Registration: Collecting Byron (4/11-13/2014)

Collecting Byron: A Conference in Celebration of the Byron Society Collection

Founded by Marsha M. Manns and Leslie A. Marchand

Drew University and the Byron Society of America

Madison, New Jersey

April 11-13, 2014

Program--To view the conference program visit: http://www.drew.edu/library/byron

All events and gatherings take place in Mead Hall

TO REGISTER FOR THE CONFERENCE http://tinyurl.com/collectingbyron-registration https://www.eventbrite.com/e/collecting-byron-tickets-9882677354

TO REGISTER FOR THE MADISON HOTEL http://www.themadisonhotel.com/

For inquiries please contact me directly: rhammerm@stevens.edu

Reminder: Decadence and the Senses (4/10-11/2014)

Reminder! Registration Open

"Decadence and the Senses: An Interdisciplinary Conference"

Goldsmiths, University of London,

April 10-11, 2014

This interdisciplinary conference explores the relationship of Decadence and the senses, and the ways in which Decadent writers attempt to capture fleeting sensations.  It is an opportunity to trace common visual, aural and 'perfumed' motifs in Decadent works, and to reflect on the extent to which the senses are important to our understanding of the tradition.

To register and to view the program, visit http://decadence2014.wordpress.com/

Final Reminder: Registration for "Coastal Cultures" (3/3/2014; 3/14-15/2014)

Registration is ​now open:

Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century, 1775–1914

Venues: English Faculty, University of Oxford & Magdalen College, Oxford

March 14-15, 2014
Closes: March 3, 2014

Description: The conference explores the diversity of experiences dependent on the coasts in the long nineteenth century. Papers will consider aesthetic responses by artists, writers and musicians, but also focus on everyday material practices. In keeping with the spirit of fluid exchange encouraged by coasts, the conference draws together scholars from across the disciplines of literature, art history, musicology, history, and geography.

Speakers include Rosemary Ashton, Margaret Cohen, Valentine Cunningham, Jane Darcy, Roger Ebbatson, Kate Flint, Nick Freeman, Nick Grindle, James Kneale, Leya Landau, Fiona Stafford, Christiana Payne, David Sergeant and Carl Thompson.

A recital will take place in association with the conference, with singers from the Guildhall School for Music performing works by Elgar, Stanford and Vaughan Williams, introduced by musicologist and concert pianist Ceri Owen.

The conference programme can be downloaded at the site below. To register, please go to http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/our-research/coastal-cultures-long-nineteenth-century-1775%E2%80%931914 Bursaries and concessionary prices available for postgraduates.

Contact: coastal.cultures@gmail.com

Registration: BSLS 2014 (4/10-12/2014; 3/27/2014)

Registration Open

British Society for Literature and Science Conference 2014

University of Surrey, Guildford

April 10-12, 2014

Deadline: March 27, 2014

Keynote talks will be given by Professor Jim Al-Khalili (University of Surrey), Professor Bernard Lightman (York University, Toronto), and Professor Mary Orr (University of Southampton). The conference will finish with an opportunity to visit Down House, the home of Charles Darwin, on the afternoon of Saturday 12 April.

Accommodation: please note that those attending the conference will need to make their own arrangements for accommodation. Information on local hotels is available on the conference website.

Membership: conference delegates will need to register as members of the BSLS (annual membership: £25 waged / £10 unwaged). It will be possible to join the BSLS when registering for the conference.

To register for the conference please visit the University of Surrey online store at http://tinyurl.com/p92lleg. The deadline for registration is March 27, 2014.

Information about how to get to the University of Surrey is available here: http://www.surrey.ac.uk/about/visitors/travel/.

For further information and updates about the conference, please contact Gregory Tate (g.tate@surrey.ac.uk) or visit the conference website at http://tinyurl.com/pp6ubz5.

