Call for Participants: Our Mutual Friend Tweets (5/1/2014; 5/14-11/15)

Call for Participants: Our Mutual Friend Tweets

Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies

Start: May 1, 2014

Duration: May 2014-November 2015

On May 1, 2014, Birkbeck's Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies will begin a project to read Dickens’s final completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, in its original monthly installments. The reading project will run from May 2014 to November 2015, matching the 150th anniversary of the novel's original serialized publication (May 1864 - November 1865).

The organizers are also running a creative project alongside the main reading group, in which participants will take on the role of one of the characters in the novel, and run a Twitter account as this character.

The organizers are looking for volunteers to participate in this project. You'll be assigned a character's Twitter account, and, each month, you'll need to read the installment and tweet what you have been doing that month, in character. However, the extent of your involvement is up to you: alongside the main plot-tweets, you can share links or interact with the other participants, provided everything is done in character!

At the end of the project, we hope to collect together the tweets using Storify, allowing us to reconstruct Dickens's story through these digital interactions.

To take part, or for more information, please email Emma Curry (Birkbeck College) on e.curry@bbk.ac.uk. Please state if you have a preference for which character you would like to play - they will be allotted on a first-come, first-served basis.

For more information on the monthly reading project, see http://dickensourmutualfriend.wordpress.com/

Forum: Birkbeck Summer Programme (Summer 2014)

Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies
Summer Term 2014 Programme

Friday 9 May 2014, 6.00–8.00pm
Pamela Gilbert (Florida): 'Body Objects and History: The Skin of the Marquis'


BIRKBECK ARTS WEEK EVENTS (19-24 May 2014)
Monday 19 May 2014, 7.30–9.00pm
"Clouds: Objects, Metaphor, Phenomena"
Panel Discussion with Vladimir Jankovic (Manchester), Richard Hamblyn (Birkbeck), and Esther Leslie (Birkbeck)

Wednesday 21 May 2014, 6.00–9.00pm
"From Text to Screen and Back: Adaptation Across Media"
Workshop with Richard Taws (UCL), Silke Arnold-de Simine (Birkbeck), and Ann Lewis (Birkbeck)

Thursday 22 May 2014, 7.40–9.00 pm
Sarah Thomas (Birkbeck): "Curating 'Empire' at Tate: Dissonance and British Art"
To be held in Room G01, 43 Gordon Square

JUNE/JULY EVENTS
Wednesday 4 June 2014, 6.00–8.00pm
Mary Hunter (McGill): "Ladies in Waiting: Time and Gynecology in Toulouse-Lautrec's Rue des Moulins (1894)"

Monday 16 June 2014, 6.00–8.00pm
Nicholas Gaskill (Rutgers): "Interior Designs: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Progressive Art of Pure Colour"

Tuesday 1 July 2014, 6.00-8.00pm
Rachel Teukolsky (Vanderbilt): "Cartomania: Sensation, Celebrity, and the Democratized Portrait"

Tuesday 8 July 2014, 6.00-8.00pm
Sue Zemka (Colorado State, Boulder): "Prosthetic Hands and Phantom Limbs"

Unless otherwise noted, all sessions take place in the Keynes Library (Room 114, School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD). The sessions are free and all are welcome, but since the venue has limited space it will be first come, first seated.

For more information, see: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/our-research/research_cncs/our-events/birkbeck-forum-for-nineteenth-century-studies-summer-term-2014

For more information on Arts Week 2014, a list of other events, and to book free tickets, see: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/about-us/events/arts-week

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

Birbeck Forum: Spring 2014 Programme (3/2014)

Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies
Spring 2014 Programme

In the first week of March the Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies will feature two talks:

• Monday March 3, 2014 (6-8 p.m.)--Angela Dunstan (Kent): “Sculptography, Sculpturing Machines, and Inanimate Sculptors: Sculpture, Authenticity and Replication in Victorian Literature”

