RSVP

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals

RSVP News

CFP: RSVP Special Session for MLA 2023

The Research Society of Victorian Periodicals seeks proposals for a Special Session at the
January 5-8, 2023 MLA convention in San Francisco, in keeping with the presidential theme of
“Working Conditions” (News from the MLA 2023 Presidential Theme: Working Conditions).

We welcome abstracts of 250-400 words on all aspects of work and working conditions within
and represented by the nineteenth-century press. We particularly welcome proposals oriented
toward social justice issues that cross geographic (including oceanic) borders and that offer
intersectional approaches to race, class, and gender.

Topics might include:

  • Hierarchies of working conditions in periodical production and distribution
  • Outsourcing of press labor
  • Reforms of working conditions and their national and international press coverage
  • Periodical representations of enslaved and oppressed laborers, including colonial workers
  • New archival sources for investigating working conditions demanded by periodical production
  • Periodical representations of work conditions for educators (a special focus of the 2023
    Presidential Theme) in day schools, boarding schools, universities, and those emerging after the 1870 Education Act
  • Sensational exposés of working conditions as sensation journalism and/or reformist interventions
  • Press coverage of Parliamentary debates about working conditions
  • Royal Commission investigations of working conditions in periodical reports and editorials, and
    their inspiration in fiction and poetry
  • New approaches to Henry Mayhew’s documentation of workers and working conditions in
    newspaper, periodical, and book form
  • Working-class periodicals and workers
  • The use of sentimentality, empathy, and rage in press coverage of working conditions
  • Global and local working conditions in the digitizing of nineteenth-century periodicals

Please send proposals and a short bio or 1-page c.v. to Linda K. Hughes by 10 March 2022.

CFP: Four Nations & Beyond – Periodical Studies and National Identities in the British Isles and Ireland

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) and the Scottish Centre for Victorian and Neo-Victorian Studies (SCVS) presents

Four Nations and Beyond:

Periodical Studies and National Identities in the British Isles and Ireland

Trades Hall, Glasgow
20 May 2022

This one-day workshop will explore how Victorian periodical and newspaper cultures operated in the different nations of the British Isles and Ireland, and in their diaspora cultures that emerged through emigration and imperialism. We hope to interrogate how periodicals constructed Irish, Scottish and Welsh identities, in relation to or in opposition to a range of ‘English’ identities, as well as examining how such English identities were unmade and remade in coeval relation with the neighbouring countries it governed. We welcome papers that investigate whether and how distinctive periodical cultures emerged in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, or in relation to English sites outside London and its environs. Were there distinct English regional identities centred on, for instance, Cornwall, Yorkshire, or the England-Wales or England-Scotland border areas?

Our inclusion of ‘beyond’ in the title speaks to ongoing interest in periodicals and newspapers in settler cultures and diasporic communities: how were these identities constructed outside Britain and Ireland in relation to indigenous cultures and other immigrant cultures? We ask too how transimperial dynamics put pressure on the ways in which globally circulating English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh periodicals articulate conceptions of the nation that ‘seem to cohere along a continuum that fuses a geoethnically bound sense of place with time’ (Sukanya Banerjee).

We are especially interested in exploring the still underexamined aspects of linguistic distinctiveness and papers centred on Welsh, Irish, Scots, Gaelic, Ulster-Scots, Manx or English regional dialects are encouraged. Proposals that focus on an individual publication, or that reflect on periodical or newspaper culture more broadly—including reflecting on the usefulness or otherwise of the ‘four nations’ as a concept and frame within Victorian periodical studies as we continue to widen our understanding of what we mean by ‘Victorian’—are also welcome.

A One-Day Conference in Glasgow

We anticipate that this workshop will take place in person in the Trades Hall in Glasgow city centre, conforming to guidelines and best practice in relation to social distancing and other regulations. We will provide opportunities to participate remotely, and will make linked content available online. Please signal in your submission if you would not be able to attend in person.

Registration for the workshop is funded by the SCVS at the University of Strathclyde and will be free up to a maximum of 30 participants.

Travel Bursaries Available

RSVP will award five travel bursaries of £200 for PG/ECR/Independent Scholar participants who do not have other access to institutional funding. If you would like to apply for these bursaries, please state so in your submission.