CFP: RAPPT "Economies of Amateur Performance" (3/7/2104; 6/28-29/2014)

RAPPT Inaugural Conference

London

June 28-29, 2014

Deadline: March 7, 2014

RAPPT (Research into Amateur Performance and Private Theatricals) is an international interdisciplinary network of researchers working on amateur performance and private theatricals (rappt.org)

"Paying the Piper: Economies of Amateur Performance"

The organization seeks proposals for presentations to be given at RAPPT’s inaugural conference, which will take place in London from June 28-29, 2014. This conference is inspired by the Pic Nic Society, arguably the first amateur dramatic society in England. This group, which performed in the Tottenham Street Theatre, London, only survived for a few years at the turn of the nineteenth century; it was motivated by a desire for cooperative endeavour, mutual pleasure, and a fair amount of elitism. Although in British English a picnic is now usually an informal meal eaten out of doors, it used to mean something like a potluck supper in American English, that is, a meal to which everyone brings a dish.  The Pic Nic journal explained in 1803, ‘The title of Pic Nic, given to this Paper, is used in the sense applied to it by a neighbouring Nation, signifying a Repast supplied by Contribution; and to this Miscellany all persons of genius and talent are invited to contribute.” It was ridiculed for a variety of reasons, as depicted in James Gillray’s famous etching, “Blowing up the Pic Nics.”

This conference will showcase the results of two RAPPT projects currently underway: 1) a collaboratively curated digital archive of the Pic Nic Society, which will serve as a digital dramaturgy site for 2) an amateur production of one of the plays that members of the society performed at the Tottenham Street Theatre. The committee’s goal is to situate this research into conversations about the economies of non-professional performance across periods and locations. In drafty church halls and lavish ballrooms, on board ships, in parlours and in purpose built spaces, lovers of the performing arts have long collaborated creatively without the sanction of academic or professional recognition. Yet not-for-profit performance still has a cost. The extravagance of the Earl of Barrymore’s theatricals at Wargrave practically bankrupted him and, as the Pic Nic controversy demonstrates, the fashion for private performance was, at the very least, perceived as a financial threat to London’s patent theaters.

The organizers invite papers on any aspect of non-professional performance, but particularly those that investigate:

• The cost and funding of amateur performance;
• The role of commercial publishers and theatrical suppliers in feeding the craze for amateur theatricals;
• The involvement of professional performers in amateur productions;
• Rivalries and tensions between professionals and amateurs;
• amateur performance in the context of a funding crisis in the humanities

Please submit proposals of 250-500 words electronically (doc or pdf) by March 7, 2014 to rappt2014@gmail.com. Queries and statements of interest welcome to the conference address or individually to conference organizers Judith Hawley (j.hawley@rhul.ac.uk) and Mary Isbell (mary.isbell@yale.edu) Please include with your proposal:

• Name and Affiliation
• Email Address
• Postal Address
• Telephone Number
• A/V Requirements

Registration: Decadence and the Senses (4/10-11/2014)

Registration Open

"Decadence and the Senses: An Interdisciplinary Conference"

Goldsmiths, University of London,

April 10-11, 2014

This interdisciplinary conference explores the relationship of Decadence and the senses, and the ways in which Decadent writers attempt to capture fleeting sensations.  It is an opportunity to trace common visual, aural and 'perfumed' motifs in Decadent works, and to reflect on the extent to which the senses are important to our understanding of the tradition.

To register and to view the program, visit http://decadence2014.wordpress.com/

Registration Open: Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century, 1775-1914 (3/14-15/2014)

Registration is now open
Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century, 1775-1914
Oxford English Faculty & Magdalen College

Dates: March 14-15, 2014

Speakers: Rosemary Ashton, Margaret Cohen, Valentine Cunningham, Jane Darcy, Roger Ebbatson, Kate Flint, Nick Freeman, Nick Grindle, James Kneale, Leya Landau, Fiona Stafford, Christiana Payne, David Sergeant and Carl Thompson.

The conference explores the diversity of experiences dependent on the coasts in the long nineteenth century. Papers will consider aesthetic responses by artists, writers and musicians, but also focus on everyday material practices. In keeping with the spirit of fluid exchange encouraged by coasts, the conference draws together scholars from across the disciplines of literature, art history, musicology, history, and geography.

