VPR News

Issue: Winter 2017
Notify editor of intention to submit: July 15, 2016
Deadline for final submission: December 1, 2016
Email: Janice.schroeder @ carleton.ca

“Beyond the means of subsistence, it is difficult to think of anything more important than education to the well-being and sense of self-worth of most nineteenth-century Britons” (Florence Boos, “The Education Act of 1870: Before and After,” BRANCH). Yet within Victorian periodical studies, education in its various dimensions has received little focused attention. The Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalism, for example, contains no topic entries on education or schooling; the entry on the professions and journalism contains scant mention of the teachers’ press. Perhaps because the “Education Question” was so broadly-encompassing, it has been difficult for press researchers to make inroads into this vast topic. This special issue aims to do just that, by inviting papers on the role of the press in theorizing the purpose of education, shaping various education debates, and educating readers. How did specialist, mainstream, and newspaper presses intervene in the most pressing questions about education and schooling before and after the Education Act of 1870? How did the press function as a space of instruction for an increasingly print-literate populace? How did the press help to define “education” itself?

Specific areas of investigation might include but are not limited to the following:
• the teachers’ press and professional journals for educators both in England and abroad;
• education in/and the imperial press;
• education debates in the established/mainstream press;
• famous educators and the press;
• special interest publications and organization journals like the Ragged School Union Magazine, Schoolmaster or the Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge;
• university and school magazines;
• illustration and education;
• press debates on the education of women and girls;
• reading, pedagogy, and serial publication;
• mechanics’ institutes and magazines;
• teaching and instruction in periodicals for children;
• the rise of print literacy and the press;
• deaf and blind education and the role of the press;
• domestic education and the press;
• practical advice and forms of everyday instruction in the press.

VPR invites essays of 5,000-9,000 words in length (including notes and bibliography) for the Winter 2017 issue of the journal. Notify the guest editor (Janice.schroeder @ carleton.ca) of intention to contribute by July 15, 2016 with a 200-word abstract. Submission deadline for final draft of articles is December 1, 2016. Please prepare contributions according to the Chicago Manual of Style.

Thanks,
Jan Schroeder
Associate Professor
Department of English
Carleton University
Ottawa, ON

Call For Submissions: Special Issue of Victorian Periodicals Review!

In anticipation of the 2015 Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) annual conference hosted by the University of Ghent, Belgium, Victorian Periodicals Review invites submissions for a special issue commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon’s final defeat was of course a watershed event in the history of Europe, and the political and cultural impact of the battle would remain fresh for decades to come.

The events shaped by the historical legacy of Waterloo inspired intense coverage and debate in the periodical press of the time, and for this special issue, we invite submissions from a variety of perspectives and from across disciplines which re-examine this legacy and shed light on the conventions of periodical and newspaper journalism of the period.

Possible topics include:

Representations of Waterloo in the nineteenth-century press: Wellington as national hero and celebrity; Napoleon and his lingering impact on French and European politics; veterans’ reunions and other commemorations of the battle; travel and tourism in Waterloo; European and transatlantic perspectives on Waterloo and its aftermath.

War correspondence in the press during the Napoleonic period.

Illustrations in the press commemorating Waterloo and/or its heroes.

Newspaper or periodical advertising drawing on the memory of Waterloo.

Topical and commemorative poetry about Waterloo in the periodical and newspaper press.

Waterloo and the Napoleonic Wars as subjects of nineteenth-century serial fiction.

We invite 500-word abstracts of potential submissions by 30 November 2014. Completed essays based on abstracts selected must be submitted by 20 February 2015. Final essays should be 5,000-9,000 words in length (including notes and bibliography).

The Waterloo special issue will be published as the Winter 2015 edition of VPR.

Please send abstracts and queries to Marysa Demoor (marysa.demoor@ugent.be) and Chris Keirstead (keirscm@auburn.edu).

The Summer issue of Victorian Periodicals Review is now out.  Issue 47.2 features papers by Fergus Dunne, Kirsite Blair, Michael D. Lewis, Rebecca N. Mitchell, Marina Cano-Lopez, Melissa Score, and Troy Gregory.  It also has a memorial by Richard Fulton of one RSVP’s founders, William Scheuerle.  The issue can be accessed online here. For subscription information (which includes membership of RSVP), see the VPR page.