Reminder: MVSA 2014 'Victorian Violence" (10/31/2013; 4/11-13/2014)

2014 MVSA Conference
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
April 11-13, 2014
Deadline: October 31, 2013

The deadline for proposals for Midwest Victorian Studies Association 2014, to be held on the campus of the University of Michigan this April 11th to 13th, is fast approaching. Proposals are due this Thursday, October 31, 2013.

Please see our conference website for more details about our 2014 conference theme of “Victorian Violence.”  We also welcome proposals for our "Victorian Pedagogy" roundtable.  Presenters will introduce innovative and successful strategies for teaching Victorian literature, history, music, and culture in the classroom.

http://www.midwestvictorian.org/p/conference.html

The committee is excited to introduce seminars to this year’s conference format.  Participants will pre-circulate position papers and, through conversation, work to identify important points of intersection and divergence.  Seminars will be held on the topics of “Colonial Violence,” led by Dr. Richard Price (University of Maryland), “Political Violence At Home and Abroad,” led by Dr. Bill Meier (Texas Christian University), and “Sensational Violence: ‘The Mysteries Which Are At Our Own Doors,’” led by Dr. Lisa Surridge (University of Victoria).  Detailed seminar descriptions are available at the website; proposals for the seminars are also due this Thursday.

In addition, the committee would like to invite applicants to “like” our Facebook page so that they can keep track of events and discussions of interest to Victorianists across disciplines.

See http://www.midwestvictorian.org/p/conference.html for more information. 

For a more extended CFP see the original post on "Of Victorian Interest"

Announcement: NAVSA 2013 Donal Gray Essay Prize Winners

At the NAVSA banquet in Pasadena last Saturday, the committee announced the winner and honorable mentions for the Donald Gray Prize for best essay published in a journal in 2012.

• The winner of the Gray Prize is Daniel Hack for his essay, “Wild Charges: The Afro-Haitian ‘Charge of the Light Brigade,’” published in Victorian Studies.  Prof. Hack was a previous honorable mention for the Gray Prize (in 2008).  
• Honorable mentions go to Daniel Martin of Wilfred Laurier U and to Brian McCuskey of Utah State U.

NAVSA offers its sincere thanks to our judges, Kali Israel, Sally MItchell, and Cornelia Pearsall, as well as to Deborah Morse for administering the award on behalf of NAVSA's Executive Council.  

CFP: VPFA 2014 "Victorian Treasures and Trash" (4/4/2014; 7/8-10/2014)

The Victorian Popular Fiction Association

6th Annual Conference,

Institute of English Studies, London

Deadline: April 4, 2014

Keynote Speaker: Dr Jonathon Shears (Keele), ‘“[...] battered [...] soiled [...] broken [...] empty [...] half-smoked [...] stale”: The Hangover in Victorian Popular Fiction’.

CFP: Victorian Treasures and Trash

The Victorian Popular Fiction Association conference is recognised as an important event on the annual conference circuit and offers a friendly and invigorating opportunity for established academics and post graduate students to share their current research. We remain committed to the revival of interest in understudied popular writers which is pivotal to the reputation this conference has established.   

The organisers invite a broad, imaginative and interdisciplinary interpretation of the topic and its relation to any aspect of Victorian popular literature and culture which might address literal or metaphorical representations of the theme.

We welcome proposals for 20 minute papers, or for panels of three papers, on topics which can include, but are not limited to:

• Treasures and Trash in: the home, the street, the store, the library, the gutter, the island, the workhouse, the factory, etc.
• Print culture and the literary marketplace: ‘trash’ fiction, high/low culture, taste, fashion, rarity, cheap editions, fine editions, ‘specials’, royalties, contracts, collectors, etc.
• Treasure: buried, hoarded, displayed, collected, traded, neglected, etc.
• Waste: scrap/s, refuse, recycling, reclamation, that which is/those who are discarded/unwanted, the abandoned, etc.
• Dirt: gossip, scandal, degeneracy, decay, cleanliness, healthfulness, godliness, etc.
• Trashed: defaced, vandalised, wasted, defamed, scandalised, denounced, drunk, drugged, etc.
• Industry: the ethics of production, craftsmanship, the cheap, the mass-produced, etc.
• Money: markets, debts/debtors, savings, shares, inheritances, ransoms, fortunes, etc.
• Papers and artefacts: archives, special collections, the museum, the preserved, the priceless, the lost, digitised treasures, etc.
• The Beloved: persons, possessions, memories, moments, etc.
• Values: validity, value/worth, cost, price, morals, family values, etc.
• Things: junk, clutter, paraphernalia, bric-a-brac, curiosities, trinkets, tokens/keepsakes, troves, etc.
• People: fortune-hunters, gold-diggers, prospectors, speculators, pirates, con-artists, thieves, beggars, prostitutes, consumers, etc.

Please send proposals of no more than 300 words to Drs. Kirsty Bunting, Janine Hatter and Helena Ifill atvpfamembership@gmail.com.  The VPFA 2014 conference website can be found here: http://victorianpopularfiction.org/ and conference registration details will be announced shortly. All speakers must be a member of VPFA to present. To become a member, please visit the website or email vpfamembership@gmail.com for a membership form.