A recital will take place in association with the conference, with singers from the Guildhall School for Music performing works by Elgar, Stanford and Vaughan Williams, introduced by musicologist and concert pianist Ceri Owen. In addition to the concessionary price, we are able to offer three fully funded places for postgraduate students, to encourage interaction between emerging and more established scholars. These special places will be awarded competitively: if you are a post-grad and wish to be considered, please register as usual, and send in a CV and a 200-word paragraph explaining why this conference is particularly important for your academic development and why your current research will benefit from and contribute to the event. If you are successful, we will reimburse fees for both registration and the conference dinner. Please send applications to coastal.cultures@gmail.com.

For links to the conference program, registration, and general information visit: http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/our-research/coastal-cultures-long-nineteenth-century-1775%E2%80%931914

Sponsored by BAVS and Magdalen College, Oxford

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

CUNY Victorian Conference: Inventing Victorian Race (5/3/2013)

Inventing Victorian Race

The CUNY Annual Victorian Conference

Organized by Richard Kaye and Talia Schaffer

Friday, May 3, 2013

CUNY Graduate Center

New York, New York

Sponsored by the Victorian Committee of the PhD program in English, the CUNY Graduate Center, Dickens Studies Annual, the Office of the President, and the Center for the Humanities.

If you are in the New York area this weekend, please come to the CUNY Victorian conference, "Inventing Victorian Race." CUNY has a fantastic lineup of speakers: Neville Hoad, Daniel Hack, Bryan Cheyette, Aviva Briefel, Faith Smith, Tim Watson, Irene Tucker, Patrick Brantlinger. It's 9-6, in the Segal Theater at the Graduate Center (34th and 5th), free and open to the public.

The program is here: http://victorian.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

CFP: Melancholy Minds and Painful Bodies: Genealogy, Geography, Pathogeny (3/1/2013; 7/9-11/2013)

Melancholy Minds and Painful Bodies: Genealogy, Geography, Pathogeny

University of Liverpool, 9-11 July 2013

Strange Contraries in thee combine,

Both hell and Heaven in thee meet,

Thou greatest bitter, greatest sweet

No pain is like thy pain, no pleasure too like thine.

John Norris, 1687

One of the major developments in the study of melancholia over the last thirty years has been the rise to  aesthetic and  cultural prominence  of varieties of negative emotions proposed and discussed as melancholy, including different conceptions, analyses, and portrayals from grief to insanity. Most recently, Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia (2011) happens to be the melodramatic adaptation of the concept fuelled by cinematic symbols.  Correspondingly, often observed as ‘a central European discourse’, melancholia has resurfaced to embody complementary or paradoxical notions not merely in the literary analysis of texts and contexts, but it has also emerged to retrieve its historical categorization. The cultural  and social  history of emotions entwined with modern medical and psychiatric lexicalization has opened new  pathways to provide  relative definitions of melancholia. However, theories about the choice of analogies for melancholy, whether aesthetic, cinematic, religious, or medical, somehow fail to distinguish the connections between  contrary factors involved in melancholia.

It is also noteworthy that theories of characterization, no matter of what kind, tend to reformulate and evaluate contrary factors for the sake of preserving ‘superiority’ according to prevalent taste at each moment in time. In Britain, for example, individual and collective melancholia has been appreciated as a sign of genius and national pride at one time  and announced as a national malady at another. Analogous is the contemporary history of behavioural rather than cognitive attributes to grief,  e.g. tearfulness. Pain, in comparison, is bodily and often mental distress which in the past was closely perceived in relation to melancholia, but today research on pain is divorced from depression let alone melancholy. Thus, we miss the ‘melancholy-pain bridge’ in contemporary scholarship of mental and physical suffering. On the other hand, while pain is seen through the lens of universality, with management models stretching from Chinese medicine to Latin America, melancholia has rarely been investigated beyond the Western borders with regard to its genealogy, pathology, pathogeny,  and management. Whether this geographical focus is a matter of re-establishing  pre-eminence or  in want of psycholinguistic reference, thereby centred on a gap in universal scientific communication, it invites intriguing and challenging enquiries.

