Volunteer Opening: Peer Reviewer in Victorian Studies for Resources for College Libraries

Resources for College Libraries (RCL), a publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries' Choice magazine and R.R. Bowker, is currently seeking academic faculty and librarians with specific subject expertise in Victorian Studies to participate in our peer review process. Available online at http://rclweb.net, RCL provides a list of core titles that are essential for the undergraduate curriculum and academic libraries.

Referees will be responsible for comprehensively evaluating the RCL subject's bibliographic content, along with its taxonomic organization. All referee work is scheduled for completion by September 1, 2012 and can be completed online and at your leisure. Referees will receive access to the RCL database during July and August to complete the review.

Please consider submitting your name to participate in this one-time professional service opportunity. Preference will be given to those with experience in teaching and/or collection development in the subject area. To volunteer as a reviewer, send an email to Anne Doherty (Project Editor, Resources for College Libraries CHOICE/ACRL) at adoherty@ala-choice.org with your contact information, CV/resume, and a brief description of your qualifications, particularly any experience maintaining or assessing core collections in the subject area.

RCL is a subscription database that identifies 75,000+ titles across 61 subjects that are essential for research and instruction at the undergraduate level. For more information, visit: http://www.bowker.com/en-US/products/rcl. 

CFP: On Page and Stage: Shakespeare, 1590-1890 (10/12/2012; 12/8/2012)

The Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies – Bangor-Aberystwyth, the British Shakespeare Association and the School of English, Bangor University, are pleased to announce

On Page and Stage: Shakespeare, 1590-1890

8th December 2012 – a one-day conference at Bangor University

Conference Organisers: Stephen Colclough & Andrew Hiscock

Guest Speaker: Professor Andrew Gurr (Reading University), Shakespeare editor and author of Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London

This one-day conference focuses upon performances, interpretations and publications of Shakespeare in the pre-modern period in the UK and beyond. It is envisaged that delegates will be addressing this subject from a number of disciplinary perspectives and presentations on the following subjects would be particularly welcome:

Shakespearean Performances 1590-1890s and Performance Reportage

Shakespearean Theatre History 1590-1890

World Shakespeares 1590-1890

Critical Responses to Shakespeare 1590-1890: e.g. journalism, diaries, correspondence

Reading Shakespeare 1590-1890: e.g. criticism, education, annotated editions

Material Shakespeare 1590-1890: mise-en-scène and mise-en-page

Shakespeare as Political Icon 1590-1890

These and other related subjects will be considered for presentation at this conference. Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be sent to the conference organising committee at shakespeare@bangor.ac.uk no later than Friday 12th October 2012. All abstracts should include the proposer’s name, title, mailing address, email address, institutional affiliation, student/employed status.

NAVSA/BAVS/AVSA Supernumerary Conference (10/4/2012; 6/3-6/2013)

The conference is a supernumerary conference for NAVSA, BAVS, and AVSA.  The dates will be June 3-6, 2013 and the deadline for proposals is October 4, just a few days after the NAVSA '12 Wisconsin conference.  NAVSA's regular conference will occur in 2013 at the Huntington, the Getty, and Pasadena from October 23-27.  You can find more information about the Venice conference at the following web site: http://glocalvictorians.wordpress.com/

The deadline, once again, is October 4.  

The Venice Professionalization Workshop

This workshop is intended for graduate students and recently minted PhDs and will address such issues as grant-writing; postdoctoral fellowships; the writing of proposals; job letters and the market; the interview process and job talks; teaching portfolios; how to turn a seminar paper into a published article; the digital humanities, pros and cons; the differences among Canadian, American, British, and also Australian markets; and negotiating contracts. The workshop will occur on San Servolo every morning, May 27-31, June 3, and June 7.  A number of scholars have expressed their willingness to participate, provided they can arrange their schedule and funding, including Andrew Miller, Carolyn Williams, Alison Byerley, Barbara Leckie, Pamela Gilbert, and Kate Flint.  There will not be a firm list of visitors until the new year.