Job Posting: Assistant Professor in Digital Media, Tenure-Track Georgia Institute of Technology (11/21/13)

Assistant Professor in Digital Media, Tenure-Track
School of Literature, Media, and Communication
Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
Georgia Institute of Technology

Deadline: November 21, 2013

Georgia Tech's School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC), which provides diverse humanistic perspectives on a technological world, is seeking to fill one Digital Media tenure track position at the rank of Assistant Professor to start in fall 2014. The program is a pioneering unit in its field and offers one of the first Ph.D. programs in digital media worldwide. It provides a studio-intensive curriculum that integrates theory and practice taught by a multidisciplinary faculty.

We seek practitioner / theorists who combine technical expertise with a strong grounding in the arts and humanities. Candidates should be prepared to teach at the undergraduate and graduate level in LMC's Computational Media and Digital Media programs. A Ph.D. (or MFA with a substantial research focus) in an appropriate field is required (e.g. digital media / arts, human centered computing, computer science, education, or design), as is computational proficiency and a demonstrated capacity for significant original research/creative work. Potential to secure external research funding is strongly desirable.

The Digital Media program in LMC covers three core areas and candidates should demonstrate expertise in one or more of the following fields. A strong preference will be given to candidates in the first area, but applications in all areas will receive full consideration:

*Knowledge and Creativity
Investigates the role of digital media technologies in creative practices, learning, and the production of knowledge. Potential areas of focus include: creativity support tools, informational visualization, innovative interface design, AI-based art, design cognition, games for learning, new models of media-based learning, or computational tools for scientific discovery.

*Civic and Public Media
Examines the ways in which interaction design and digital media construct and support civic life. Potential areas of focus include: the use of information design for public argument, participatory and co-design methods, and new modes of public engagement with technology. 

*Arts and Entertainment
Explores how digital media technologies can enhance, expand, and reconfigure arts and entertainment. Potential areas of focus include: digital performance, games, interactive narrative, and information visualization.

Applicants should send a 1-page cover letter, research statement, teaching statement, CV (including contact information and a list of three potential references for letters of support), and a link to a targeted online portfolio or work sample (website or PDF). Applications should be emailed as a single PDF tohiring@lmc.gatech.edu. Review of applications will begin November 21, 2013 and continue until the position is filled. The Georgia Institute of Technology is regularly ranked among the nation’s top ten public universities. Georgia Tech is an equal opportunity employer whose academic core mission is based on the principles of inclusion, equity, diversity, and justice. For more information about the School, please visit http://lmc.gatech.edu.

Graduate Workshop: NASSR 2014 "Romantic Connections" (6/12/2014)

Graduate Student Workshop

NASSR 2014

University of Tokyo

June 12, 2014

The NASSR Tokyo supernumerary "Romantic Connections" Conference offers graduate students a special opportunity to network in a global community of Romanticists. We invite graduate students at any stage of their degrees to attend "Emerging Connections, a one-day workshop to be held at the University of Tokyo on the day before the main conference (June 12th, 2014).

Panels will be led by scholars from North America, the U.K, and Asia. We will cover a broad range of topics, including skills, professionalisation, and the future of the academy. An evening reception will provide the opportunity to network with other young scholars. Fees for the day (excluding accommodation) will be around $100 (10,000 yen).

Registration for Emerging Connections will be available alongside registration for the larger conference. For questions and information about the event, please contactgraduates@romanticconnections2014.org.

The graduate workshop precedes the main NASSR conference, "Romantic Connections" which runs from June 13-15, 2014 in Tokyo, Japan. Abstracts for conference presentations are due November 30.

Colloquium: University of Westminster "Staging Science" (12/6-7/2013)

STAGING SCIENCE

Roundtable Colloquium Performance

Centre for the Study of Science and Imagination, University of Westminster

December 6-7, 2013

Organiser: Professor Martin Willis (m.willis@westminster.ac.uk)

December 6, 2013, 6:30-8:00pm (The Boardroom)

Staging Historical and Contemporary Science: A Roundtable

• Jim Al-Khalili (Physicist, Science Communicator and Broadcaster)
• Tim Boon (Head of Research, Science Museum)
• Imran Khan (Chief Executive, British Science Association)
• Katrina Nilsson (Head of Contemporary Science, Science Museum)
• Jonathan Renouf (Executive Producer, BBC Science Unit)

Saturday December 7, 2013, 9:00-6:00pm (The Boardroom)