The Victorian experience of sculpture was mediated by the desire to get 'very much nearer to the actual touch of the artist,' as Edmund Gosse termed it. This talk will consider how this desire for the sculptor's touch escalated in parallel with the perception that sculpture was becoming divorced from its creators' hands, seeming more inherently replicable than its sister art by virtue of its capacity to be recast. The nineteenth-century saw the development of a series of machines which threatened to eradicate the human touch from what had long been characterised as a mechanical art. By retracing the history of these 'sculpturing machines' and the literature they inspired, this paper provides a productive context for understanding the many nineteenth-century texts preoccupied with replication, reproduction and multiple incarnations. Taking Thomas Hardy's The Well-Beloved as a central text, and drawing on novels by George Eliot, Henry James and Vernon Lee, my paper will argue that these novels powerfully engage with late nineteenth-century angst surrounding the reproduction of sculpture and the corresponding suspicion of its circulation in multiple incarnations.

• Tuesday March 4, 2014 (6-8 pm)--Jennifer Tucker (Wesleyan): 'Facing Facts: The Tichborne Affair in Victorian Visual Culture'

Organized by the Birkbeck History and Theory of Photography Research Centre (http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/research/photography)
This talk investigates the role of visual display in the celebrated nineteenth-century trials in Britain of Arthur Orton, widely known as the 'Tichborne Claimant.' Familiar to historians as a cause that attracted popular working-class support and propelled the reformation of the Court of Chancery in 1875, the Tichborne trials (1871–1874) were also, I argue, an important landmark in the history of portraiture, photography and modern visual culture.

Future Spring Term events include:

• Wednesday March 12, 2014 (6-8 pm)--Vladimir Jankovic (Manchester): “Climate Fetishism in the Long Nineteenth Century?”
• Wednesday March 192014 (6-8 pm)--Dennis Denisoff (Ryerson): “The Eco-Politics of Women's Pagan Desires”

Unless otherwise noted, all sessions take place in the Keynes Library (Room 114, School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD). The sessions are free and all are welcome, but since the venue has limited space it will be first come, first seated.

For more information, see: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/our-research/research_cncs/our-events/birkbeck-forum-for-nineteenth-century-studies-spring-term-2014
Please email c19@bbk.ac.uk to join our mailing list or to obtain further information about the series.

Seminar: Birkbeck's Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies Spring Programme (1/17/2014 & 2/7/2014)

London Nineteenth-Century Studies Seminar
Spring Term Programme of Events

Birkbeck University

Inaugurated by Birkbeck's Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies in 1987, the Seminar is chaired by Dr Ana Vadillo (Birkbeck) and organised by a committee made up of nineteenth-century specialists from the English Departments of the colleges of the University of London. Responsibility for each season of seminars is passed around the group.

SPRING TERM
Friday January 17, 2014
Steward House, Room 349
17:30 - 19:30
Archaeology of Emotions 1
Stefano Evangelista (Oxford): 'Encounters with Sculpture in Sigmund Freud and Vernon Lee: Science, Aesthetics, Pathology'
Carolyn Burdett (Birkbeck): 'From shareability to Unanimism: or, how psychology tried to keep the Good in the Beautiful'

Friday February 7, 2014
Stewart House, Room 349
17:30 - 19:30
Archaeology of Emotions 2: Panel on An Archaeology of Sympathy
James Chandler (Chicago); Respondent: Luisa Calé (Birkbeck)

For more information please contact Ana Parejo Vadillo (a.parejovadillo@bbk.ac.uk) or visit the website at: http://events.sas.ac.uk/events/visitor_events.php?page=ies_seminars&func=results&aoi_id=54

Seminars: Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies (Winter 2014)

The London Nineteenth-Century Studies Seminar 2013-2014 Programme
Institute of English Studies, University of London

Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies

Winter 2014

Inaugurated by Birkbeck's Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies in 1987, the Seminar is chaired by Dr Ana Vadillo (Birkbeck, University of London) and organised by a committee made up of nineteenth-century specialists from the English Departments of the colleges of the University of London. Responsibility for each season of seminars is passed around the group.