The workshop will cost US$800.  That will include the program fee, rental of the classroom, and lodging for the period May 25 to June 2, plus an additional night on June 7, so 10 extra nights in Venice.  This means that participants would have 10 extra nights in Venice for less than they could arrange any other way, thanks to the help of Venice Int'l U, so the workshop is a bonus of sorts (two and a half hours every morning, leaving the afternoons to visit Venice each day).  The only cheaper lodging option is the Venice hostel but it only allows you to stay for a maximum of 3 nights.  The next cheapest is Domus Ciliota at €70/night (the price, however, goes up in June). It's already sold out for those dates (if it were available, it would be over $1000 for 10 nights, with the June rate increase). The housing will be in in dorm rooms on San Servolo from May 25 to June 7, not counting the nights of the conference itself; the conference runs from June 3-6.  You can find information about the island here:

http://www.sanservolo.provincia.venezia.it

In most cases, there will be three students together in one room, with a bathroom in the unit.  San Servolo is just a 10-minute vaporetto ride away from Piazza San Marco, the tourist heart of Venice.  

Note that the conference will run the first-come-first-served seminar format NAVSA ran successfully at Vanderbilt last year and will be running again in Wisconsin:

http://english.wisc.edu/navsa/?page_id=137

This means that, even if an individual does not get accepted in response to the general call, s/he will have the ability to join the conference and have his/her paper listed in the conference program.  Hopefully, that will be enough to secure funding from home institutions.

If you are interested in this workshop, please contact Dino Franco Felluga at:  felluga@purdue.edu

NYPL Dickens Lecture Series (10/3-12/18/2012)

Victorianists in the NY-NJ-CT area will be interested in the link below to the New York Public Library's upcoming Dickens exhibition. 

http://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/charles-dickens-key-character

The exhibition is accompanied by a free lecture series in the South Court auditorium adjoining the gallery: 

Wednesday, October 3 at 6:00 p.m.

(also Thursday, November 29 at 1:15 p.m.; Tuesday, January 8, 2013 at 6:00 p.m.)

“Dickens and the Language of Images”

Wm. Moeck

Nassau Community College (SUNY)

Dickens’s emblematic character descriptions are explored in a slideshow presentation by the exhibition curator.

Wednesday, October 10 at 6:00 p.m.

“Dickens and London”

Anne Humpherys

Lehman College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY)

The growth of London and the human costs of modernization are seen reflected in novels such as Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, and Bleak House.

Friday, October 12 at 1:15 p.m.

(also Friday, December 14 at 1:15 p.m.)

“Out of the Blacking Factory”

Robert Armitage

Humanities Bibliographer, General Research Division

This presentation examines various aspects of Dickens’s life, the broad range of his fiction, and its various illustrators.

Wednesday, October 17 at 6:00 p.m.

 “A Tale of Two Cities: Love, Sex, Imprisonment”

Carolyn Williams

Rutgers University

This talk considers Dickens’s fascination with prisons—and with mistress Ellen Ternan—as backgrounds for A Tale of Two Cities.

Tuesday, October 23 at 6:00 p.m.

“Dickens’s Prompt Texts”

Isaac Gewirtz, Curator

Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature

From his novels Dickens created unique prompt texts with which he performed on stage to great acclaim, and which now belong to the Berg Collection.

Tuesday, November 6 at 6:00 p.m.

“The Worst Dickens Ever: Our Mutual Friend”

Sean Grass                                     

Iowa State University

This presentation explains why Henry James—and those who have hated Our Mutual Friend since—have it all wrong.

Wednesday, November 14 at 6:00 p.m.

“The Twists of Oliver Twist”

Catherine Robson

New York University

The plot contortions of this famous novel are discussed in relation to three culturally symbolic sites.

Wednesday, November 28 at 6:00 p.m.

“David Copperfield and Dickensian Character”

Jonathan Farina

Seton Hall University

This talk playfully catalogs Dickens's many distinct styles of characterization in his most autobiographical novel.

Wednesday, December 5 at 6:00 p.m.

“Theater and the Politics of Style in Great Expectations”

David Kurnick

Rutgers University

This talk considers the relations among Dickens’s singular style, his interest in popular performance, and his democratic imagination.

Wednesday, December 12 at 6:00 p.m.

“Dickens, Scrooge and Autobiography”

Gerhard Joseph

Lehman College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY)

A Christmas Carol is discussed as a cautionary tale showing the kind of person that Dickens—haunted by childhood misery—might have become.

Tuesday, December 18 at 6:00 p.m.

“Dickens and the Criminal Mind”

Kristin Le Veness

Nassau Community College (SUNY)

Dickens’s most notorious villains are discussed in relation to his dedication to realism and social reform.