Staging Science Colloquium 

• 9:00-9:30: Setting the Stage: Science and Imagination (Martin Willis)
• 9:30-10:15: Iwan Morus (Aberystwyth)
• 10:45-11:30: Daniel Brown (Southampton)
• 11:30-12:15: Robert Kargon (Johns Hopkins)
• 1:15-2:00: Jeremy Brooker (Independent Researcher)
• 2:00-2:45: Tiffany Watt-Smith (Queen Mary)
• 3:15 -4:00: Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (Oxford)
• 4:30-5:15: Jean-Baptiste Gouyon (Science Museum, London)
• 5:15-6:00: Bernard Lightman (Respondent) (York, Canada)
• 6:00-7:00pm: Drinks Reception and Book Launch for Jeremy Brooker’s Temple of Minerva (Regent Street Building Foyer) 
• 7:00-7:30 and 7:45-8:15 (The Old Cinema) performances of the Pepper’s Ghost Illusion with Charles Dickens’s ‘The Haunted Man’ produced, directed and performed by Richard Hand and Geraint D’Arcy (University of South Wales) 

ATTENDANCE INFORMATION

Places for all the events that make up Staging Science are limited. Please apply early for each event as below. In your email please make clear which event or events you wish to attend. Many thanks.

  

To reserve a place at the Roundtable (Friday evening) please contact Rebecca Spear on rebecca.spear@my.westminster.ac.uk

To reserve a place at the colloquium (Saturday day), which comes with an invitation to the Pepper’s Ghost performance (Saturday evening), please contact Rebecca Spear on rebecca.spear@my.westminster.ac.uk. Please do advise Rebecca if you wish to come to the colloquium but are not able to attend the evening Performance. 

To inquire about a place at the Pepper’s Ghost performance only please contact Professor Martin Willis on m.willis@westminster.ac.uk

For updates on Staging Science connect to SCIMAG’s blog site at: http://scienceimagination.wordpress.com 

CFP: Blake, the Flaxman's and Romantic Sociability Conference (11/15/2013; 8/18-19/2014)

Blake, the Flaxman's and Romantic Sociability Conference
Keynes Library, School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London, 43 Gordon Square

July 18-19, 2014

Deadline: November 15, 2013

Including: A reading of William Blake’s MS An Island in the Moon (c.1784)

Blake’s sociability encompasses the real, the satyrical, and the imaginary. His visionary company includes ‘Companions from Eternity’, corporeal friends, and spiritual enemies. From the salon to the moon, across the geographies of ‘a certain island near by a mighty continent’, a mighty cast of characters intermingle. Enter Steelyard the Lawgiver and Mrs Nannicantipot, Suction the Epicurean, Sipsop the Pythagorean, Quid the Cynic, Inflammable Gas the Wind Finder, Etruscan Column the Antiquarian, Aradobo the Dean of Morocco, Obtuse Angle, Tilly Lally the Siptippidist, Miss Gittipin, Gibble Gabble, and Scopprell. Their imaginary, emergent, and satyrical disciplines include ‘Fissic Follogy, Pistinology, Aridology, Arography, Transmography, Phizography, Hogamy HAtomy, & Hall that’. This wild jamboree is a record of the convivial friendship and patronage of John and Ann Flaxman, Harriet and her husband the Reverend Anthony Stephen Mathew, who provided the young artist with ‘The Bread of sweet Thought and the Wine of Delight’.

Starting from the world of An Island in the Moon, this conference illuminates Blake’s relationship with the ‘Sculptor of Eternity’ and his circle from the early days to the ‘Regions of Reminiscence’, from the 1780s to the 1820s, following the Flaxmans across the channel, into the cosmopolitan networks of the Grand Tour, in order to recover the material cultures, sites, and dynamic forms of their Romantic sociability.

Topics include:

• The Flaxmans and their circle
• Cosmopolitan Networks
• Continental Travel and Travel Writing
• Gender
• Imaginary, Emergent, and Satyrical Disciplines
• Material Cultures of Art
• Patronage
• Politics
• Sociability

Please send a 300 word abstract for a 20 minute paper to blakeflaxmans@bbk.ac.uk by November 15, 2013. For more information, see: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/news/blake-the-flaxmans-and-romantic-sociability.

Conference organizers: Helen Bruder and Luisa Calè

Special Event: Victoriana "The Art of Revival Exhibition & Film Series" (Fall 2013)

VICTORIANA: THE ART OF REVIVAL EXHIBITION & FILM SERIES
AUTUMN 2013

Victorian Exhibition

Birckbeck School of Arts

Guildhall Art Gallery

September 7-December 8, 2013

An exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery on Victorian revivalism will be accompanied by a symposium on Steampunk and a film season running in Birkbeck’ School of Arts cinema in Gordon Square this autumn (2013).

From the macabre to the quaint, the sensational to the surreal, ‘Victoriana: The Art of Revival’ is the first ever exhibition in the UK to offer a major examination of Victorian revivalism in all its forms.

Featuring graphic design, film, photography, ceramics, taxidermy, furniture, textiles and fine art, this multi-media show explores work inspired by the 19th century and created over the last 20 years, highlighting the on-going influence of the Victorian age.

