RSVP

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals

webmaster@rs4vp.org

Call for VPR Submissions Editors

“Printing-Office (The Victoria Press) in Great Coram-Street, for the Employment of Women as Compositors” from The Illustrated London News (Jun. 16, 1861). British Library, P.P. 7611

Victorian Periodicals Review (VPR) is expanding its editorial board to include Submissions Editors who will facilitate the double-blind peer review process. The journal invites expressions of interest from individuals working in nineteenth-century periodical studies who meet the criteria described below.

What’s Involved

Each Submissions Editor takes responsibility for securing specialist reviewers for approximately three submissions per year. On the basis of the reviewers’ reports, the Submissions Editor then provides a recommendation to the Editor. In the case of a recommendation for major revisions, the Submissions Editor’s opinion is usually sought on resubmission.

Submissions Editors will play a major role in shaping the journal and its critical interests in the years to come. Besides cultivating exciting new work in our field, Submissions Editors are encouraged to develop ideas for the journal’s occasional features, including Retrospectives, Review Conversations, and Round Tables. The VPR editorial team is unpaid and operates on a voluntary basis. Members of the editorial board serve for a three-year term with the option to renew.

Who Should Apply?

VPR is deliberately seeking to diversify its editorial board, and we encourage expressions of interest from scholars from a wide range of backgrounds, specializations, and career levels. We welcome applications evidencing one or more of the following:

  • Expertise in nineteenth-century periodicals or newspapers in any area or discipline. We are particularly looking to expand the board’s coverage of transatlantic, transnational, and transimperial print culture; the provincial press; working-class periodicals; comic and illustrated periodicals; race and ethnicity; and the long nineteenth century.
  • Editorial experience, such as working on a journal or digital project, editing special issues or collections of essays, or supervising MA/Ph.D. students.
  • A proven track record of collegiality and team contributions to the field through the activities of learned societies or conference organization.
  • Nineteenth-century subject expertise developed within organizations outside the university, such as libraries, museums, or galleries.

How to Apply

Interested candidates should send a one-page statement explaining their interest in the role and a one-page CV to VPR Editor Katherine Malone by Monday, January 9, 2023.

Upcoming Joint RSVP/ESPRit Online Event

Join Us for a Virtual Seminar on The Foreign Language Press

RSVP and ESPRit are delighted to host a joint online event featuring colleagues from TransfoPress, the Transnational network for the study of Foreign Language Press from the 18th to the 20th century. The seminar will take place 8th December 2022 at 5 p.m. GMT / 6 p.m. CET via Zoom, and will last approximately 90 minutes. During the seminar, the below speakers will give 15-minute presentations, followed by Q&A and discussion. The seminar is free and all are welcome.

Registration Information

This virtual event will be held 8 December at 5 p.m. GMT / 6 p.m. CET via Zoom.

Once registered, participants will receive a Zoom link via email.

Register Here

Invited Speakers

At this online event, we’re pleased to welcome the following colleagues from the Transfopress network who will give the following presentations:

  • Diana Cooper-Richet (Université Paris-Saclay): “The Transfopress network (2012-2022): object, activities, publications”
  • Jennifer Hayward (Wooster College, Ohio) and Michelle Prain (Universidad Adolfo Ibànez, Valparaiso): “The English-Language press in Chile: 19th Century global networks to 21st Century digital dialogues”
  • Nicolas Pitsos (BULAC/Université Paris-Saclay): “The foreign-language press and the emergence of a polyphonic capital: the case of Paris”
  • Isabelle Richet (Université Paris Cité): “Helen Zimmern and the Italian Gazette: the editor as cultural go-between”

We hope to see you there!

RSVP Seeks New Communications Coordinator

RSVP is now hiring a new Communications Coordinator! With many thanks and best wishes for our current coordinator, Alison Hedley, we find ourselves in search of someone to follow in her illustrious footsteps.

The RSVP Communications Coordinator administers communications related to awards, events, member news, and elections. Supervised by the President, the Communications Coordinator consults with the Vice-President and Treasurer as needed and collaborates with the Webmaster and Social Media Coordinator.

Help RSVP Thrive in This Paid Position

The work of the Communications Coordinator is estimated at 5 hours per week and paid at the rate of $20 USD per hour. The major duties of the Communications Coordinator include: 

  • Managing fellowship, grant, and prize applications and notifications in SM Apply in coordination with the awards committees and the President
  • Preparing the monthly newsletter: writing announcement copy, assembling  and editing submitted text and images, and distributing the newsletter by email using MailChimp
  • Assisting with digital event enrollment and administration as needed
  • Supporting communications related to the annual conference and elections
  • Responding to queries submitted to RSVP via the website contact form
  • Updating and maintaining the membership list 
  • Developing guidelines and other materials to support recurring and ongoing RSVP activities (for example, award committee decision-making)

Interested in Applying?

Applicants should send a cover letter indicating their interest in and qualifications for the position, along with a 1-2-page cv, to RSVP President Fionnuala Dillane by 10 October, 2022.

Congratulations to Our 2022 VPR Prize Winners!

Having been officially announced at our annual conference, congratulations to our 2022 winners of our Victorian Periodicals Review awards, the Rosemary VanArsdel Prize and our first-ever Expanding the Field Prize!