CFP: Self-Adornment in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel (9/30/2012; 3/21-24/2013)

Panel: “Self-Adornment in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel”

44th Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)

March 21-24, 2013

Boston, Massachusetts

Host Institution:  Tufts University

From the Eustace family diamonds, to Dorothea’s emeralds, accessories and objects of personal adornment litter the pages of the nineteenth-century British novel. This session investigates objects and practices of self-adornment, including jewelry, cosmetics, accessories, and clothes to contribute to our understanding of both canonical and less well-known works of fiction. This panel might include papers which situate objects and practices of self-adornment in relation to realist description, material culture, or feminist criticism; it also invites papers which consider the special role of self-adornment within specific genres such as the sensation novel, or silver fork fiction.   Abstracts of 500 words or less should be submitted to Danielle Barkley, danielle.barkley@mail.mcgill.ca.

Deadline:  September 30, 2012

Please include with your abstract:

Name and Affiliation

Email address

Postal address

Telephone number

A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee with registration)

The 2013 NeMLA convention continues the Association's tradition of sharing innovative scholarship in an engaging and generative location. The 44th annual event will be held in historic Boston, Massachusetts, a city known for its national and maritime history, academic facilities and collections, vibrant art, theatre, and food scenes, and blend of architecture. The Convention, located centrally near Boston Commons and the Theatre District at the Hyatt Regency, will include keynote and guest speakers, literary readings, film screenings, tours and workshops.

Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however, panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable.  http://www.nemla.org/convention/2013/cfp.html

Symposium: "Victorian Things: Nineteenth-Century Literature and Material Culture" (9/22/2012)

Victorian Things: Nineteenth-Century Literature and Material Culture   

Oxford Brookes University, Saturday 22 September 2012

This one-day symposium will reflect on, and respond to, the current materialist turn in Victorian Studies and Thing Theory. Nineteenth-century literature is crowded with objects, but traditional methods of interpretation have directed us to focus on characters and plots. Through three thematic sessions, ‘Desirable Things’, ‘Anatomical Things’ and ‘Objects and Memory’, this symposium aims to explore the story of objects as ‘things’ with specific values and meanings in Victorian culture. This exciting day of presentations and discussion will be concluded with a plenary lecture by Professor Isobel Armstrong: ‘“The Thing-Character of the World”: four artefacts in the nineteenth-century novel and four materialisms.’               

Delegate fee (including lunch and coffee): £15
Students and unwaged (including lunch and coffee): £10

For bookings and further information contact: Dr. Tatiana Kontou, Dr. Verity Hunt, Dr. Andrew Mangham or Verity Burke: victorianthings12@gmail.com

Schedule

10am-10.30am: Registration

10.30-11am: Welcome and Coffee with Tatiana Kontou, Verity Hunt and Andrew Mangham

11am-12.30: Panel 1: Desirable Things   

Erika Kvistad (University of York) 'Objects for Desire: Sex Toys in Villette'

Kara Tennant, University of Glamorgan 'Elegant Exotics: Fur, Feathers and Fashionable Femininity in Mid-Victorian Britain'

Tatiana Kontou (Oxford Brookes University) 'Paste Jewellery: Courtship in Florence Marryat's actress novels'

12.30-1.30: Lunch

1.30-3pm: Panel 2: Anatomical Things

Katherine Inglis (University of Edinburgh) ‘No sympathy for the revenant? The resuscitated body in Scott, Dickens and Eliot’

Andrew Mangham (University of Reading) 'Collateral Objects and the Science of Suicide: Rereading The Pickwick Papers'.

Verity Burke (University of Reading ) ‘“What have beauty and grace to do with Trials, Poisonings, Horrors?” The clue and the body in Wilkie Collins’s The Law and the Lady’

Helen Hauser (Independent Scholar) ‘Hand on my heart: The consequences of taking people apart and putting icons together’

3-3.30pm: Coffee

3.30-5pm: Panel 3: Objects and Memory

Adelene Buckland (University of East Anglia) 'James Tennant's mineral shop, 149 Strand'

Verity Hunt (University of Southampton) '"Please keep this for me": Memories and Souvenirs of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham'

 Martin Willis (University of Glamorgan) ‘A Solidified Fantasy of Things: Archaeologists and Travel Writers Memorialize Egypt’

5-6pm: Plenary Lecture

Isobel Armstrong (Birkbeck College, University of London) ‘“The Thing-Character of the World”: four artefacts in the 19thC Novel and four materialisms.’