‘Victoriana: The Art of Revival’ brings together 28 major contemporary artists who encapsulate the many forms and motivations of modern takes on Victorian style. These include Yinka Shonibare, Grayson Perry, Paula Rego, Dan Hillier, Paul St. George, Rob Ryan, Kitty Valentine and Jake and Dinos Chapman

The exhibition takes place from Saturday 7 September to Sunday 8 December – visit the City of London website for more information.
For more information, see: http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/visiting-the-city/attractions-museums-and-galleries/guildhall-art-gallery-and-roman-amphitheatre/Pages/victoriana.aspx

VICTORIANA AT BIRKBECK
Birkbeck will also host a season of events on Neo-Victorian culture this term, organized in collaboration with the Guildhall Art Gallery's Victoriana Exhibition.

VICTORIANA ON FILM
A season of free film screenings in collaboration with the Guildhall Art Gallery's Victoriana Exhibition.
The film series will include the following free screenings:

• 22 October: The Piano (Jane Campion 1993)
• 29 October: The Picture of Dorian Gray (Albert Lewin 1945)
• 5 November: The Prestige (Christopher Nolan 2006)
• 12 November: Gone to Earth (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger 1950)
• 19 November: The Elephant Man (David Lynch 1980)
• 26 November: Angels and Insects (Philip Haas 1995)

The films will be shown from 2-5pm at the Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD
The first film will be Jane Campion's The Piano (1993), introduced by Professor Lynda Nead.
For more information and to register for the screening, see: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/about-us/events/about-us/events/bbk-local?uid=710317d28ee1b53de695fcbdeae93b4d

MONSTERS AND DETECTIVES: RE-WRITING THE VICTORIANS FOR TELEVISION & RADIO
Panel discussion at Birkbeck School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square
Keynes Library

November 23, 2013, 2-5pm,

Speakers:
Dr Marie-Luise Kohlke (Swansea), 'Reciprocal Haunting in _Ripper Street_: Spectres of Twenty-First-Century Sexual Abuse in Neo-Victorian Media'
Michael Eaton (television and radio writer), 'Victorians such as Us'
Dr Benjamin Poore (York), 'The Strange Casebooks of Dr Jekyll and Mr Holmes: Adaptations and the limits of Neo-Victorianism'
Register for the event here: https://bbk-monsters-detectives.eventbrite.co.uk/ 

STEAMPUNK: A SYMPOSIUM
Guildhall Art Gallery, Guildhall Yard, London, EC2V 5AE
Saturday 30 November 2013, 1-5pm

The Steampunk symposium takes place on 30 November - you can see full details and reserve your (free) place here: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/events-calendar/steampunk-a-symposium 

For more information about the programme of events, see:http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/news/victoriana-the-art-of-revival-exhibition-and-film-series

Prize: RSVP Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship (10/31/2013)

5th annual Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship

Research Society for Victorian Periodicals

Deadline: October 31, 2013

The fifth annual Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship, made possible by the generosity of publisher Gale, part of Cengage Learning, is a prize in support of dissertation research that makes substantial use of full-text digitized collections of 19th-century British magazines and newspapers. A prize of $1500 will be awarded, together with one year's passworded subscription to selected digital collections from Gale, including 19th Century UK Periodicals and 19th Century British Library Newspapers.

Purpose: The purpose of the Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship is two-fold: (1) to support historical and literary research that deepens our understanding of the 19th-century British press in all its rich variety, and (2) to encourage the scholarly use of collections of full-text digital facsimiles of these primary sources in aid of that research.

Eligibility: Eligible for this award is any currently enrolled postgraduate student, in any academic discipline, who by the end of 2013 will have embarked on a doctoral dissertation or thesis that centrally involves investigation into one or more aspects of the British magazine and newspaper press of the 19th century. Preference will be given to projects that are interdisciplinary in approach, and that propose to use innovative methods of exploration that are uniquely possible with online collections. The digitized collections used in this research may include those created by any publishers or projects, whether commercial or non-commercial.

Applications: Applicants should send a c.v. and the names and contact information of two scholars who are familiar with the applicant and his or her dissertation project; it is expected that one of these will be the student's dissertation director. The project description (approx. 500-800 words) should concisely explain the aims of the proposed research and the key importance of the role of full-text digitized collections in that research. Applications for the Gale Fellowship for dissertation research to be undertaken in 2014 must be submitted in electronic form and sent to galefellowship@rs4vp.org by October 31, 2013. Any queries about the application may be sent to the same address. Applicants will be notified in January. The successful applicant will be expected to submit a brief report to RSVP at the conclusion of the funded portion of the project, describing the results of the research.

For more information and news about the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, please visit its webpage at www.rs4vp.org

Lecture Series: Birckbeck Forum “Mediating Song: Pre-Raphaelite Balladry in Poetry and Paint” (10/23/2013)

The Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies

Keynes Library

Elizabeth Helsinger (Chicago)

“Mediating Song: Pre-Raphaelite Balladry in Poetry and Paint”

October 23, 2013 (7:30-9:00 pm)

In the 1850s two generations of Pre-Raphaelites practiced what might be called a modern medievalism in painting, poetry, and song. By returning to older models, they rendered contemporary forms of narrative and visual representation newly strange. This talk focuses on one aspect of Pre-Raphaelite explorations of the pre-Renaissance past from the perspective of a mid-nineteenth-century present: their reworkings of traditional ballads, trans-mediating old songs into deliberately unsettling poems and pictures. For Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, and others in their circle these mediated ballads became occasions for imagining their way forward, towards alternative models for relating figure to ground, subjects to objects, and present to past and future.

