Registration open: Race, Nation and Empire on the Victorian Popular Stage (7/11-14/2012)

Registration is now open for the major international conference ‘Race, Nation and Empire on the Victorian Popular Stage’ (to be held in the Storey Institute, Lancaster, 11-14 July 2012).

Please visit the website for further information (https://sites.google.com/site/victorianpantomime/2012-conference).

The full programme is available for download from the website. A list of confirmed panels and speakers is to be found at the base of this email. You’ll see an excellent line up of speakers from across the UK, North America and Australia. John MacKenzie will provide the keynote lecture: ‘All the Empire’s a Stage: the Context and Performance of Imperialism’. (Emeritus of Lancaster, Edinburgh etc). He is author of Propaganda and Empire, Imperialism and Popular Culture and series editor of Manchester University Press’ Studies in Imperialism. Jane Pritchard (Victoria and Albert Museum) will deliver a special session which includes the exhibition of early film footage highlighting dance practice. The conference includes papers from academics working in the fields of theatre history/performance studies, Victorian literature, cultural history and museum studies. Cengage is sponsoring a special session on digital archives and Victorian Studies.

Reminder: Race, Nation and Empire on the Victorian Popular Stage (3/23/2012; 7/11-14/2012)

Race, Nation and Empire on the Victorian Popular Stage

The Storey, Lancaster, 11-14 July 2012

A reminder that the call for papers deadline (23 March) is drawing near. This conference will be the third in a series of three organised as part of our AHRC-funded project on the 'Cultural History of English Pantomime, 1837-1902'. Please send proposals of up to 300 words, to arrive no later than 23 March, to Peter Yeandle (p.yeandle@lancaster.ac.uk).

https://sites.google.com/site/victorianpantomime/

Further info:
A number of studies, most recent of which is Marty Gould's Nineteenth-Century Theatre and the Imperial Encounter, have demonstrated ways in which Victorian theatres served as significant sites for the 'imperial encounter'. Across a variety of theatrical forms, particularly the non-canonical stage, the stage provided a series of visual narratives in which audiences were presented the landscapes, architecture, peoples, and religions of colonised territories.  Moreover, theatre often served as a site for propaganda, educating and enthusing audiences about Britain's vast empire.

On the one hand, we seek papers exploring theatrical representations of the landscapes, religions and peoples Britons encountered as part of their imperial project.  We are interested especially in discussing the ways in which popular entertainments brought the empire 'home' and how this affected patterns of popular culture, including the gendering of public imperial discourse, the formation of racial attitudes and the construction of national identities. Given recent scholarship on provincial theatre, we especially welcome proposals which investigate connections between the 'local' and the imperial and the role of performance cultures in promoting civic and municipal identities.

On the other hand, we seek proposals which engage the two-way traffic of imperialism: that is, how were Britons and their colonial project represented in overseas sites, both by Britons abroad and those people and landscapes who became the subject of the colonial gaze.

We welcome proposals which engage the following general themes and areas for exploration:

• The 'image' of empire: visual representations in performance (corporeal enactment; the movement of bodies and artefacts; costumes; props; set design and scene painting; etc) and print (playbills; posters; theatricalisation of visual metaphor in periodicals, literary and early film and radio culture)
• Variations and hybridisation of performance culture: intertextual crossovers between sites of representation (pantomime, melodrama, lantern shows, dioramas, minstrelsy, exhibitions, festivals, circus, zoos, etc)
• Performance cultures of celebrity, commemoration and exploration: representation of the military and the navy; of warfare, settlement and conquest; of adventure stories and the patriotic impulse
• Traffic - the mediation of cultural contact zones on the stage: touring companies; dynastic families; performance sites in the colonies; negotiation/subversion of dominant norms through performance.
• Race, Science and Identity: peripheral, metropolitan, national and global formations of culture and identity; stage engagements with evolutionary science and anthropology; gendering of theatrical discourse.

Keynote Speaker: John MacKenzie

Confirmed speakers:

• Jeffrey Richards (Lancaster): Drury Lane - epitome of Empire?
• Kate Newey (Birmingham): Theatrical Utopias
• Marty Gould (South Florida): The Crusoe Tradition/ Anglo-African cultural exchange
• Jim Davis (Warwick): Dynastic theatrical families
• Catherine Haill (V&A museum): W.S. Gilbert and the question of patriotism
• Ross Forman (Warwick): Exhibitions and Re-enactment
• Anne Witchard (Westminster): Representations of the Chinese on stage
• Jo Robinson (Nottingham): Seeing the world from the provinces
• Marah Gubar (Pittsburgh): Transatlantic children's touring companies
• Stuart Currie (Worcester): Mid-century warfare on stage: set painting/scenography
• Simon Sladen (Winchester): Race-relations and 20thC pantomime's Victorianism
• Jane Pritchard (V&A museum): Dancing the Empire: Imperialism on the ballet stage
• Veronica Kelly (Queensland): Australia

CFP: Race, Nation and Empire on the Victorian Popular Stage (3/23/2012; 7/2012)

Race, Nation and Empire on the Victorian Popular Stage

https://sites.google.com/site/victorianpantomime/home/2012-conference

This conference will be the third in a series of three organised as part of our AHRC-funded project on the 'Cultural History of English Pantomime, 1837-1902'.