Symposium: “Richard Marsh: Re-Reading the Fin de Siècle” (7/20/2012)

Richard Marsh: Re-Reading the Fin de Siècle

A one-day symposium at the University of Brighton, Friday 20th July 2012

Richard Marsh is best-known for his 1897 novel The Beetle, a gothic bestseller at the time more popular than Dracula. Indeed Marsh was a prolific and extremely successful writer in the 1890s and the early 20th century. Strikingly, however, his writing has until recently been mostly forgotten. With several of his novels and shorter fictions now being republished, this situation is set to change. The symposium seeks to harness renewed academic interest in Marsh towards a reappraisal of his significance for a fin de siècle culture that is often considered to offer a kind of mirror onto our own culture at the start of the 21st century. It will bring together literary and historical specialists of the period to examine Marsh's oeuvre as a whole. A central concern will be to examine how Marsh's ambivalent fiction often works against the grain of more canonical texts and therefore has the potential productively to unsettle what it is thought is known about fin de siècle culture. Understanding late-Victorian / Edwardian questions about gender and sexuality, imperialism, science and the nature of history, surely remain incomplete without negotiating the complex terrain of Richard Marsh's writing.

Further information, including the provisional programme and details of how to register, is now available here: http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/study/humanities/news/richard-marsh-re-reading-the-fin-de-siecle-a-one-day-symposium

Registration open: RSVP 2012 “Sentiment and Sensation in Victorian Periodicals” (9/14-15/2012)

Registration is open for the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals conference, “Sentiment and Sensation in Victorian Periodicals,” September 14-15, 2012, at the AT&T Conference Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Papers will address any aspect of Victorian periodicals, particularly those on the discourse of sentiment and sensation in the newspaper and periodical press that variously promoted or targeted readerships, established journalistic networks or brands, and shaped, responded to, and/or addressed cultural and ideological concerns. For information about local arrangements and registration is available at the RSVP 2012 website, www.rsvp2012.org or by contacting Kathryn Ledbetter,KLedbetter@txstate.edu. Be sure to make your hotel reservations while conference prices are still active.

International Centre for Victorian Women Writers / Mary Braddon exhibition (7/16-22/2012)

Co-directors Professor Adrienne Gavin and Dr Carolyn Oulton are delighted to announce the official launch of the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers (ICVWW) on the opening day of the exhibition 'Victorian Rebel: The Many Faces of Mary Braddon'.

Exhibition dates: 16th-22nd July 2012
Augustine House, Canterbury Christ Church University

This free exhibition, celebrating the life and work of the bestselling Victorian author Mary Braddon, features a public lecture by Visiting Research Fellow and expert on the Braddon archive, Dr Gabrielle Malcolm at 5:30 on the 16th July.

The exhibition will include letters, drawings, photographs and a rare copy of Braddon's unpublished memoir of childhood Before the Knowledge of Evil.

The Braddon Archive has recently been transferred from the Braddon family to the ICVWW.

Exhibition Opening Hours 9-5.30 M to F, 9-1pm Sat and Sun
Augustine House, Canterbury CT1 2YA, UK

Augustine House is a 5 minute walk from Canterbury East Station and next to Canterbury High Street. Please note disabled parking is available at this site and Pay and Display car parks are close to the building.

http://www.canterbury.ac.uk/Research/Centres/ICVWW

Presentation: "Old Guard/Avant-Garde: The Politics of Post-Victorian Aestheticism" (7/11/2012)

The University of Delaware Library invites you to "Old Guard/Avant-Garde: The Politics of Post-Victorian Aestheticism,” a presentation by Kristin Mahoney (2012 University of Delaware Library/ Delaware Art Museum Fellow in Pre-Raphaelite Studies). 

Kristin Mahoney is an Assistant Professor of English at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. She has published articles on the national politics of collecting Vernon Lee and Dante Gabriel Rossetti in Criticism, Victorian Studies, and Victorian Periodicals Review. She is the editor of Hubert’s Arthur by Baron Corvo, published by Valancourt Books in 2009. Her current research is on late-Victorian aestheticism in the early twentieth century.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012, 12 noon Class of 1941 Lecture Room
Morris Library
University of Delaware
181 S. College Avenue
Newark, DE

Light refreshments to be provided.

RSVP by Monday, July 9, 2012 to libraryrsvp@winsor.lib.udel.edu or to 302-831-2231.