Other Forum events for the Autumn Term include:

• Monday 11 November 2013, 6:00-8:00pm
• Tabitha Sparks (McGill): 'The Symbolic Economy of Disease in Sensation and Satire: Lady Audley's Secret and Dr Phillips: A Maida Vale Idyll'
• Friday 15 November 2013, 6:00-8:00pm
• Kate Flint (USC): 'Intrusive Light: Flash Photography and Documentary Work'
• Organized by the History and Theory of Photography Research Centre at Birkbeck

Unless otherwise noted, all sessions take place in the Keynes Library (Room 114, School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, London, UK, WC1H 0PD). All sessions are free and welcome to the public.

For more information, see: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/our-research/research_cncs/our-events/birkbeck-forum-for-nineteenth-century-studies-autumn-term-2013 

Please email c19@bbk.ac.uk if you would like to join our mailing list or to obtain further information about the series.

CFP: BAVS 2014 "Victorian Sustainability" (3/31/2014; 9/4-6/2014)

British Association of Victorian Studies conference

University of Kent, Canterbury

September 4-6, 2014

Deadline: March 31, 2014

“Victorian Sustainability”

From emerging ideas about the perils of environmental degradation to the establishment of the National Trust, the concept of sustainability began to take on a new importance in the Victorian period that remains relevant in 21-st century modernity. We welcome proposals which address any aspect of Victorian sustainability and especially encourage interdisciplinary approaches.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Victorian nature writing and/or discourses of nature and science
• Heritage and preservation (of built environments, natural landscapes, species, material cultures)
• Climate change and the Victorians
• Sustenance and sustainability
• Victorian discourses of emotional/psychological sustainability or wellbeing
• Eco-criticism and environmental aesthetics in Victorian literature
• Sustaining the Victorians (literary and/or cultural legacies)
• ‘Green imperialism’ and/or colonial sustainability
• The emergence of self-sufficiency and sustainable ways of life in the Victorian period
• Waste/pollution vs. recycling/renewal in urban and industrial contexts
• Narratives of catastrophe, risk, decay or crisis in the Victorian period
• Representations of growth, flourishing and/or transformation in Victorian literature and culture
• Social ecology and the relation between human and non-human in the Victorian period
• Victorian pastoral and/or the legacy of Romanticism
• The sustainability of Victorian Studies

Proposals (300 words max.) are due by March 31, 2014, and should be sent to kentbavs2014@gmail.com. Panel proposals (comprised of 3 paper proposals, plus an additional 300 words explaining how the papers are linked in addressing the theme) are also welcome.

The 2014 BAVS conference will be hosted by the new Centre for Victorian Literature and Culture at the University of Kent, Canterbury. Any inquiries about the Centre or the conference may be sent to the Centre Director, Professor Wendy Parkins at W.J.Parkins@kent.ac.uk

Registration Open: Literary Dolls: The Female Textual Body from the Nineteenth Century to Now (3/8/2014)

Literary Dolls: The Female Textual Body from the Nineteenth Century to Now

University of Durham

International Women’s Day

March 8, 2014

Registration is now open for this one-day conference on March 8, 2014 (International Women's Day).

Keynote speakers at the conference include the winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Jane Smiley; Professor Jo Phoenix (University of Durham); Dr Kate MacDonald (University of Ghent).

To register visit http://www.dur.ac.uk/r.a.white/literarydolls

Prize: 2014 MVSA Walter L. Arnstein Prize for Dissertation Research in Victorian Studies (2/1/2014)

MVSA Walter L. Arnstein Prize for Dissertation Research in Victorian Studies

Deadline: February 1, 2014

The Midwest Victorian Studies Association is pleased to announce the Twenty-First Annual Walter L. Arnstein Prize for Dissertation Research in Victorian Studies.  This is a prize of $1,500 to support dissertation research in British Victorian Studies undertaken by a student currently enrolled in a doctoral program in a U.S. or Canadian university. 

Proposals from graduate students are sought by February 1, 2014.  They may be submitted from the fields of literature, history, art history, or musicology, but should have a significant interdisciplinary component that will render them of interest to scholars studying Victorian Britain across a range of disciplines, approaches, and subfields. 