VanArsdel Prize Winner

The winner of this year’s VanArsdel Prize is Alycia Gilbert (University of Washington) for her essay “‘Her Speech Betrayeth Her’: The New Woman and Gendered Slang in the Periodical Press.”

The committee notes, “This essay skillfully combines analysis through the lenses of gender studies and periodical studies with a linguistics-based approach. The author brings in a consideration of the intersections of class and gender as they shape the use of language. Periodicals are central to the study, which explores different genres (editorial, fiction, and reviews) and multiple titles.”

Expanding the Field Prize Winner

The first-ever VPR Expanding the Field Prize goes to Sourav Chatterjee (Columbia University) for his essay “Against Imitation: Anticolonial Caricatures in Basantak or the Bengali Punch.”

The committee writes: “This essay contributes to periodical studies in precisely the way this prize seeks to reward. The scope of research and scholarship is impressive, as the author’s argument and methodology decenter whiteness and advocate for a complex understanding of periodicals in India beyond the Anglocentric periodicals more commonly studied.”

Look for their essays in upcoming issues of Victorian Periodicals Review!

Congrats to our 2nd Annual Mitchell Prize Winner!

The results are in! Our 2022 Mitchell Dissertation Prize Winner is Maryam Sikander for her “Oudh Punch (1877-1915): Satire and Parody in the Colonial Contact Zone.” Dr. Sikander’s dissertation examines the transcultural life of Punch in India through the framework of the colonial “contact zone.” Per our Mitchell Prize committee, this ambitious project demonstrates a deft touch in managing the breadth of translation and archival work as it crosses historical and geographical boundaries. It makes a clear contribution to the study of Victorian periodicals and their transformations in colonial contexts.

Honorable Mention

An honorable mention goes to Elizabeth Rawlinson-Mills’s “Bards, Priests and Prophets: The Newspaper Poets of the South African War (1899-1902).” Our committee called Dr. Rawlinson-Mill’s project “a beautifully written and methodologically interesting exploration of bards, poets and prophets during the Second Boer War.”

About the Mitchell Dissertation Prize

Black-and-white portrait of scholar Sally Mitchell

The Sally Mitchell Dissertation Prize is awarded annually to the best Ph.D. dissertation, defended in the previous calendar year, that explores the 19th-century British periodical press (including magazines, newspapers, and serial publications of all kinds) as an object of study in its own right, not as a source of material for other historical topics.

Established in 2020, the prize honors Sally Mitchell, a longstanding and highly valued member and leader of RSVP. Notably, Sally was a committed and ardent mentor of graduate students who worked hard to support their work and advance their careers.

Thanks to all who sent in submissions for this year, and especially to our committee members who had to choose just one from so many wonderful submissions!

Congratulations to our 2022 Award Winners

The results are in for our Colby, Peterson and Field Development awards and grants!

Robert and Vineta Colby Book Prize

Book cover of Priti Joshi's Empire News. Includes title and stylized image of crumpled newsprintThe winner of this year’s Robert and Vineta Colby Book Prize is Priti Joshi’s Empire News: The Anglo-Indian Press Writes India (SUNY Press, 2021). The prize committee praised Empire News as “a valuable, innovative and timely study that brings to life the circulations of English language newspapers published in mid-century India with an immaculate level of care and attention to archival detail.” This book “compellingly illuminates the ways in which the empire was not a monolithic construct of the press, but an often contradictory space of competing voices, shaped by the journalistic need for copy, access to sources, and volatility in the business of press production.”

The committee would also like to give an honourable mention to Alison Moulds’ Medical Identities and Print Culture, 1830s-1910s (Palgrave, 2021) as a highly impressive work of scholarship for an early career researcher.

Linda H. Peterson Prize

Laura Vorachek is this year’s recipient of the Linda H. Peterson Prize for her project, The Society of Women Journalists, 1894-1914. As the decision committee commented that with its “impressive” temporal and international scope, this project “promises to add significantly to our knowledge and understanding of the role of women journalists and the press from the late nineteenth century to the beginning of World War One.”

RSVP Field Development Grant

This year, the Field Development Grant committee has made the somewhat unusual decision to divide the award equally between two equally worthy and complementary projects: Printed Matters: Early Representations of the Caribbean in British Periodicals (Louise Kane) and Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition: Investigating an Archival Future (James Mussell, Mark Turner, and Paul Caton).

Collecting articles from British periodicals that represent the Caribbean, Printed Matters will “expand and expedite” new research possibilities in the field. Scholars of British imperialism, transatlanticism, Caribbeanism, and more will benefit immensely from this exciting project.

Investigating an Archival Future, meanwhile, will be invaluable as “a clear model for how to wind down digital projects while preserving their usability.” While it focuses on preserving and archiving an existing resource, the Nineteenth Century Serials Edition (ncse), it will nonetheless develop the field of periodical studies in a crucial way.

Congratulations to all! Thanks to those who submitted and to our awards committees for all their hard work. Stay tuned for further announcements regarding our Sally Mitchell Dissertation, VanArsdel and Expanding the Field prizes, which will be made later this summer.