Parking validation will be provided for the Trabant University Center Garage on Main Street, the Perkins Student Center Garage on Academy Street or in the Visitors’ Lot #41 on South College Avenue upon leaving the Morris Library.

Display: Victorian Sentimentality at the Tate

If you are in or around London, do find time to visit Tate Britain where a new 'Display' focusing on Victorian Sentimentality has been devised by Nicola Bown, Senior Lecturer in Victorian Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, Victoria Mills, Research Fellow, Darwin College, University of Cambridge and Tate Britain curator Alison Smith. Further details are here: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/display/focus-victorian-sentimentality

Last Call: Victorians Journal of Culture and Literature (6/30/2012)

Victorians Journal of Culture and Literature marks the bicentenary birth-years of Robert Browning and Charles Dickens. New work addressing any aspect of their writing, careers, and contributions to literary and cultural history are invited for consideration. Please send electronic submissions to deborah.logan@wku.edu. Questions are welcome, as are illustrations (b/w, no copright issues).

Deadline for submissions: June 30, 2012. Notification: August 2012. Publication: December 2012.

CFP: MVSA 2013 "Victorian Belief/Victorian Doubt" (10/31/2012; 4/12-14/2013)

Midwest Victorian Studies Association (MVSA) 2013 Conference

Victorian Belief/Victorian Doubt

April 12-14, Cleveland, Ohio

For our 2013 conference we invite presentations, panels, and entertainments from scholars of art, music, history, history of science, and literature on topics related to Victorian belief and doubt. These could include religions, superstitions, and convictions of all sorts, and their obverse: skepticisms, denials, and uncertainties. With its single, shared session format, MVSA offers a unique opportunity to present work to an undivided audience. Participants are also invited to submit essays for an edited volume of articles based on conference proceedings.

Sample topics might include, but are not limited, to the following:

• Religious controversies; conversion and de-conversion
• Musical or artistic expressions of faith, belief and doubt
• “The invisible hand,” political economy, and “faith in the market”
• Ethics and morality
• Death and the afterlife
• Missions and missionaries
• Secular faiths: agnosticism, Positivism, the “religion of Socialism”
• Science as a system of belief; skepticism; the “unknowable”
• Folk beliefs: medicine, superstitions, witchcraft, magic
• Eclectic faiths: Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, etc.
• Social class and religion

We encourage submissions for sessions of varied formats; panels devoted to teaching the Victorians; and proposals relating to digital Victoriana. Proposals for 20-minute papers or longer panels should submit 500-word abstracts and vitae by October 31, 2012, to conferencesubmissions@midwestvictorian.org; if you do not receive a reply within 3-5 days, please re-send.

We are pleased to have as our 2013 plenary speakers Timothy Larsen, McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College and author of Crises of Doubt: Honest Faith in 19th-Century England (2006) and A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians (2012); and Julie Melnyk of the University of Missouri-Columbia, author of Women’s Theology in 19th-Century Britain (1998) and Victorian Religion: Faith and Life in Britain (2008).

Even if you do not submit a paper, please plan to attend!  For more information, please visit www.midwestvictorian.org.

CFP: Pre-Cinema & Silent Film (NCSA, CSU/Fresno) (9/30/2012; 3/7-9/2013)

Special Session on Pre-Cinema & Silent Film

"Loco/Motion"
34th Annual Conference of the Nineteenth Century Studies Association
Fresno, California, March 7-9, 2013

As part of the 2013 NCSA conference, Arnold Anthony Schmidt is seeking papers or presentations for one or more panels about pre-cinema and early film technology, as well as on silent film creators (producers, actors, directors) and images (representations of class, culture, gender, or race) produced anywhere before 1914. Film – i.e. “moving pictures” -- fits neatly into the conference theme of Locomotion, which I interpret very broadly.

If they like, scholars might address the theme literally (treating images of travel and physical movement) or metaphorically (e.g. technical evolution; camera movement; narrative or character development; cultural, historical, or psychological change). Feel free to email me if you have questions about the appropriateness of a topic for presentation.

To submit, please e-mail 250-word abstracts of 20-minute papers and one-page vitae to Arnold Anthony Schmidt at aschmidt@csustan.edu by 30 September 2012. It may be possible to arrange screenings to accompany the panels, so include information about any material available.

