RSVP

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals

communications@rs4vp.org

Race and Trans-imperialism Workshop

One landscape format black and white glass plate negative depicting Johann Franz Julius von Haast seated by moa skeletons at the Canterbury Museum.
Fig. 1. Glass Plate Negative: Johann Franz Julius von Haast at the Canterbury Museum.

Join us on 10 May 2021 at 6 pm UK / 12 pm CT for the first in a series of RSVP workshops on race and trans-imperialism, titled, Returning Citation: The Journal of the Polynesian Society, Natural Science and Indigenous Agents.

In this one-hour workshop, Dr. Megan Kuster will talk through questions about Indigenous contributorship raised by the Journal of the Polynesian Society. She will also outline how she has been drawing on Indigenous Studies methods to recontextualise the absent presences of Indigenous knowledge brokers. 20 to 30 minutes of discussion and suggestions for further reading will follow her 30-min presentation.

Megan Kuster is a European Research Council Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the SouthHem project, in the School of English, Drama and Film at University College Dublin in Ireland (see https://www.ucd.ie/southhem/). Megan’s current project focuses on the environment, capital and labour in colonial New Zealand. An article on this research is forthcoming in the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History (July 2021). Her presentation for RSVP’s workshop series on race and trans-imperialism is part of a new article she is preparing on Moa bones, Indigenous labour and extinction discourse.

Register Now

Register here for this free online event. RSVP membership is not mandatory to attend. Event enquiries can be submitted to the Vice President via our contact form.

Household Words: How to Do Primary Source Research at Home

22nd April 2021, 6 pm UK / 12 pm CT

Illustration for Charles Dickens’ Bleak House by Phiz (Hablot K. Browne).

With research libraries around the world closed to readers due to the pandemic, many researchers have struggled to access primary sources necessary to the study of Victorian periodicals. At the same time, it is a truth universally acknowledged that since the 1990s, readers around the world have gained unprecedented access to Victorian print thanks to the proliferation of digital archives and bibliographies. What resources and methods enable us to research Victorian periodical culture during the pandemic?

RSVP will explore this question in an informal virtual roundtable with editors of open-access digital resources of great importance to the study of Victorian periodicals: Emily Bell (Curran Index; Charles Dickens Letters Project) and Stephen Basdeo and Jessica Thomas (George W.M. Reynolds Archive).

Dr. Stephen Basdeo researches 18th and 19thc popular literature and has recently focused on G.W.M. Reynolds and Pierce Egan Jnr. He is currently editing Reynolds’s newspaper writings for an open access website co-edited by Jessica Elizabeth Thomas.

Dr. Emily Bell is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. Her research interests lie in Victorian and Edwardian authorship, periodical culture, Dickens studies, and digital humanities. She is an editor for the Charles Dickens Letters Project, and co-editor of the Curran Index to Victorian periodicals. 

Jessica Elizabeth Thomas recently completed her MA in Nineteenth Century Literature and Culture at Chester University. Her BA in English was earned at Aberystwyth University. Currently, she is collaborating with Stephen Basdeo to edit Reynolds’s journalism. She has also catalogued Gladstone’s books and pamphlets at St. Deiniol’s library in Hawarden, for an AHRC-funded research project. 

Register Now

Register here for this free online event. Participation does not require RSVP membership and all are welcome to attend. If you have any questions about this event, please don’t hesitate to contact us and direct your enquiry to the Vice President.