Friday December 13, 2013
Stewart House, Room G37 (Ground Floor)
32 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5DN
Time: 17:30 - 19:30

'Oscar Wilde: The Editor and the Journalist'
John Stokes (KCL, Emeritus) and Mark Turner (KCL) will be speaking about their recent 2 volume edition of Wilde’s journalism.
This event is co-sponsored by the 'Shows of London' Research Group at KCL:http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/english/events/seminars/sol.aspx

Friday January 17, 2014
Stewart House, Room 349 (3rd Floor)
32 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5DN
Time: 17:30 - 19:30

Archaeology of Emotions 1
Stefano Evangelista (Oxford): 'Encounters with Sculpture in Sigmund Freud and Vernon Lee: Science, Aesthetics, Pathology'.
Carolyn Burdett (Birkbeck, University of London): 'From shareability to Unanimism: or, how psychology tried to keep the Good in the Beautiful'

Friday February 7, 2014
Stewart House, Room 349 (3rd Floor)
32 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5DN
Time: 17:30 - 19:30

Archaeology of Emotions 2: Panel on 'An Archaeology of Sympathy'
Speaker: James Chandler (Chicago)
Respondent: Luisa Cale (Birkbeck, University of London)

For more information, see: http://events.sas.ac.uk/events/visitor_events.php?page=ies_seminars&func=results&aoi_id=54 or contact contact Ana Vadillo ata.parejovadillo@bbk.ac.uk

Event: Birkbeck University "Steampunk: A Symposium" (11/30/2013)

Steampunk: A Symposium
The Guildhall Art Gallery

Birkbeck University
November 30, 2013
1:00-5:00pm

Steampunk is one of the more peculiar genres to mutate out of Neo-Victorianism. Although tethered to an aesthetic idea of the past, it has severed any link to authenticity, freely reinventing and repurposing Victorian technology and culture in order to imagine a counter-factual world of hybridity and playfulness. Ranging across media from film to fashion, literature to design, its identity is fluid but unmistakable. But do these impossible pasts and futures tell us something about our present reality?

Programme
1.00-1.15: Welcome

1.15-2.45: Panel discussion: Steampunk: remaking the past and the future
Jeanette Atkinson – ‘Top Hats, Corsets and Tea Duelling: the Well Mannered World of Steampunk’
Tony Venezia – ‘Science and Monsters:  A Guide to Steampunk Comics’
Anna Powell – ‘Mixing the Planes in Hellboy’

2.45-3.45: Viewing of the exhibition

3.45-4.15: Q&A with Steampunk artist Ian Crichton (aka Herr Döktor) and Guildhall curator Katty Pearce

4.15-4.45: Discussion of the exhibition

4.45: Closing remarks and thanks

This symposium is free to attend but please reserve a place using our online booking form found here:http://www.bbk.ac.uk/events-calendar/steampunk-a-symposium

There will be a concessionary £5 charge for entry to the Guildhall's exhibition on the day.

This event forms part of our Victoriana series, which includes an exhibition and film screenings - see full details here: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/news/victoriana-the-art-of-revival-exhibition-and-film-series

Special Event: Monsters and Detectives: Re-Writing the Victorians for Television and Radio (11/23/2013)

Monsters and Detectives: Re-Writing the Victorians for Television & Radio
Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD
Saturday November 23, 2013, 2:00-5:00pm

Adaptations of nineteenth-century narratives are a staple of prime-time drama, but the costume classics have now been joined by a new kind of Neo-Victorian tale. Popular shows like Ripper Street and Sherlock reinvent the past as a fictive playground of ideas, where contemporary fears and fantasies can be played out. But why do writers return to the past in order to scrutinise modernity? And what happens in the intersection between history, literature and mass media?

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”

Admission is free, but registration is essential: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/events-calendar/monsters-and-detectives-re-writing-the-victorians-for-television-and-radio

Special Event: Touching the Book: Embossed Literature for Blind People in the Nineteenth Century (7/18-10/30/2013)

Peltz Gallery, Ground Floor, School of Arts, Birkbeck, London WC1H 0PD

July 18 – September 16, Monday-Friday 9-8pm.

September 17 – October 30, Monday – Saturday, 9-8pm

This free exhibition explores the history of literacy for blind and visually impaired people in nineteenth-century Britain and Europe through the development of embossed literature. It introduces visitors to the variety of embossed writing systems that blind people were taught prior to the widespread adoption of braille at the end of the nineteenth century. There was fierce debate in this period between educators who favoured a system based on the Roman alphabet that could be read still by sight and those who advocated for an arbitrary system – such as braille – more suited to finger reading.