Applicants must submit:

• A cover sheet (to be found on the MVSA webpage:http://www.midwesternvictorian.org/p/prizes.html
• A statement on research (maximum 3 single-space pages, 12-point font).  Please provide a brief overview of your dissertation topic, remembering that your proposal will be reviewed by faculty members in several disciplines.  Indicate clearly the present state of your work, and explain how the award would assist you in completing the dissertation (for example, partial travel support, purchase of library supplies, etc.).  
• A current CV (maximum 2 pages single-spaced, 12-point font).  
• Two letters of reference; these must be submitted directly by the recommenders to:arnsteinprize@midwestvictorian.org

DEADLINE: February 1, 2014.  Please submit cover sheet, statement, and CV by email to: arnsteinprize@midwestvictorian.org

For more details about MVSA and the Arnstein prize, please go to: http://www.midwestvictorian.org

CFP: VSAWC 2014 "Victorian Communities" (10/18/2013; 4/26-27/2014)

The Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada 2014

Banff, Alberta, Canada

April 26-27, 2014

Deadline: October 18, 2013

Keynote Speaker: Aileen Fyfe (History, University of St. Andrews)

“Victorian Communities”

Our conference theme explores Victorian concepts, representations, and experiences of community. From Chartist organizations to the Salvation Army,  from women’s colleges to Mechanics’ Institutes, from Evangelical congregations to pagan gatherings, and including rituals ranging from family reading and hymn singing to maypole dancing, rugby matches, and croquet games, Victorians sought out “combinations” that were political, religious, domestic, social, artistic, academic, and/or erotic.

Whom did such communities empower and whom did they exclude? Which communities were fostered and which repressed or excluded? We welcome papers that consider the implications, definitions, and manifestations of Victorian community in all its forms. We welcome papers from all disciplines and methodologies: Art History, History of Science, Architecture, Music and Theatre History, Literature, Popular Culture, Media History/Archaeology, Disabilities Studies, and Digital Humanities. We encourage would-be participants to propose 3-paper panels on related topics.

Please forward 250-word abstracts with titles plus a separate 75-word biographical blurb to VSAWC14@uvic.ca by October 18, 2013.

Other notable conference features:

• Workshop on Public Victorian Studies: Beyond the University Walls with Teresa Mangum (English, U of Iowa; Director, Obermann Center for Advanced Studies)
• Publication Workshop for Graduate Students and Junior Faculty with Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Lisa Surridge (University of Victoria Department of English; Coeditors, Victorian Review)

Visit web.uvic.ca/vsawc/ for more information

Reminder: INCS 2014 "Nineteenth-Century Energies" (11/15/2013; 3/27-30/2014)

Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies

University of Houston

March 27-30, 2014

Deadline: November 15, 2013

Featuring Keynote Speakers

   Tom Gunning: Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Art History and Department of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago
   Tim Morton: Professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair of English, Rice University

“We do not exactly know what energy is, but we recognize it,” wrote engineer William Carpenter in 1883. For INCS 2014, the committee solicits proposals that recognize nineteenth-century energies in all their multiple, mutable forms. What made the nineteenth century move, tick, and turn? How were its energies instigated, exchanged, conceived, and converted? Who was most animated, and who sought lethargy? What shapes—literal, figurative, material, textual, painted, embodied—did its energies assume? And how were nineteenth-century energies contained? Proposals might focus on the following topics, but are not limited to these:

• Currency and currents
• Hurricanes, storms, and weather
• Evolution and devolution
• Eruptions, real and imagined
• Electromagnetism and wave theory
• Dynamism and cosmology
• Photosynthesis
• Environmental effects and anthropocenic ages
• Geography and geology
• Fossil fuels
• Radiation
• Conservation
• Narrative rhythms
• Prosodic energies
• Punch cards and digitized text
• Time and temporality
• Cartography and mapping
• Circuitry
• Rain, Steam, and Speed (Turner or otherwise)
• Circulation: of people, of molecules, of money
• Diasporas
• Technologies of vision
• Political energies
• Sweated labor and radical movements
• Steam(punk) and industry
• Urban construction and destruction
• Architectural tensions
• Bodies in motion: working, exercising, performing
• Protoplasm and vital energies
• Libido
• Virility and vigor
• Lassitude, ennui, paralysis, inertia
• Opiates and opioids
• Stimulants and tonics
• Animal magnetism, mesmerism, sensations
• Telekinesis, spiritualism, mental telepathy
• Enervation and innovation
• Sleep

Deadline: November 15, 2013. For individual papers, send 500-word proposals; for panels, send individual 500-word proposals for each paper plus a 250-word panel description.

Please include a one-page cv and your name, affiliation, and email address on your proposal. Proposals that are interdisciplinary in method or panels that involve multiple disciplines are especially welcome. Submit proposals at incs2014.org; send questions to info@incs2014.org.

Travel subventions are available for graduate students; please contact Chris Vanden Bossche, INCS Executive Director (cvandenb@nd.edu), for further information.

