RSVP

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals

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RSVP 2019 Annual Conference CFP Announced

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals is pleased to announce the call for papers for our next annual conference.

The conference, entitled ‘Work/Leisure, Duty/Pleasure’, will be hosted by the University of Brighton, UK, and will take place 25-27 July 2019. 

Proposals are invited for 20 minute papers or panels of three or four related papers that address any aspect of the Victorian periodical or newspaper press. Proposals relevant to the Conference theme of Work/Leisure, Duty/Pleasure would be particularly welcome. For more information about the conference theme and how to submit a proposal please visit our conference page.

All those giving a paper at the RSVP conference are required to be members of the Society.

The Curran Index – update

The ongoing effort to identify the writers of articles, stories, and poems in the Victorian press that is the Curran Index is getting a new look, and new super-powers!  With the support of RSVP, our intrepid editor, Gary Simons, is working with a team to convert the old set of pages, which are made up of blocks of text that have had to be scrolled through, into a fully functional online database that can be searched in a variety of ways.  Please visit this new and improved work in progress here (http://curranindex.org/) and read about all the latest additions to this rapidly expanding resource.

PhD Studentship: The People’s Friend? Recovering Scottish Popular Magazine Culture

PhD Studentship: The People’s Friend? Recovering Scottish Popular Magazine Culture – with National Library of Scotland and the University of Strathclyde.

Deadline for applications 17 May 2018

Applications are invited for an AHRC-funded collaborative PhD to research Scottish popular magazine culture, with a particular focus on the period from the founding of the People’s Friend (1869) to the 1930s. The studentship is a fully-funded award under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme made through the Scottish Cultural Heritage Consortium (of which the National Library of Scotland is a member).

The studentship will commence on 1 October 2018 and last for three years. Student Development Funding (equivalent to an additional 6 months funding) will also be available to allow time for further training and skills development opportunities that are agreed as part of the PhD programme. It is expected that this will take the form of a six month placement at the Library in the relevant curatorial teams in the Department of Collections & Research.

The project will be supervised by Professor Kirstie Blair and Dr David Goldie (University of Strathclyde) and Dr Graham Hogg (National Library of Scotland). The student would be based both at the Library and in the School of Humanities at the University of Strathclyde, as part of a strong cohort of students working in Scottish studies, periodical and magazine culture, and nineteenth/early twentieth -century studies.

The Library has a very significant and under-researched archive of Scottish popular magazines from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Investigating how these magazines constructed a specifically Scottish sense of identity and culture, the project will explore their lasting influence and significance within wider British and international publishing contexts. Through this partnership, the student will also investigate and develop expertise in the issues involved in digitisation, and act as an adviser on the Library’s periodical digitisation programme through a built-in six month placement at the Library. Besides reconsidering a vital aspect of Scotland’s literary heritage, then, the PhD will also include reflection on questions of ‘recovery’ and digitization, considering how this archive connects to reading communities today. D. C. Thomson of Dundee are additional partners on this studentship, and the student will also have the opportunity to work with the D. C. Thomson archivist on events centred on Dundee’s popular magazine culture, including celebrations of the People’s Friend 150th anniversary in 2019.

More about the project and how to apply can be found here.

Nineteenth-Century Synergies: Ventures at Home and (Ad)Ventures Abroad

Nineteenth-Century Synergies: Ventures at Home and (Ad)Ventures Abroad hosted by the Department of English, at Presidency University, Kolkata, West Bengal, India took place on the 22nd and 23rd of February, 2018.

Here they are next to a rather impressive poster advertising the conference!
Here they are next to a rather impressive poster advertising the conference!

Professors Joanne Shattock and Linda Hughes, gave papers entitled “Journalism and Literature: Contested Professions” and “Tennyson, The Princess, and Tennyson’s Global Women Readers” respectively.

More about the conference can be found here.