Touching the book: Embossed literature for Blind People brings together a rich array of material, including important examples of early classbooks, spiritual guides, the first specially-commissioned embossed Bibles, writing devices, pamphlets and visual images. It details how early embossing attempts were motivated by religious desire to enable blind people to read the word of God directly through touch. This fuelled investment in embossing processes which in turn improved the quality and durability of embossed books.

Most significantly however, the development of finger-reading practices helped to create new communities of literate blind and visually-impaired people who began advocating for reading and writing systems best suited to the needs of blind people. The exhibition highlights individuals in the nineteenth-century blind community who both raised the profile of and were instrumental in improving literacy for blind and visually-impaired people, including Laura Bridgman, William Moon, G.A. Hughes, Louis Braille and Thomas Rhodes Armitage.

http://blogs.bbk.ac.uk/touchingthebook/

Registration Open: "Victorian Body Parts" (09/14/2013)

VICTORIAN BODY PARTS CONFERENCE


Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies

Saturday 14 September 2013
 

Barts Pathology Museum



Registration is now open for the Victorian Body Parts Conference. The conference fee is £15 (£10 for students/unwaged). Please register here: https://www2.bbk.ac.uk/english/vbp/
 



PROGRAMME




09.30-09.50  Registration and Refreshments




09.50-10.00  Opening Remarks



Carla Valentine (Technical Assistant Curator, Barts Pathology Museum)



Beatrice Bazell and Emma Curry (Birkbeck College, University of London)




10.00-11.15  Keynote Panel



Dr Katharina Boehm (Universität Regensburg), 'Body Boundary Object'



Dr Kate Hill (University of Lincoln), 'A Head for Knowledge: Archaeology, Anthropology and Body Parts in Victorian Museums'



Chair: Dr Victoria Mills (Darwin College, University of Cambridge)




11.15-11.45  Tea Break




11.45-13.00  Panel One: Severed Parts



Ellery Foutch (University of Wisconsin-Madison), 'Sandow’s Arm'



Dr Graeme Pedlingham (University of Sussex), '"I take myne owne": The Hysteric, The Collector and Anatomical Autonomy in Richard Marsh's "Lady Wishaw's Hand" (1895)'



Catherine Oakley (University of York), 'Laughable Limbs: Comic Dismemberment in Early Cinema 1895-1910'



Chair: Diana Garrisi (University of Westminster)




13.00-13.45  Lunch




13.45-15.00  Panel Two: Prosthetic Parts



Clare Stainthorp (University of Birmingham), 'The Case of the Artificial Hand: Considering Disability, Prosthesis and the Motif of the Hand in the Nineteenth Century'



Ryan Sweet (University of Exeter), '"Down Came the Limb with a Frightful Smash": Prosthesis as Weapon in Nineteenth-Century Literature'



Emma Curry (Birkbeck College, University of London), 'Wiggery Pokery: Touching Dickens’s Hair'



Chair: Amanda Sciampacone (Birkbeck College, University of London)




15.00-15.15  Break




15.15-16.30  Panel Three: Gendered Parts



Lisa Coar (University of Leicester), 'The Surgically Sartorial: Cutting it Fine among Wasp-Waisted Men'



Ally Crockford (University of Edinburgh), 'Erect Victorians: the Anxious Masculinity of the Nineteenth-Century 'Diphallic' Terata'



Beatrice Bazell (Birkbeck College, University of London), 'Corset, Camera, Constriction: Articulating the Female Body in Mid-Victorian Culture'



Chair: Dr Corinna Wagner (University of Exeter)




16.30-16.45  Break




16.45-17.30  Keynote Address



Dr Tiffany Watt-Smith (Queen Mary, University of London), 'Organs of Imitation: Theatrical Body Parts and Scientific Psychology'



Chair: Dr Nicola Bown (Birkbeck College, University of London)




17.30-17.45  Closing Remarks



Dr Nicola Bown (Birkbeck College, University of London)




For more information, please see: http://victorianbodyparts.wordpress.com/

Special Event: Birkbeck, London, “Touching the Book: Embossed Literature for Blind People in the Nineteenth Century,” curated by Dr. Heather Tilley

New exhibition about nineteenth-century blindness open at Birkbeck, London.