Essay Prize: INCS 2014 "Susan Morgan Graduate Student Essay Prize" (3/1/2014)

Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies

The Susan Morgan Graduate Student Essay Prize

Guidelines for the Inaugural 2014 Award

Deadline: March 1, 2014

Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS) is pleased to announce the inauguration of the Susan Morgan Graduate Student Essay Prize. The prize has been established in honor of Susan Morgan, Distinguished Professor of English at Miami University, a prolific, interdisciplinary scholar of nineteenthcentury literature and culture, and a longstanding member of INCS. Professor Morgan’s scholarship has shaped the interdisciplinary fields of women’s writing, travel writing, and empire studies—fields that are central to the work of many INCS scholars—and she has generously mentored countless graduate students and junior colleagues. Her selected publications include In the Meantime: Character and Perception in Jane Austen’s Fiction (Chicago, 1980); Sisters in Time: Imagining Gender in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction (Oxford, 1989); Place Matters: Gendered Geography in Victorian Women’s Travel Writings about Southeast Asia (Rutgers, 1996); and Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of the King and I Governess (California, 2008). We are fortunate to have Professor Morgan as a valued member of INCS.

Guidelines

• 1) The Susan Morgan Graduate Student Essay Prize will be awarded annually, at the annual conference each year. The inaugural 2014 prize will be awarded in Houston, Texas.
• 2) Eligible essays must be posted to the INCS conference website by the submission due date and presented for discussion by the author at the conference. Submissions may not exceed the length specified for INCS papers on the conference website; for 2014, the length is 4,000 words. Only people whose proposals have been accepted for the conference are eligible to submit a conference paper and be considered for the prize.
• 3) The prize will be announced at each annual conference.
• 4) The award is $500 and publication of the essay in Nineteenth-Century Contexts, the INCS-affiliated peerreviewed journal. The winning author will work with readers for the journal and be given the opportunity to revise the essay prior to publication.
• 5) The second-place essay will be awarded the designation “Honorable Mention.”
• 6) The due date is the date designated for papers to be submitted prior to the INCS annual conference. For the inaugural 2014 essay prize, that date is March 1, 2014. Papers submitted after that date cannot be considered for the prize.
• 7) Papers should be uploaded to the conference website in doc format, per website instructions. Please include this phrase at the top of submission papers: SUBMISSION FOR THE SUSAN MORGAN GRADUATE STUDENT ESSAY PRIZE (which will be removed before the paper is posted to its assigned conference panel).
• 8) The competition will be judged by a panel of judges appointed by the INCS board.
• 9) No judge will be allowed to assess his or her own submission or to assess work submitted by anyone with whom the judge has worked closely.
• 10) INCS reserves the right to award no prize in any given year.

Lecture: 2nd Bran Stoker Birthday Lecture and Symposium (11/8/2013)

2^nd Bran Stoker Birthday Lecture and Symposium

Prof. Sir Christopher Frayling

Whitby Museum

November 8, 2013

The 2nd Bram Stoker Birthday Lecture and Symposium will take place at Whitby Museum on November 8, 2013 (11am – 5:45pm). PROF. SIR CHRISTOPHER FRAYLING will deliver the Bram Stoker Birthday Lecture, “Mr Stoker's Holiday in Whitby”, at 4:30pm. The Lecture will be preceded by papers from 11am by David Pybus, Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society, on Stoker and Victorian Whitby; Dr Martin Arnold (University of Hull) on Celts, Goths and the Old North; Dr Catherine Wynne (University of Hull) on Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde and Egyptomania. Professor Martin Goodman (Professor of Creative Writing, University of Hull) will read from the manuscript of his new vampire novel. The True book of the Vampires reveals aspects of ancient vampire lore hitherto unknown to humans. A lunch-time walk to St Mary's Churchyard will be included (optional).

Tickets (full day): £15 (half-day from 2.30pm): £10

To book a place, contact Dr Catherine Wynne (c.wynne@hull.ac.uk) by November 4, 2013.
Organized by Dr Catherine Wynne, Department of English, University of Hull, UK

Prize: Tennyson Essay Prize 2013 (7/31/2014)

The Tennyson Society Publications Board announces:

TENNYSON ESSAY PRIZE 2013 

A prize of £500 is offered for the best essay on any aspect of Tennyson’s life and work, received by the Tennyson Publications Board by July 31, 2014.  Essays should be no longer than 5000 words. The competition is open to all, but entries from persons under the age of 35 will be especially welcomed. The winning entry will be published in a future edition of the Tennyson Research Bulletin.

RULES OF THE COMPETITION

• 1) The closing date for the submission of entries is 31 July 2014. Entries should be clearly marked ‘Tennyson Essay Competition’. They should be sent to:  Rosalind Boyce, c/o The Tennyson Society, The Central Library, Free School Lane, Lincoln LN2 1EZ, England.
• 2) Essays should be no longer than 5000 words and should conform to the Harvard (author/date) system.
• 3) Only one entry per individual is allowed.
• 4) Each entry should be accompanied by an abstract of approximately 200 words.
• 5) Three copies of each entry should be submitted.
• 6) The Publications Board reserves the right to publish in the Tennyson Research Bulletin, within a period of four years from the date of submission, entries other than the winning entry. Entrants will be informed of decisions by 31 December 2014. Typescripts will not be returned to authors. 
• 7) The decision of the judges, who will be drawn from the Tennyson Society Publications Board, is final and no correspondence will be entered into concerning their decision.

