RSVP

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals

Awards News

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.

Congratulations to our 2022 Curran Fellowship Winners!

In case you missed it in our last (March) newsletter, we’re pleased to announce this year’s Eileen M. Curran Fellowship winners!

These travel and research grants are intended to aid scholars of 19th-century British periodicals who wish to study primary print and archival sources. These fellowships are made possible by a generous bequest of the late Eileen Curran, Professor Emerita of English at Colby College and inspired by her pioneering research on Victorian periodicals.

Our 2022 fellows are:

  • Sue Chen, “Preparing the Child for Science”: Victorian Children’s Periodicals and Scientific Literacy
  • Richard Scully, The Last Victorian: Sir Bernard Partridge, Pictures, Periodicals, and Politics in Britain, 1861-1945
  • Catherine Birch, Female Punch Contributors, 1868-1918
  • Stéphane Sadoux, The Cheap Cottages Crusade: Rural Bylaws and the Periodical Press, 1901-1905
  • Tsz Ting Yan, China, Humour, and the Opium Wars in Punch: An Intertextual Enquiry
  • Julie Sorge Way, Inviting Submission: Isabella Beeton’s Journalism and Editorial Work at the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, 1857-1865
  • Beth Rodgers, L.T. Meade and the Professionalisation of Authorship at the Fin de Siècle

Congratulations again to our winners! We look forward to the fruits of your archival work.

Already thinking about next year’s fellowships? Learn more about our annual fellowships, grants, and prizes on our website.

Announcing a New Annual VPR Prize!

RSVP is excited to announce a new annual prize! The Victorian Periodicals Review Expanding the Field Prize will be awarded annually for an outstanding essay that diversifies the existing geographic, racial, and ethnic composition of nineteenth-century periodical studies. We encourage submissions that deepen our understanding of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) founders, editors, contributors, and readers of periodicals; interrogate Anglocentric perspectives; enact anti-racist or anti-colonial values; and/or consider the cultural impact of the British Empire around the world.

The awardee will receive $500 and publication of their article in Victorian Periodicals Review. Graduate students, independent scholars, and faculty of all ranks are invited to submit their work.

Applications for our inaugural prize winner will be accepted from May 1 until June 15, 2022. Please send submissions via email to our VPR editor, Dr. Katherine Malone. We will send out reminders as the date approaches. In the meantime, we hope you’ll consider submitting your work this upcoming Spring!

Now Accepting Curran Fellowship Applications and Colby Prize Nominations

The web portal for the 2022 Curran Fellowship applications and Colby Book Prize nominations is now open!

The deadline for Curran applications is Dec. 15, 2021. Applicant reference letters are due by Dec. 22, 2021. This set of travel and research grants is intended to aid scholars studying 19th-century British magazines and newspapers in making use of primary print and archival sources. The Curran Fellowships are open to researchers of any age from any of a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. They are made possible through the generosity of the late Eileen Curran, Professor Emerita of English, Colby College.

For detailed application instructions and information on eligibility, please see the Curran Fellowship webpage.

The deadline for Colby nominations is Jan. 31, 2022.The Colby Prize is intended to honor original book-length scholarship about Victorian periodicals and newspapers. The annual prize is awarded to a book published during the preceding year that most advances our understanding of the nineteenth-century British press.

For detailed instructions about nomination and information on book eligibility, please see the Colby Book Prize webpage.

Those who have applied to RSVP awards in past years will notice that we have migrated to a new online platform, SurveyMonkey Apply. If you have any questions about SM Apply or other aspects of applying for this fellowship, please direct your queries to RSVP’s awards contact email.

VanArsdel Prize Winner Announced

The 2021 VanArsdel Prize has been awarded to Elizabeth Howard (PhD Candidate, University of Minnesota) for her essay, “‘Keeping Christmas’ on the Page: the Adelaide Observer, Alice in Wonderland, and the Australian Periodical at Play.”

The committee commented, “This is an excellently written, interesting essay that focuses on an understudied area to make an original contribution to the field of periodical studies. Its astute analysis of the Adelaide Observer highlights this newspaper’s status as a colonial/settler production but contains insights more broadly relevant to newspaper culture in the Victorian world.” 

The VanArsdel Prize, established in 1990 to honor Rosemary VanArsdel, is awarded annually to the best graduate student essay investigating Victorian periodicals and newspapers. The winning essay will be published in Victorian Periodicals Review. Congratulations, Elizabeth Howard!