Graduate students may, upon acceptance of their abstracts, submit complete papers in competition for a travel grant to help cover transportation and lodging expenses.

For more information, please see the general conference CFP: http://www.nineteenthcenturystudiesassociation.org/uploads/9/7/7/9/9779672/ncsa_cfp_flyer.pdf

CFP: Moving Towards Science in the Long Nineteenth Century (7/30/2012; 9/12/2012)

‘Moving Towards Science in the Long Nineteenth Century’: 

Postgraduate Symposium

12 September 2012, 
The Literary and Philosophical Society, 
Newcastle upon Tyne.

Guest speakers:

Professor Jennifer Richards and Dr Anne Whitehead (Newcastle University), Professor David Knight (Durham University), and Dr Peter Garratt (Northumbria University)

The North East Postgraduate Research Group for the Long Nineteenth Century (NENC) invites proposals for a one-day postgraduate symposium held on Wednesday 12 September 2012.

The theme of the symposium reflects two parallel ‘moves’ towards science. First, it references the rise of the ‘natural sciences’, the scientific method, and the professional scientist across the long nineteenth century. Second, it recognises moves in contemporary arts and humanities scholarship towards a more nuanced disciplinary relationship with the sciences and the possibility of ‘one culture’.  Adopting an exploratory methodology, the day will allow postgraduate delegates to think widely about how literary culture of the period approached, adapted, and rejected emergent scientific, technological, and medical discourses and methods. More broadly, we will consider how and why literature and science might move together in the contemporary academy.

Ranging across the early modern period to the end of the long nineteenth century in their areas of specialisation, our guest speakers will consider in particular how they have approached or made use of scientific discourses in their own research. This will provide delegates with an opportunity to gain insight into some of the methodological and theoretical benefits and challenges of a turn towards science. Accordingly, we invite proposals from postgraduates for papers which broadly consider ‘moves’ towards science in the literature of the long nineteenth century, or in contemporary approaches to nineteenth-century literature.

Possible topics could include, but are not limited to:

• Defining science then and now: shifting linguistic terms
• Science in the public arena: the role of institutions in shaping relations between literature and science
• The popularisation of science through literary forms: prose, poetry, periodical, and pamphlet
• Reading in new ways: approaching the scientific text across disciplinary lines
• Specialisation and the figure of the professional scientist
• Evolution: approaches, responses, reactions
• Developing narratives: the Enlightenment, discovery, invention
• Science in literary forms and the literary form of science
• Medicine and the burgeoning medical industry
• Science at the margins: gender, class, race, and geography
• The collaboration of scientific and literary circles
• Science and anxiety: resistance to scientific ideas in literature
• The rise of psychology and theories of the mind
• Pseudoscience and quackery: authenticity, belief, demonstration, and revelation

Abstracts of 250 words for 20-minute papers should be submitted to movingtowardsscience@gmail.com by 30 July 2012.

The symposium is being generously supported by the British Society for Literature and Science (BSLS) and by the three host Universities (Newcastle, Durham, and Northumbria). The day will therefore be free to attend, and we are delighted to be able to offer a number of postgraduate travel bursaries.

Please indicate in your abstract if you would like to be considered for a bursary.

For more information please visit the NENC website: www.northeast19thcentury.org

Registration Open: “The Other Dickens” conference (7/6-8/2012)

The University of Portsmouth is pleased to announce that registration for 'The Other Dickens: Victorian and Neo-Victorian Contexts' conference at the Centre for Studies in Literature, University of Portsmouth, 6-8 July, is now open.  You can register and view the draft conference programme online at http://www.port.ac.uk/research/csl/literatureevents/conferences/otherdickens/

As well as the conference itself, Victorianists are invited to register for two special events: a public lecture by Lillian Nayder entitled 'Afterlives: Mrs Dickens in Fact and Fiction' (7pm, 6th July) and Miriam Margolyes' show 'Dickens' Women' (5pm, 8th July, Portsmouth Grammar School).  Further details can be found at http://www.port.ac.uk/special/dickens2012/specialevents/

We look forward to seeing you in the city of Dickens' birth for these bicentenary events!

CFP: Victorian Review Hamilton Prize (6/30/2012)

Victorian Review invites applications for the Hamilton Prize for the best graduate student paper submitted to the journal in a given year. The annual award honours the effort and achievements of Susan Hamilton, editor of Victorian Review from 2000 to 2006.

