York University

The VSAO executive invites proposals for 20-minute papers to be presented at next spring’s annual conference on 27 April 2013.  The conference theme will be “Victorian Play(s): Excess and Expression." Victorian acting, playacting, acting out; posing, positing, and performing; divinity and fabulousness: considerations of any aspect of Victorian life or culture connected to the theme are welcome. Please send electronic copies of proposals (300-500 words) and a brief biographical statement to Matthew Rowlinson (mrowlins@uwo.ca) by 30 January 2013.

For more information, visit http://www.yorku.ca/vsao/newsletters/2012sept.html#calls_paper

Last Call: 2013 International Conference on Narrative (1/14/2013; 6/27-29/2013)

2013 International Conference on Narrative
June 27-29, 2013
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester (UK)

Plenary Speakers
Catherine Belsey, Swansea University
Diane Negra, University College Dublin
Nicholas Royle, University of Sussex

Contemporary Narrative Theory Session Speakers
Torben Grodal, University of Copenhagen
Liesbeth Korthals Altes, University of Groningen
Jan Christoph Meister, University of Hamburg
Greta Olson, Justus-Leibig-University Giessen
Ruth Page, University of Leicester
Richard Walsh, University of York

Conference Coordinators
Paul Wake, Ginette Carpenter

Call for Papers
We welcome proposals for papers and panels on all aspects of narrative in any genre, period, discipline, language, and medium.

Deadline for receipt of proposals: Monday, January 14, 2013.

Proposals for Individual Papers
Please provide the title and a 300-word abstract of the paper you are proposing; your name, institutional affiliation, and email address; and a brief statement (no more than 100 words) about your work and your publications.

Proposals for Panels
Please provide a 700-word (maximum) description of the topic of the panel and of each panelist’s contribution; the title of the panel and the titles of the individual papers; and for each participant the name, institutional affiliation, email address, and a brief statement (no more than 100 words) about the person’s work and publications.

Please send proposals by email as a PDF, Word, or RTF document to: narrative@mmu.ac.uk

All participants must join the International Society for the Study of Narrative. For more information on the ISSN, please visit: http://narrative.georgetown.edu/.

For more information about the conference, and to download this Call for papers as a PDF please visit our website: http://www2.hlss.mmu.ac.uk/conferences/international-conference-on-narrative/

CFP: Navigating Networks: Women, Travel, and Female Communities (4/1/2013; 10/4/2013)

In the field of travel studies, the past two decades have witnessed an ever-growing interest in women’s travel writing. One aim of scholars has been to counter stereotypical assumptions about travel and travel writing being a principally masculine enterprise, emphasising instead that the perception of the gendering of travel is to a large extent a misconception, an ideological construct that assumes the notion of gendered separate spheres. This day-­long conference seeks to move beyond the already established fact that women travelled far more than the patriarchal ideology of separate spheres would suggest. It aims to delve further into the rich topic of women’s travel and travel writing practices by examining the ways in which women navigated female networks and created communities with one another, both through their travels and travel writing. In doing so, it will draw upon the notion of travel as a means of building networks and fostering connections with others. Through an examination of various female travel networks, this conference seeks to explore further the significance of women’s travel throughout the ages, including the opportunities for communication it fostered and the unique privileges that it cultivated.

We invite papers that address the topic of women’s travel networks in any historical period. We welcome discussion on any of the following: nonfictional or literary accounts; diaries; letters; articles; films; documentaries; photographs; and paintings.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

The Act of Travel

• women travelling in groups, independently of men (‘unprotected’ female travellers, spinsters abroad)
• access to exclusively female spaces abroad (harems, baths, spas, circles of gossip)
• development of alliances between the female traveller and the female local
• issues of ‘othering’ – do women have an imperial agenda or do they sympathise with foreign women?
• bonds of sisterhood, friendship, and partnerships
• communities of female expats; salons and social scenes abroad
• feminine self-­fashioning: creation of female travel identities abroad
• negative associations with female travel networks: women’s aversion to being lumped together with other female travellers; their desire to break free from collective identities and stereotypes

Recording Travels

• female literary communities developed through the practice of travel and writing
• female travel writers’ engagement with one another’s texts
• female reception to travel texts
• modern travel blogs
• travelogues, advice books, or periodical pieces aimed at female readers/ travellers
• similar stylistic characteristics of women’s travel writing
• shared attitudes, interests, and goals in women’s travel writing

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words (for papers of 20 minutes) to Hannah Sikstrom and Kimberly Marsh at <travelculturesseminar@gmail.com> by 1 April 2013.

Travel Cultures is an interdisciplinary seminar series at the University of Oxford for anyone with an interest in inter-­cultural communication, exploration, and travel writing.

Call for Articles: Paganism in Late Victorian Britain (3/1/2013)

Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens is planning to publish in 2014 a special issue on paganism in late Victorian Britain (1870-1900). During this key transition period, representations of pagan belief and ritual considerably evolved in the wake of new anthropological and archeological explorations of “primitive cultures” (E. B. Tylor). Our aim in this volume will be to try and shed light on this rising interest in paganism in art, religion, science and politics in the later years of the 19th century. We will welcome contributions on all aspects of late Victorian paganism, especially those offering a cross-disciplinary focus. We invite in particular proposals that examine paganism from a comparative and intercultural perspective, rather than as a purely literary object, with particular attention paid to:

• Paganism as an expression of the late Victorian interest in alternative forms of worship and religious belief, and as a reaction against industrialization, materialism, scientism, and the dwindling of traditional faiths.
• The eclecticism of late Victorian paganism, which drew on a wide range of beliefs, ritual practices, national or regional customs, traditions and folklore: Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquity, Celtic and Norse mythology, druidism, Odinism, occultism, esotericism, spiritualism, witchcraft, freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, etc.
• The relationship between paganism and conventional Christianity; the reception of those new forms of spirituality by the Established Church; the representation of Roman Catholicism as a pagan religion (cf. the charges of idolatry leveled against Roman Catholics); paganism as a return to pre-Christian forms of worship.
• Paganism as a scientific object; the rising interest in anthropology and religious science at the end of the Victorian period (E. B. Taylor, J. G. Frazer, the Cambridge Ritualists…)
• Representations of pagan ritual in literature and the visual arts (in particular in late Pre-Raphaelitism, as well as in Symbolist, Aesthetic and Decadent painting or poetry/prose).
• Paganism and music; the reception of R. Wagner in Britain.
• Paganism and philosophy; F. Nietzsche’s impact in Britain.
• Paganism and gender: women’s interest in non-patriarchal forms of faith; the question of the sacred feminine; paganism and homosexuality.
• Paganism and politics (nationalism, regionalism, feminism, environmentalism, socialism).

The articles (around 6000 words) will have to be written in English. 

Detailed proposals in English (500-1000 words) and a short bio-bibliography should be sent as a Word attachment to the guest editors no later than 1st March 2013: 

Charlotte.Ribeyrol@paris-sorbonne.fr

Claire.Murray@paris-sorbonne.fr

Contributors whose proposals have been accepted will be notified by May 2013.

The completed articles will be due by 1st February 2014.