We  welcome contributions  from different fields in humanities, social and life sciences in the following categories and other relevant areas:

• Diversity in the geography of melancholia and pain
• The relationship between Western theories of emotions and Oriental conceptions
• The European hypothesis of melancholia-pain in non-European cultures
• Orientalism, grief, and abstinence
• Emotionality as negativity
• Gender attributes and tearfulness
• Art history, muscle tension, and the painful posture
• Interpretation, assumption, semantic relation
• Fear, Pain, and melancholy dominance
• Depression and pain
• Paranoia, melancholia, and pain
• Misconceptions; cyclothymia and bipolar disorder
• Melancholy appropriation, ethnicity, multicultural perspectives
• Cosmology and elegiac pain management
• Cinematic symbols
• Literary emotionality, fictive superiority
• Embodied cognition
• Anaesthetics, the relationship between medical management and other models
• Lyric manifestation of melancholy and pain

Submission:

Abstracts and panel proposals of up to 300 words per 20-minute papers are welcome plus a short biographical note. If you wish to attend without presenting a paper, please email the organisers with your CV and a statement as to how your research relates to the conference. Postgraduate students can apply for Dr Wasfia Mhabak Memorial Grant by sending your abstract, 1000-word research statement, and CV to the conference board.

A selection of papers expanded and edited after the conference will be considered for publication in the International Journal of Literature and Psychology (issues 2014). Further particulars: http://paranoiapain.liv.ac.uk

Submission Deadline: 1 March 2013

Email your proposal to: painpara@liv.ac.uk

Last Call for Registration: Edward Lear: The Bicentennial Conference (9/21-22/2012)

Edward Lear: The Bicentennial Conference

Jesus College, Oxford, 21-22 September 2012

http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/news-events/upcoming-events/201209/edward-lear-bicentennial-conference

Edward Lear (1812-1888): zoological illustrator, landscape painter, cartoonist, travel writer, drawing master to Queen Victoria, depressive, diarist, friend of the Tennysons, epileptic, exile, and nonsense poet of genius. Praised by Ruskin and Eliot, elegized by Auden, analysed by Orwell and Huxley, Lear has never ceased to fascinate and delight. His life and works intersect major artistic currents of the nineteenth century, and his influence can be felt in successors as diverse as Stevie Smith and John Ashbery, James Joyce and James Thurber.

This two-day conference will be the first ever gathering of scholars to celebrate and discuss Lear’s work in his various creative fields. Interdisciplinary in scope, it will set the agenda for future study, resituating Lear as a major figure in his own time, and showing how he continues to speak to our own.

Speakers: Anna Barton * Gillian Beer * Matthew Bevis * Aingeal Clare * Richard Cronin  * Christopher Decker * Hugh Haughton * Daniel Karlin * Robert M. Peck * Adam Phillips * Seamus Perry * Peter Robinson * Anne Stillman * Peter Swaab * James Williams

Registration is now open at: http://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&prodid=108&deptid=110&catid=22. Registration closes September 14, 2012. 

For further information, please contact james.williams@jesus.ox.ac.uk

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.

"Who Owns the Legacy of Oscar Wilde?" conference and exhibition at Drew University

"Who Owns the Legacy of Oscar Wilde?"
An Interdisciplinary Conference
Drew University, Madison, NJ
1-2 June 2012

Who was Oscar Wilde? An aesthete who subverted philistine values, or pandered to bourgeois taste?  The first modern dramatist, or the last of the Victorian playwrights? An Irish nationalist, or an Anglophile? A socialist, or a shrewd literary entrepreneur? An immoralist, or a new kind of moralist? A philosopher, or a court jester?  A misogynist, or a feminist? A pioneer of  "queer theory," or someone who never quite came to terms with his sexuality?

Join us for a two day conference where we attempt to answer these questions and others.