We're very pleased to announce that a new, free exhibition has opened in the Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck's School of Arts, Central London. Touching the Book: Embossed Literature for Blind People in the Nineteenth Century is curated by Dr Heather Tilley, a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in Birkbeck’s Department of English and Humanities, and supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) through their Sharing Heritage programme.

The exhibition explores the history of embossed reading and writing practices for blind and partially-sighted people prior to the adoption of braille in nineteenth-century Britain and Europe. It contains important examples of nineteenth-century embossed books, writing devices, journals, pamphlets and portraits from the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), the Wellcome Library, and private collections.  This was a period in which a number of raised alphabets were invented and taught in blind schools and teaching societies throughout Europe, characterized either by their resemblance to the Roman alphabet and legible to the eye or their use of an arbitrary, symbolic code, such as braille.

The exhibition traces debates between those alphabets that were best-suited to the eye vs those best-suited to the finger and explores how nineteenth-century blind and partially sighted people, including Thomas Rhodes Armitage (a founding member of RNIB) and communities campaigned to have ownership of embossed writing systems. Visitors will also be able to access further information and share responses to the exhibition on the exhibition’s website (http://blogs.bbk.ac.uk/touchingthebook/).

Touching the Book: Embossed Literature for Blind People in the Nineteenth Century. Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD.

18 July to 30 October 2013. Please visit the exhibition website for more information on opening hours.

The curator will deliver regular tours of the exhibition.

Bursaries Available: The Victorian Tactile Imagination Conference (7/1/2013; 7/19-20/2013)

Bursaries Available for the Victorian Tactile Imagination Conference
Birkbeck, University of London
19-20 July 2013

The conference committee are delighted to announce that four bursaries are now available to enable postgraduate and early career researchers (within three years of the PhD viva) to attend the conference, generously supported by the British Association of Victorian Studies (BAVS):www.bavsuk.org.

The bursaries will cover the conference registration fee as well as a contribution of £40 towards travel expenses (please note this does not include the conference dinner). In order to apply for a bursary, applicants must provide:

• A brief (500 word) outline of how attending the conference will contribute to their research
• A short (2 page) CV
• A brief note stating any access to institutional research funds to support conference attendance currently available.

Applications will be assessed on the quality of outline proposals, with priority given to shortlisted candidates with limited access to institutional research funds. Please note it is not necessary to be presenting a paper at the conference to apply for a bursary.

As part of the bursary conditions, successful applicants will be asked to produce a short report on the conference by 20 August 2013, with the opportunity to develop this into a forum piece for a special edition of the open-access online journal 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century (www.19.bbk.ac.uk) in 2014.

Please email applications to Dr Heather Tilley at victoriantactileimagination@gmail.com by 9am, 1 July 2013. Successful applicants will be informed by 5 July 2013.

Key information:

Address for queries/submission of applications: Dr Heather Tilley, victoriantactileimagination@gmail.com
Deadline for applications: 9am, Monday 1 July 2013
Outcome announced: Friday 5 July 2013

For more information on the Victorian Tactile Imagination conference please visit the conference website:
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/our-research/research_cncs/our-events/the-victorian-tactile-imagination

The Victorian Tactile Imagination conference is organised by Birkbeck, University of London’s Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, and supported by the British Academy: www.britac.ac.uk and the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS): www.bavsuk.org

Registration Open: The Victorian Tactile Imagination Conference (7/19-20/2013)

Registration is now open for:
The Victorian Tactile Imagination Conference
19-20 July 2013
Birkbeck, University of London

Keynote speakers:

Professor William Cohen (University of Maryland), on Arborealities: The Tactile Ecology of Hardy’s Woodlanders

Professor Gillian Beer (University of Cambridge), on Dream Touch

Dr Constance Classen (author of The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch), on Victorian Intimacies: Love, Death, and the British Museum

Professor Hilary Fraser (Birkbeck, University of London), on Touching Pictures: Victorian Art Writing and the Tactile Imagination”

For more information, the full programme, or to register for the conference (spaces are limited), please visit the website at: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/our-research/research_cncs/our-events/the-victorian-tactile-imagination