Papers should be 20-25 pages in length and should not have been previously published. The winner must have been registered as a graduate student in the six months preceding the competition deadline. Winners will receive an award of $250 CAN and publication of the winning essay in Victorian Review. The deadline for submissions for the competition will be June 30 2012. 

The winning essay will be selected according to three criteria: contribution to Victorian studies; quality and originality; and style and clarity. The award will be judged by the editorial team of the journal in consultation with Advisory Board members. 

Please send entries to:

vreview@uvic.ca
ATTN: Mary Elizabeth Leighton
Submissions Editor

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.

Booking now open: Victorian Popular Fiction Association 4th Annual Conference “Hard Cash” (7/11-12/2012)

Booking is now open for the Victorian Popular Fiction Association 4th Annual Conference, 11–12 July 2012, Institute of English Studies, University of London, Senate House.

Theme: Hard Cash: Money, property, economics and the marketplace in Victorian Popular Culture

Keynote speakers: Regenia Gagnier: 'The global circulation of British literature and culture: British fiction, economics and the marketplace', and Deborah Wynne: 'Hades! The Ladies! Male Drapers and
Female Shoppers'

Guest Speakers: David Waller, author of The Perfect Man: The Muscular Life and Times of Eugen Sandow Victorian Strongman and Helen Rappaport author of Beautiful For Ever: Madame Rachel of Bond Street – Cosmetician, Con-Artist, and Blackmailer

The VPFA conference is now an established event on the annual conference timetable and offers a friendly and invigorating opportunity for established academics and postgraduate students to share their current research. Our theme this year is Hard Cash: Money, property, economics and the marketplace in Victorian Popular Culture. This theme enables us to develop the interdisciplinary study of
nineteenth-century popular culture, and changing attitudes to money and economics across the period.

To view the provisional programme or to register your place, please visit: http://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/events/ies-conferences/VictorianPF4

CFP: Nineteenth-Century Philanthropy: Poverty, Giving, and the Culture of Altruism (8/10/2012)

Given the pervasive nature of private philanthropy during the long nineteenth century, its influence on the basic institutions of society was inescapable.  In the uneven march toward the modern welfare state, fluctuating government policy dictated the scope of the public sector and the space for private volunteerism, and philanthropists became increasingly effective at shaping policy debates.  With the growth of charitable organizations came the development of presumably scientific and disinterested methods of coordinating and systematizing relief, often in order to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor. Examining the discourse involved in these methods illuminates the complex motives behind charity work and the ways in which nineteenth-century philanthropy worked hand-in-hand with the other institutions of its day.

Literature of the period both reflected these issues and sought to influence debates over the nature and function of philanthropy. While some social reform writers adopted philanthropy as the figure for their own artistic endeavors, others militated against its rising influence—Carlyle characterized the new phenomenon of “philanthropology” as a “sugary, disastrous jargon.” Many writers, understanding its polarizing energy, made it a central theme of their works.

We propose a collection of essays addressing the function of philanthropy in British and American writing of the long nineteenth century.  Essays should explore the multi-faceted nature of philanthropic discourse and try to account for its prominent and dynamic role in the literature of the period. 

Possible topics include:

• Philanthropy as social classification: modes of discrimination, the “deserving poor,” detecting pauperism
• The science of charity: ethics, altruism, philanthropy in evolutionary thought, moral and social psychology—Darwin, Spencer, Bain, etc.
• The economics of philanthropy: business models, paving the way for the welfare state, criminal philanthropists
• Lady Bountiful: women’s contributions to charity work and philanthropic constructions of gender
• Imperial philanthropy: transnational exchange, colonial subjects as philanthropists, negotiating competing ideologies of race and nation, abolitionist discourses
• The “Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists”: self-help societies, the poor as philanthropists, reverse philanthropy
• Educational philanthropy: ragged schools, Sunday schools, working men’s institutions
• Competing ideologies of philanthropy: political economy, religion, socialism, utopianism
• Philanthropic fiction: authorship as philanthropy, depictions of charity in mass media, philanthropic print culture, satirical portraits

Please send a 500-word proposal and 1-page vita by August 10th, 2012 to:

Frank Christianson

Associate Professor of English

Brigham Young University

frank_christianson@byu.edu

Leslee Thorne-Murphy

Associate Professor of English

Brigham Young University

lesleetm@byu.edu

Essay drafts (7-10,000 words) will be due by August 1st, 2013.