Presenters include: Susan Bernardo, Felicia J. Ruff, Fred Roden, Shelley Salamensky, Philip Smith, Patrick W. Bixby, Loretta Clayton, Margaret D. Stetz, Anne Margaret Daniel, Marylu Hill, Jonathan Rose, and Christine Kinealy.

To register & get more information, visit http://depts.drew.edu/grad/wilde/Main.html.


"Oscar Wilde's Legacy: A Selection from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection"
Exhibition at Drew University Library
2 May-2 June 2012

Oscar Wilde died in exile in France in 1900. But his writings, his plays, his wit, and his fame lived on. This display, drawn from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan from the University of Delaware Library, focuses on how Wilde's friends and associates dealt with his legacy in the early twentieth century. Among the figures represented  by books and other items are Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde's lover; the artist Aubrey Beardsley; the caricaturist  Max Beerbohm; and the novelist Ada Leverson.

Colonial Girlhood Conference, University of Melbourne (6/13-14/2012)

Victorianists, especially those located in Australia and New Zealand, might be interested in attending the upcoming "Colonial Girlhood/Colonial Girls" conference at the University of Melbourne from 13-14 June.

Parallel conference sessions will include speakers from disciplines including English, history, cultural studies, art history, cinema and education. The program includes participants from across Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South Africa, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, and the United States.

The conference includes keynote speeches by Professor Angela Woollacott (Australian National University) and Associate Professor Cecily Devereux (University of Alberta) and the launch of the online exhibition "Home & Away: Girls of the British Empire" (hosted by the Girl Museum).

The draft conference program and registration information are available at our conference website: http://www.avsa.unimelb.edu.au/colonialgirls.html

Sensualising Deformity Conference Programme/Registration (6/15-16/2012)

The preliminary programme for the upcoming conference at the University of Edinburgh, Sensualising Deformity: Communication and Construction of Monstrous Embodiment, is now online at http://sensualisingdeformity.blogspot.co.uk/p/conference-programme.html, and registration is live. We are currently offering reduced rates for anyone who books before 15 April. For more details, visit http://sensualisingdeformity.blogspot.com.

Our keynote speakers include Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (George Washington University), Margrit Shildrick (Linköping University), Peter Hutchings (Northumbria University) and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (Emory University). In addition, our programme features a number of fascinating papers pertaining to nineteenth-century constructions/conceptions of exceptional bodies, so we hope to see some of you there!

Registration Open: RSVP 2012 conference (9/14-15/2012)

Registration is now 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

INCS 2012 "Picturing the Nineteenth Century" (3/22-25/2012)

You are invited to attend the 2012 conference of the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies association, "Picturing the Nineteenth Century," to be held in Lexington KY, March 22-25. The conference features three keynote speakers:

• Shawn Michelle Smith (Art Institute of Chicago), "Visions of the Nineteenth-Century Nation: Augustus Washington and the Civil Contract of Photography"
• Julie Codell (Arizona State University), "Victorian Portraits: The Material Culture of Identity"
• Nancy Armstrong (Duke University), "The Victorian Archive and Its Secrets"

 In addition, it includes a lecture and exhibit by photographer/daguerrotypist  Jerry Spagnoli and the inimitable Victorian Theatrical Society of the University of Virginia, which will perform H. J. Byron's 1858 play The Maid and the Magpie; or, The Fatal Spoon!

The complete conference program, the registration form, and travel and accommodation information can be found on the conference website: http://incs.as.uky.edu. Deadline for the advanced registration fee and the conference banquet is March 5; deadline for receiving a reduced rate at the conference hotel (Lexington Downtown Hilton) is March 1, though the hotel will honor the rate after the deadline if rooms are available.

Conference: Politics, Performance and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain (4/19-20/2012)

Politics, Performance and Popular Culture

in Nineteenth-Century Britain
University of Birmingham, 19-20 April 2012

You are invited to join us for a two-day symposium in Birmingham, at which we will explore the relationship between politics, performance and popular culture in nineteenth-century Britain. Our speakers have been confirmed, but we welcome participants for roundtable discussions and other contributions.