A number of studies, most recent of which is Marty Gould's Nineteenth-Century Theatre and the Imperial Ideal, have demonstrated ways in which Victorian theatres served as significant sites for the 'imperial encounter'. Across a variety of theatrical forms, particularly the non-canonical stage, the stage provided a series of visual narratives in which audiences were presented the landscapes, architecture, peoples, and religions of colonised territories.  Moreover, theatre often served as a site for propaganda, educating and enthusing audiences about Britain's vast empire.

On the one hand, we seek papers exploring theatrical representations of the landscapes, religions and peoples Britons encountered as part of their imperial project.  We are interested especially in discussing the ways in which popular entertainments brought the empire 'home' and how this affected patterns of popular culture, including the gendering of public imperial discourse, the formation of racial attitudes and the construction of national identities. Given recent scholarship on provincial theatre, we especially welcome proposals which investigate connections between the 'local' and the imperial and the role of performance cultures in promoting civic and municipal identities.

On the other hand, we seek proposals which engage the two-way traffic of imperialism: that is, how were Britons and their colonial project represented in overseas sites, both by Britons abroad and those people and landscapes who became the subject of the colonial gaze.

We welcome proposals which engage the following general themes and areas for exploration:

• The 'image' of empire: visual representations in performance (corporeal enactment; the movement of bodies and artefacts; costumes; props; set design and scene painting; etc) and print (playbills; posters; theatricalisation of visual metaphor in periodicals, literary and early film and radio culture)
• Variations and hybridisation of performance culture: intertextual crossovers between sites of representation (pantomime, melodrama, lantern shows, dioramas, minstrelsy, exhibitions, festivals, circus, zoos, etc)
• Performance cultures of celebrity, commemoration and exploration: representation of the military and the navy; of warfare, settlement and conquest; of adventure stories and the patriotic impulse
• Traffic - the mediation of cultural contact zones on the stage: touring companies; dynastic families; performance sites in the colonies; negotiation/subversion of dominant norms through performance.
• Race, Science and Identity: peripheral, metropolitan, national and global formations of culture and identity; stage engagements with evolutionary science and anthropology; gendering of theatrical discourse.

The deadline for proposals for 20 minute papers, up to but not exceeding 300 words, should be sent to Peter Yeandle (p.yeandle(at)Lancaster.ac.uk) by no later than 23 March 2012.


Keynote Speaker: John MacKenzie

Other confirmed speakers:

• Jeffrey Richards (Lancaster): Drury Lane - epitome of Empire?
• Kate Newey (Birmingham): Theatrical Utopias
• Marty Gould (South Florida): The Crusoe Tradition/ Anglo-African cultural exchange
• Jim Davis (Warwick): Dynastic theatrical families
• Veronica Kelly (Queensland): Australian star actors and pantomime
• Catherine Hail (V&A museum): W.S. Gilbert and the question of patriotism
• Ross Forman (Warwick): Exhibitions and Re-enactment
• Anne Witchard (Westminster): Representations of the Chinese on stage
• Joanne Robinson (Nottingham): Seeing the world from the provinces
• Marah Gubar (Pittsburgh): Transatlantic children's touring companies
• Stuart Currie (Worcester): Mid-century warfare on stage: set painting/scenography
• Simon Sladen (Winchester): Race-relations and 20thC pantomime's Victorianism
• Veronica Kelly (Queensland): Australia

Possible Victorian Studies Position (12/14/2011)

The English Department at Stony Brook hopes to search for a tenure-track assistant professor in Victorian studies.  This scholar will have particular expertise in literature in English of the British Empire, including regions where the Empire held sway, such as India, Africa, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.  This search is subject to budgetary approval, but we invite inquiries now.

The Ph.D. must be in or at hand September 1, 2012.  The successful candidate would join a department in which research and teaching are innovative and interdisciplinary.  Our faculty and graduate students work closely with Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, Women's Studies, Africana Studies, Philosophy, History, Art History, and other departments and programs.

Please have interested scholars send letters of inquiry, CV, letters of recommendation, and a writing sample by December 14, by email if possible (sspector@notes.sunysb.edu).

Stephen Spector
Professor and Chairman,
Department of English,
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794-5350