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Panel Proposal:
“Forcible Evidence: The Periodical Press,
the Public, and State Violence”
In recent
years, Victorian scholars have given renewed attention to the periodical press
and extra-literary modes of communication. Thanks to technological improvements
in printing and circulation, the Victorian era saw a significant expansion in
the quantity of periodicals and newspapers available to a growing and
multifaceted public. As a result, Victorians like Matthew Arnold were anxious
about the effect of the new periodical press on the amorphous public and a
weakening of state and social authority and coherence, both domestically and
abroad. Of course, newspapers could (and did) support state authority as well
as oppose it. So how did the press mold readers’ opinions and actions in the
guise of delivering information? In what ways did the diverse form(s) of the
periodical press shape and present evidence, ultimately influencing what Wilkie
Collins called “the Unknown Public?” Specifically, how did justifications for
state violence compare to the independent trials performed in the periodical
press, and how did the press redefine what counted as evidence for the English
reading public?
This panel seeks papers that investigate the role of the
periodical press in presenting, shaping, and defining the public and its
understanding of the disciplinary role of the state. Papers may address such
issues as: What is the newspaper’s treatment of disciplinary violence? What
counts as evidence of force, and what counts as forcible evidence? What is the
relationship between the newspaper and state methods of control and punishment,
including torture, imprisonment, and capital punishment? What is the role of
the newspaper in defining the limits of official violence used in colonial
spaces? How does the press depict state-sanctioned suffering and the
appropriate response of the public to these scenes?
Please submit abstracts of 500 words and a one-page CV by February 25, 2013 to Katherine Anderson
(kajander@indiana.edu).
Panel subject to approval.