CFP: Nineteenth Century Research Seminars (10/31/2013; 1-5/2014)

Nineteenth Century Research Seminars

University of Edinburgh, Scotland

January-May 2014

Deadline: October 31, 2013

The Nineteenth Century Research Seminars (NCRS) will take place at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Humanities (IASH) in the University of Edinburgh from January – May 2014. This monthly seminar series seeks to provide a cross- and inter-disciplinary space in which doctoral researchers and early career researchers (ECRs) working on the nineteenth century can meet, discuss their research, form connections, and perhaps sow the seeds for future collaborations. Each seminar will consist of two papers: one paper from a University of Edinburgh-based researcher and one paper from a researcher based in any other higher education institution. The NCRS is supported by the University of Edinburgh’s Researcher-Led Initiative Fund.

NCRS invites proposals for twenty-minute papers addressing any aspect of nineteenth century literature, history, and culture from doctoral researchers and ECRs only. Abstracts (<250 a="" affiliation="" along="" an="" and="" be="" biography="" body="" brief="" email="" href="mailto:edinburgh19thcentury@gmail.com" in="" institutional="" name="" of="" should="" speaker="" submitted="" the="" to="" with="" words="">edinburgh19thcentury@gmail.com

. The closing date for submissions is Thursday October 31, 2013.

The NCRS will reimburse the selected non-University of Edinburgh speakers’ travel expenses up to £100.

Reminder: NVSA 2014 "Victorian Senses" (10/15/2013; 4/11-13/2014)

CFP: NVSA 2014

Victorian Senses

Stony Brook University,

April 11-13, 2014

Proposals Due: October 15, 2013

The Northeast Victorian Studies Association calls for papers that treat the Victorians and the senses—sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell.

The committee invites papers from all disciplines on topics ranging from the representation of individual sense experience to the scientific, psychological, and philosophical study of the senses; from the sensory impact of mechanization, industry, and the urban city to the extrasensory world of the Victorian séance and spirit rapping. How were the senses categorized and conceptualized in the period? How did Victorian writers and artists understand and represent the sensations of living in their world? What role did capitalism or politics play in the transformation of the Victorian world of the senses—the rise of consumer culture or the publication of Chadwick’s 1842 Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population, for instance, or Victorian censorship? How did the ascendancy of empiricism shape the ways in which Victorian scientists and writers experienced and described the world? In what ways were the senses regarded as unreliable or inadequate for a full understanding of reality? How did the Aesthetic and Decadent movements define or exploit sensory experience? In what ways were sensory interactions with the world enhanced, complicated, or compromised by new communication and sensory technologies? How were sensory deficits—blindness, deafness—understood? What explains the cultural popularity of sensation fiction and public spectacle in Victorian culture?

Topics to be considered can include, but are not limited to, the following:

Senses and the Body:

• sensory deficits (blindness, deafness)
• illusions
• dreaming
• mesmerism and hypnotism
• anaesthesia
• synaesthesia
• hallucination
• sense illusions
• drugs and alcohol
• the senses and evolution
• extrasensory perception
• insanity and nervous disease

Studying the Senses:

• psychology of sense perception
• experimental study of the senses
• physiology and the senses
• sexual science
• sensory deprivation
• animal senses

Communication, Optical, and Acoustic Technologies:

• photography and its predecessors
• the phonograph
• sound recordings
• the microscope
• the telescope
• extending the senses through technology

Senses and the Victorian World:

• factories and industrialization
• urbanization
• the sensory overload of the metropolis
• consumerism and the senses

History, Method, and Philosophy:

• empiricism—sense experience as the origin of knowledge
• rationalism
• the unreliability or inadequacy of the senses
• sense experience and consciousness
• social and cultural history of the senses
• sociology and anthropology of the senses
• the hierarchy of the senses: vision as the highest sense   

Culture and the Arts:

• Sensation fiction
• the sensational
• the representation of sense experience in fiction, poetry, and art
• literary realism and empiricism
• spectacle
• the poetry of sensation, spasmodic poetry, the “fleshly school” of poetry
• magic
• Decadence and Aestheticism
• sentimentality

Proposals (no more than 500 words) by Oct. 15, 2013 (email submissions only, in Word format): Erika Behrisch Elce, Chair, NVSA Program Committee: Erika.Behrisch.Elce@rmc.ca

Please note: all submissions to NVSA are evaluated anonymously. Successful proposals will stay within the 500-word limit and make a compelling case for the talk and its relation to the conference topic. Please do not send complete papers, and do not include your name on the proposal. Please include your name, institutional and email addresses, and proposal title in a cover letter. Papers should take 15 minutes (20 minutes maximum) so as to provide ample time for discussion.

The Coral Lansbury Travel Grant ($100.00) and George Ford Travel Grant ($100.00), given in memory of key founding members of NVSA, are awarded annually to the graduate student, adjunct instructor, or independent scholar who must travel the greatest distance to give a paper at our conference. Apply by indicating in your cover letter that you wish to be considered. Please indicate from where you will be traveling, and mention if you have other sources of funding.