Locating Revolution: Place, Voice, Community 1780–1820

Aberystwyth 9–12 July 2012

A conference jointly hosted by the Wales and the French Revolution Project at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies; the Centre for Romantic Studies, Aberystwyth University; and the Department of English, Swansea University.

This conference explores the relation between geography (considered as place, landscape, cartography and real and imagined space) and change during the period of the revolutionary wars. In what local, localised forms did the European upheavals of the age manifest themselves? How were social, religious and political loyalties conditioned by particular landscapes and environments? What were the coordinates of loyalism and opposition in particular rural, regional, urban and metropolitan communities? The conference seeks to place ‘history’ in specific locations, mapping connections across Europe, the Atlantic, and the wider world. It also sets out to consider the dramatic material forms that Romanticism, revolution and reaction took at this time. Delegates are invited to consider a range of cultural productions, material objects and literary forms with a view to revealing how the multiform phenomenon we term ‘Romanticism’ was experienced on the ground and in precise cultural locations.

Abstracts for 25-minute papers, and suggestions for panels, should be sent by 16th March 2012 to Angharad Elias (a.elias@wales.ac.uk). Panels on the following are particularly welcome:

• local/regional/national/European identities

• readings of ‘place’ and ‘space’

• cartographies of loyalism and opposition

• four Nations criticism: refining the ‘British’ response

• neglected /silenced voices

• oral traditions

More information available at: http://frenchrevolution.wales.ac.uk

The 41st Meeting of the Victorians Institute
19-21 October 2012
at
Virginia Commonwealth University

Please send 300-500 word proposals for papers and a 1-page c.v. via email to dlatane@vcu.edu by 1 May 2012. Papers are invited on any aspect of the rubric, including

arts & crafts – the media of the empire – theatre — ekphrasis– the exhibition as medium – illustration and text (extra-illustrated volumes – giftbooks) — hybridity and language — map and mapping – media and genre — medium specificity in the 19th-century — new (digital) media and the Victorians — photography and its relationship to traditional media — poetry of the daily press — the print trade — show and tell (dioramas, panoramas, history, literature) — Victorian new media (typewriting – film) – sound and music – information systems – periodicals, pamphlets, broadsides – representation of media in fiction and poetry, etc.

Because 2012 marks the bicentennial of Robert Browning’s birth, papers which consider his work are especially welcome, whether or not they conform closely to the topic, as a portion of the program will commemorate the occasion.

Keynote address by W. J. T. Mitchell, Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago, is editor of Critical Inquiry and his books include “What Do Pictures Want?,” “Art and the Public Sphere,” “Iconology,” and “Blake’s Composite Art.”

Plenary talk to commemorate the bicentennial of the birth of Robert Browning by Herbert Tucker, John C. Coleman Professor of English at the University of Virginia; his books include “Epic: Britain’s Heroic Muse, 1790-1910,” “Tennyson and the Doom of Romantcism,” and “Browning’s Beginnings: The Art of Disclosure.”

Selected papers from the conference will be refereed for the “Victorians Institute Journal” annex at NINES.

Limited travel subventions will be available from the Victorians Institute for graduate students whose institutions provide limited or no support.

Please visit www.vcu.edu/vij for information about the conference, the Victorians Institute, and “Victorians Institute Journal.”

“Victorian Mixed Media” is sponsored at Virginia Commonwealth University by the College of Humanities and Sciences, Department of English, and the PhD program in Media, Art and Text (MATX).

David Latané, conference organizer.

Advisory committee: Nicholas Frankel, Catherine Ingrassia, John Picker (English); Eric Garberson, Catherine Roach (Art History); Nicholas Wolf (History).

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The last of issue of VICTORIAN POETRY (49:4; Winter 2011) is now available.