In what ways might popular culture have defined politics?  How might 'performance' be addressed as a concept by which better to understand crowd behaviour, whether for example at hustings or in protest?  How did politicians and others conceptualise their audience?  If, as Patrick Joyce argues, the late-Victorian audience in a context of political reform were 'rightful heirs to the democracy of pleasure' (Visions of the People, 1994, p. 309), how can we define the relationship between audience, politics and pleasure? Can we identify a discursive relationship between political and performance culture?

Speakers:

• Mike Sanders (Manchester): on Platforms, Correspondences and Theatrical Metaphor.
• Jim Davis (Warwick): Victorian pantomime and the Politics of Gender Variance
• Jane Pritchard (Victoria and Albert Museum): on Ballet, class and identity
• Jill Sullivan (Independent): on The Irish question in regional pantomime
• Marcus Morris (Lancaster): on Labour leaders, political rhetoric and performativity
• Richard Gaunt (Nottingham): on Peel as actor-dramatist (parliament itself as theatrical institution)
• Caroline Radcliffe (Birmingham): on Theatrical hierarchy and Cultural capital: East and West London
• Anselm Heinrich (Glasgow): on Gladstone, national theatre and contested didactics of theatre.
• Janice Norwood (Hertfordshire): on East End Socialism, performance techniques in protest/marches
• Peter Yeandle (Lancaster): on Christian Socialism and performing arts: politics, theology and theatricality

Costs: £35 (£20 postgraduate). Further information about local accommodation upon request. For further information, please contact Peter Yeandle at p.yeandle(at)lancaster.ac.uk

CFP: Shared Visions: Art, Theatre and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century (11/15/2011; 2/11/2012)

Shared Visions: 

Art, Theatre and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century

Conference Date: Saturday 11th February 2012 (10am to 6pm)
CFP Deadline: 15 November 2011

School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies, Millburn House, Warwick University

This one-day conference, held in conjunction with the journal, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, will explore the connections between art, theatre, and visual culture in the nineteenth century. During this period, the ‘art of seeing’ challenged the traditional dominance of the written word. Vision, previously denigrated as deceptive, became considered as a universal language, accessible to all, and more authentic than text. Popular theatre, especially melodrama, led the way in exploring the possibilities of the new visuality. We invite papers that explore the visual culture of theatre and exchanges between theatre and the visual arts. We are particularly interested in contributions which explore the following topics:

• Theatre as visual culture
• The relationship between word and image
• Theatrical illustration
• Theatrical portraiture
• Audiences and reception of art/theatre/visual culture
• Posters/playbills
• Visual technology: panoramas; dioramas; phantasmagorias; magic lanterns
• Stage spectacle: set design, scene painting, lighting, special effects, costume
• Stage pictorialism/stage tableaux/realization
• Local colour
• Illusion
• Authenticity
• Theatricality
• Attitude and gesture
• Theatre architecture
• Caricature
• Narrative/temporality
• History as spectacle

Please submit abstracts (500 words maximum) to patricia.smyth@nottingham.ac.uk. Papers should be no more than 20 minutes long and will be followed by a panel discussion.

Lunch, tea and coffee will be provided.
Conference fee: £20 (£10 for postgraduate students)
For further information, please contact Patricia Smyth at the above e mail address.

Kate Newey and Jim Davis
Editors, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film

CFP: NeMLA panel "A Question of Education: Victorian Expectations, Practices, and Transformations" (9/30/2011; 3/15-18/2012)

NeMLA 2012 Convention Rochester, NY, March 15-18, 2012
http://www.nemla.org/convention/2012/

"A Question of Education: Victorian Expectations, Practices, and Transformations"

This panel invites papers on Victorian educational theories and practices. What were the major influences and debates, and how were they represented in contemporary literature? Topics to consider include: early vs. late century practices, gendered education, educational theories and proponents, literary representations of education, teachers and students, radical education. Please email 250-500 word abstracts to Kristin.LeVeness@ncc.edu.

The deadline for submission is September 30, 2011.