Prospective PhD: Apply to Victoria University Wellington (7/1/2013)

Victoria University of Wellington is currently inviting prospective PhD students to apply for the 1 July application round (there will be another in November). Two areas of expertise in the English Programme may be of particular interest to Victoria-List members: colonial literature of the nineteenth century, and, within the field of children’s literature , the late Victorian concept of adolescence. Victoria University was rated first in New Zealand in the recent national research rankings (PBRF) and the English Programme was ranked first amongst English programmes in New Zealand. The 2013 QS World UniversityRankings rank Victoria as one of the top 50 universities in the world in four subjects, one of which is English Language and Literature. For information on how to apply, please see How to Apply for a PhD on the Faculty of Graduate Research website. A number of scholarships are available for students of exceptional academic merit, open to New Zealand and international students in any discipline. All offers of Victoria Doctoral Scholarships from 2013 will consist of a $23,500 per annum stipend plus domestic tuition fees for up to three years.

Feel free to write to Anna Jackson with any questions about graduate study in this programme. Anna.jackson@vuw.ac.nz

Anna Jackson
Deputy Head of School 
School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies 

Exhibit: Dickens Down-under (9/21-12/13/2012)

In this year of world-wide Dickens Celebrations, we too at Special Collections, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, are participating. On 21 September begins our “Celebrating Charles Dickens, 1812-1870: A Man of His Age”, which runs through to 13 December 2012.

Not only will the first and second edition works be on display, including those memorable images by artists who collaborated closely with Dickens, but in order to contextualise his life and works, a select number of themes that figure so strongly during the reign of Queen Victoria will be on display. They include the City of London; the poor and dispossessed; Punch; the Great Exhibition; and the Crimean War. Dickens’s enduring legacy will also feature, including those ‘down-under’ Dickens Societies.

   

The physical exhibition will start in the de Beer Gallery, Special Collections, 1st floor, Central University Library, on 21 September. Hours: 8.30 to 5.00 Monday to Friday. As usual, an on-line exhibition will follow.

For any further details, please contact Dr Donald Kerr, Special Collections Librarian Donald.kerr@otago.ac.nz ; phone (03) 479-8330

CFP: Special Issue of Women’s Writing on Nineteenth-Century Australian and New Zealand Girls’ Culture (9/1/2012)

Colonial girls’ culture is receiving growing critical attention, prompting us to rethink its significance for women’s writing. The journal Women’s Writing invites original papers for a special issue dedicated to the colonial girl and her literature in nineteenth-century Australia.

What was it like to be a girl at “the antipodes” in the nineteenth century? How was the colonial girl constructed, both “back home” and throughout the British Empire, and how did she view and represent herself? Was there a distinctly “antipodal,” Australian, or New Zealand girls’ culture and in what ways did it parallel, overlap with, influence, and in turn, become influenced by constructions of girlhood in other parts of the Empire? How did antipodal girls’ culture harness and redefine imperialist ideologies and their malleable relationship to domesticity? In what ways did their literary representation not only mould imperialist representations, but help to shape nineteenth-century literature in English in general, including children’s and especially popular girls’ fiction, which was emerging as a distinct genre in the course of the century? These are some of the questions that individual articles will be addressing. The colonial girl’s changing depiction in Victorian culture at the same time raises larger issues about the representation of the antipodes in British and colonial texts. A new look at colonial girlhood constructively draws into question the still dominating discourses on male mateship, for example. In addition, it helps us to reassess the wide range of genres that constituted nineteenth-century Australian and New Zealand literature and read them in tandem with similar cultural formations.

This special issue aims to create a forum for a more encompassing approach to nineteenth-century Australian literature, inviting comparative work on British and colonial texts, while providing new detailed insight into Australian girls’ literature.

Topics may include but are not limited to:
Colonial girlhood and its literary representation
The construction of colonial girls’ culture
Australian girls’ magazines and periodicals
“The antipodes” in both British and colonial girls’ publications
Colonial children’s literature and writing for girls
Individual authors and their works
Comparative approaches

Please submit papers for consideration between 4000-7000 words to Tamara S. Wagner at tswagner_at_ntu.edu.sg, by 1 September 2012.

Contributors should follow the journal’s house style details of which are to be found on the Women’s Writing website http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/09699082.asp. This is the new MLA. Please note that instead of footnotes, we use endnotes with NO bibliography. All bibliographical information is included in the endnotes. For example, we require place of publication, publisher and date of publication in brackets after a book is cited for the first time.

Please also include an abstract, a brief biographical blurb (approximately 100 words), and a key of 6 words suitable for indexing and abstracting services.