ARTICLES:

Browning, Renaissance Painting, and the Problem of Raphael

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Robert Browning’s Necropoetics

Renée Fox

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Laura’s Laurels: Christina Rossetti’s “Monna Innominata” 1 and 8 and Petrarch’s Rime sparse 85 and 1

Mary Moore

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“Perchance my hand may touch the lyre”: Orality and Textuality in Nineteenth-Century Deaf Poetry

Jennifer Esmail

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The Sentimental Artistry of Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the Children”

Peaches Henry

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The Margins of the Dramatic Monologue: Teaching Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point”

Melissa Schaub

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10-12th August 2012

University of St Andrews

28-30 June 2012

Organised by the Browning Society in collaboration with Royal Holloway, University of London, the University of Westminster and the University of the West of England. Supported by the British Association of Victorian Studies (BAVS).

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

Isobel Armstrong
Daniel Karlin
Tricia Lootens
Cornelia Pearsall

Over the past two centuries, Robert Browning has been hailed initially as the co-inventor of the dramatic monologue, and more recently, as earlier origins of the genre have been proposed, as its most prominent practitioner. To celebrate the Bicentenary of Browning’s birth, the Browning Society is hosting an international conference to reassess not only Browning’s work in what is arguably the defining genre of his oeuvre, but also the broader practice and theory of the dramatic monologue before, after and during his lifetime.

The conference remit of Browning, Before and Beyond proposes, in the first instance, to discuss the dramatic monologue in relation to Browning and other Victorian practitioners of the genre. The conference seeks to explore the reasons behind the rise of the genre during the Victorian era and the extent to which its formal and generic concerns with issues of performativity and spectacle, identity and subjectivity, text and truth – Browning introduced his Dramatic Lyrics of 1842 as ‘so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine’ – are illustrative of key concerns of the Victorian age.

Further, the conference hopes to extend critical discussion of the growth, profile, and generic nature of the dramatic monologue. The organisers welcome papers on pre-and post-Victorian poets and poems as a means of exploring the historical limits and reaches of the genre. Similarly, papers that explore the generic and disciplinary reaches of the form – its associations with drama, or connections to the Romantic lyric mode, for example – are warmly encouraged.

20-minute papers are invited on any topic relating to the dramatic monologue. Submissions may include, but are not restricted to:

·         new approaches to defining the dramatic monologue and its significance

·         reassessments of established approaches to the genre

·         the origins/ predecessors of the genre

·         Victorian variants of the genre

·         issues of subjectivity and selfhood

·         Post-Romanticism and the dramatic monologue

·         the dramatic monologue and gender

·         the genre’s relation to history

·         hybrid versions of the genre

·         twentieth-century and twenty-first century uses of the genre

·         the dramatic monologue and performance poetry

Conference organizers: Dr Simon Avery, Dr Vicky Greenaway, Dr Britta Martens. Please submit 300-word abstracts to s.avery@westminster.ac.uk by 31 January 2012.

28 April 2012

The theme for this year’s VSAO conference is “Victorian Thresholds: Between Literature and Anthropology.” The executive invites abstracts for 20 minute papers to be presented at our morning panel. Please send electronic copies of proposals (300-500 words) and a brief biographical statement to Matthew Rowlinson (mrowlins@uwo.ca) by 28 January 2012. Alternatively, hard copies can be sent by mail to Matthew Rowlinson / Department of English / University of Western Ontario/ London, ON CANADA N6A 3K7

Victorian Transnationalism:
The Atlantic Legacy in the Long 19th Century

The Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States (VISAWUS) announces its 17th annual conference to be held Oct. 11-13,  2012, during the height of the fall foliage season, on the campus of SUNY Plattsburgh in Plattsburgh, NY, which is situated on beautiful Lake Champlain (across from Burlington, VT), and an hour south of Montreal.

