RSVP

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals

RSVP News & Events

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.

VPR/DNCJ promotion

 

RSVP is giving away copies of the Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalism (DNCJ) free to new and renewing subscribers to the Victorian Periodicals Review! (If you renewed recently, just add another year to your renewal and you’re good to go.) You don’t need to put in a promotion code, just sign up and this essential reference book will be mailed to you, while supplies last.

Click on this image to be taken to the VPR subscription page
Click on this image to be taken to the VPR subscription page

These copies are already going fast, and there’s a limited number of them, so best to act quickly if you want a copy. And of course with your subscription (which only costs $35) comes membership in RSVP. It’s a win-win!

CFP: Special Issue of Victorian Periodicals Review – Essays in Honor of Sally Mitchell

CFP: Special Issue of Victorian Periodicals Review 

Essays in Honor of Sally Mitchell

CFP-VPR Special Issue for Sally Mitchell[1] copy

Proposals due March 1, 2018

Completed Essays due September 1, 2018

 

Sally Mitchell (1937-2016) was a pioneering feminist scholar and teacher in the field of Victorian studies whose work opened new avenues for the study of women’s writing, cultural history, and journalism. Throughout her career, periodicals were at the heart of her research, which included groundbreaking work on women’s penny papers and popular reading, an innovative study of The New Girl, critical biographies of Dinah Mulock Craik and Frances Power Cobbe, indispensable histories such as Daily Life in Victorian England and Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia, as well as edited editions and anthologies of Victorian women’s writing. To honor her contributions to our field and highlight her continued legacy in Victorian periodical studies, we plan to publish a special issue of VPR in Fall 2019.

Contributions to the special issue should be 5,000 to 9,000-word essays (including notes and bibliography) focused on any topic inspired by Sally Mitchell’s work on the periodical press. Essays might explore the Victorian press in relation to:

  • • Victorian women writers and women’s reading
  • • The “new girl” and girls’ culture
  • • Daily life and social history
  • • Popular fiction and literary history
  • • Feminist activism, networks, and mentoring
  • • New directions in biography
  • • New approaches to teaching with periodicals

Please submit a 200-word abstract and a CV by March 1, 2018 to guest editor Katherine Malone at katherine.malone@sdstate.edu.

 You can download a PDF version of the CFP here.

Completed essays will be due September 1, 2018.