Proposals Now Accepted Through 18 March 2022

Proposals should be emailed to 4nationsandbeyond@gmail.com and should consist of a 250 word abstract and a 5-line biography. The deadline for proposals is Friday, 18 March 2022. Participants will be notified shortly thereafter.

We encourage advance submission of your presentation as a recorded presentation (max. 15 minutes) or draft paper (max. 2,500 words) so it can be shared with registered participants who are not attending in person (should there be any issues on the day with online streaming). Pre-submissions should be received by 6 May 2022.

Kirstie Blair, University of Strathclyde

Fionnuala Dillane, on behalf of RSVP

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.

Settler Colonialism and the Slave Trade: Our November Transimperialism Workshop

The RSVP Race and Transimperialism Workshop Series presents:

Settler Colonialism and the Slave Trade:
Exploring Henry and Mary Bibb’s Voice of the Fugitive (1851-1853) and Mary Ann Shadd Cary’s The Provincial Freeman (1853-1857)

The Provincial Freeman masthead Voice of the Fugitive masthead

Dr. Fariha Shaikh (University of Birmingham)
Wednesday 17 November 2021, 6pm GMT / 12 pm CST

This third workshop in our series will focus on two mid-century Canadian periodicals: the first Black-owned periodical, Henry and Mary Bibb’s Voice of the Fugitive (1851-1853) and the first Black periodical to be owned by a woman, Mary Ann Shadd Cary’s The Provincial Freeman (1853-1857). Dr. Shaikh will situate these periodicals within the context of the periodical market place in mid-century Canada, and its status as a settler colony. She will attend to the periodicals’ contribution to the ‘Anglophone world’ (to use James Belich’s phrase): the ways in which they mediate questions of free and unfree labour and migration, and how they provide significant case studies for exploring the intersections between settler colonialism and slavery.

The 50-minute workshop will include Q&A, with time for discussion and suggestions for further reading. The workshop is free. All are welcome. Please register here to receive the Zoom link for this free online workshop.

About Our Speaker

Dr. Fariha Shaikh is Senior Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Birmingham. She is the author of Nineteenth-Century Settler Emigration in British Literature and Art (Edinburgh University Press, 2018). She has an interest in the relationship between periodicals and settler colonialism, and has articles and chapters related to this in English Studies in South Africa, Worlding the South (Manchester University Press, 2021) and forthcoming work in Interventions. She is a New Generation Thinker 2021.

Participation does not require RSVP membership; all are welcome. For any other queries, please email us and direct your inquiry to our Vice President, Fionnuala Dillane.

Workshop: The Making of Transimperial Technological Networks

Logo of Bahishkrit Bharat, a Marathi periodical. The logo features the text of the journal title flanked by two lions in chains atop a banner.

Join us on 21 October 2021 at 5:30 pm BST / 11:30 am CST for a workshop titled, The Making of Transimperial Technological Networks: A Case Study of Select Marathi Periodicals.

This event is the second in our series on Race and Transimperialism. Dr. Vaibhav Singh (University of Reading) will introduce us to Marathi periodicals to discuss aspects of design processes, typographic history, printing and textual communications in the context of transimperial technological networks. The 50-minute workshop will include a presentation from Dr. Singh and Q&A, with time for discussion and suggestions for further reading. The workshop is free. All are welcome. See below for registration information.

Dr. Vaibhav Singh is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading, where he recently completed a 3-year British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. His project, “Merchants of alphabets: networks of typographic design and technology in Indian language publishing, 1900–1950” addresses the impact of typographic design and technology on the linguistic diversity of Indian publishing in the decades leading up to the country’s independence. It situates typographic design – a critically under-researched area in publishing and book history – within the intellectual frameworks of nationalism, mass communication, and technological modernity. Dr Singh is the recipient of an RSVP Curran Award in 2021.

His recent publications include:

Singh, V. (2018) The first Indian-script typeface on the Monotype: a missing chapter in the history of mechanical typecasting. Journal of the Printing Historical Society, 29.

Singh, V. (2018) The machine in the colony: technology, politics, and the typography of Devanagari in the early years of mechanization. Philological Encounters, 3 (4).

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.