The focus of this year's conference is Victorian Transnationalism, with particular emphasis on the Atlantic legacy in the long 19th century.  As the site of a decisive American victory in the War of 1812, Plattsburgh is a testament to the fraught history of the “special relationships” between Britain and her neighbors across the pond. The town is home to an annual re-enactment of the Battle of Plattsburgh as well as historical sites relevant for scholars of the nineteenth century. We encourage papers across all disciplines exploring various aspects of the relations among and between the UK, Canada, the US, and other nations and regions across the Americas. Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following:

·       Intertextuality across national boundaries
·       Transnational influences in art
·       Concert tours and musical influences
·       Theatrical trends and tours
·       Transnational friendships, famous and infamous
·       Periodical press and public relations
·       Sports and amusements, competitions and crazes
·       Fashion and fads
·       Celebrity authors and book tours
·       Literary and other piracies
·       Transnational science—synergies and squabbles
·       Expeditions and exploration
·       Migration of religious and spiritual movements
·       The Imperial project in Britain and the Americas
·       Legacies of war (Revolutionary, Napoleonic, War of 1812)
·       Transnational relations during the American Civil War
·       Race, racism, and slavery
·       Transatlantic social reform movements and actors
·       International affiliations and antipathies
·       Transportation, tourism, and travel
·       Expatriots: immigration and emigration
·       Communication technologies (telegraph, e.g.)
·       Transatlantic commerce and commodities
·       Nautical technologies, marine life, aquaria
·       Fishing and whaling
·       Indigenous peoples, real and imagined
·       Wilderness and civilization
·       National symbols, stereotypes, and slurs
·       National identities and ideals
·       Clashing national manners and customs
·       Transnational gender-role differences
·       Ways of speaking: accents in English
·       National tastes in food and drink
·       Cosmopolitanism and provincialism
·       Definitions of class difference and labor issues
·       Contagion and containment, infectious diseases and epidemiology
·       Contact zones, ethnographies, and autoethnographies

By March 5, 2012, email 300-word abstracts and a 1-page CV (name on BOTH) to: Genie Babb at gbabb001@plattsburgh.edu. For further information on the conference, visit VISAWUS.org.

Conference Hotel: Best Western Inn at Smithfield. To make reservations please call the hotel directly at 518-561-7750, dial extension 2 to reach the front desk and ask for the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association to receive the group rate. There is a cut off date of 09/10/2012; rooms will need to be booked on or by this date to receive the group rate. (Group rates available 10/10 through 10/13/2012.)

• “Amelia Curran’s Newfoundland Painting,”by Fiona Pollack, Memorial University
• “What is a First Edition?  The Case of Don Juan. Cantos VI.–VII.–and VIII.,”  by Gary Dyer, Cleveland State University
• “`Destined to complete a certain cycle’: Francis Jeffrey and Byron’s Orientalism,” by John J. Regan, University of Cambridge
• “Framing Difference: The Orientalist Aesthetics of David Roberts and Percy Shelley,” by Manu Samriti Chander, Rutgers University, Newark
• “The Metaleptic Imagination in Shelley’s Defence of Poetry,” by Kir Kuiken, University at Albany, SUNY
• “Leigh Hunt and Juvenilia,” by Laurie Langbauer, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Books Reviewed: Diane Hoeveler’s Gothic Riffs, Mary A. Favret’s War at a Distance, Scott Krawczyk’s Romantic Literary Families, Daisy Hay’s Young Romantics, Susan J. Wolfson’s Romantic Interactions, Jacques Khalip’s Anonymous Life, Elizabeth A. Fay’s Fashioning Faces, Miriam L. Wallace’s Revolutionary Subjects in the English “Jacobin” Novel, Alan M Weinberg and Timothy Webb’s edited volume The Unfamiliar Shelley, Paul A. Vatalaro’s Shelley’s Music, Stephen C. Hebron and Elizabeth C. Denlinger’s Shelley’s Ghost, L. Adam Mekler and Lucy Morrison’s edited volume Mary Shelley: Her Circle and Contemporaries, David O’Shaugnessy’s monograph William Godwin and the Theatre and his edition of The Plays of William Godwin, Ben P. Robertson’s Inchbald, Hawthorne, and the Romantic Moral Romance, Jennifer N. Wunder’s Keats, Hermeticism and the Secret Societies, and Sue Brown’s Joseph Severn, A Life.

The Annual Bibliography for 2010