RSVP

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals

RSVP News & Events

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!

December Workshop: Framing the Syrian Monument of Xi’an in The Chinese Repository (1832-1851)

The RSVP Race and Transimperialism Workshop Series presents:

Framing the Syrian Monument of Xi’an in The Chinese Repository (1832-1851): American Beatitudes of Commercial Christendom, from the Foundation to Destruction of the Canton Mission Press

Two-page spread of the Chinese Repository, volume 14, issue number 5, for May 1845

Dr. Kendall A. Johnson (University of Hong Kong)
Thursday, 16 December 2021, 4 p.m. GMT / 10 a.m. CST

This fourth workshop in our series will focus on the materiality of periodical production in the anglophone missionary press in Canton (Guangzhou). The first American missionaries to China were keen to use metallic fonts in printing the Chinese language. To appreciate why metallic fonts mattered, this talk considers how the The Chinese Repository (1832-1851) juxtaposed articles on China’s deep history while reporting on turbulent news of the present. 

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.

The Chinese Repository in Context

The editors Elijah C. Bridgman and S. Wells Williams printed the monthly periodical for two decades, through the First Opium War and Taiping Rebellion. Reports of opium smuggling and debates over “free trade” appeared next to scholarly surveys of dynastic succession and descriptions of regional customs, trade, government, and religion. Over the years, they were proud that Chinese script, pressed from metallic fonts, appeared with increasing frequency across all the articles. In 1845 Bridgman showcased this ability by looking back across a literal millennium to publish his new annotated translation of engravings from the “Syrian Monument,” a stone tablet of the 8th-century uncovered near Xi’an in 1625 CE (widely known as the Nestorian Stele). Bridgman’s print-cultural framing of this monument implies his aspirations as an American Protestant missionary in the global historical scale of Christendom. Just as insightful are the compounded failures that ensued, including the destruction of the Canton Mission Press on December 14, 1856 at the start of the Second Opium War and the waning support of it by church-goers, ministers, and merchants back in the United States. 

Today The Chinese Repository offers much more than a first-hand record of events. The antiquarian research in its pages recalls an American brand of commercial Christendom that fixed attention on China’s ancient past while rationalizing gunboat diplomacy in the present, all the while investing faith in future powers of print technology to redeem China.

About Our Speaker

Dr. Kendall A. Johnson is Professor of Literature in the School of English at the University of Hong Kong where he researches material print culture in a transnational and global historical frame. His most recent single‐authored book is The New Middle Kingdom: China and the Early American Romance of Free Trade (Johns Hopkins University Press 2017). Other publications include Henry James and the Visual (Cambridge University Press 2007; 2011), Oceanic Archives, Indigenous Epistemologies, and Transpacific American Studies (Hong Kong University Press 2019, with O. Heim and Y. Shu); Narratives of Free Trade in Early US-China Relations (Hong Kong University Press 2010; contributing editor), and The Critical Companion to Henry James (FactsOnFile 2009, with E.L. Haralson). The Oxford Handbook of Twentieth-Century American Literature (edited by L. Bow and R. Castronovo) includes his chapter on opium consumption in the autobiographical writings of Emily Hahn and George Santayana. His work has appeared in American Literary History (ALH), American Literature, American Quarterly, The Columbia Guide to Native American Literature of the United States: 1945-Present (2006; edited by E. Cheyfitz), Modern Fiction Studies, and elsewhere.

Participation in this workshop 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.

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.

Please Welcome Our Newest Board Members

And the votes are in! Please welcome our four newest board members:

  • Priti Joshi
  • Matt Poland
  • Catherine Waters
  • Teja Varma Pusapati

We appreciate your willingness to help lead our organization during an exciting time in Victorian scholarship. And of course, thanks to all who voted!

Meet Our Newest Board Members

Priti Joshi is a Professor of English and Asian Studies at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, located on the unceded territories of the Puyallup people. She has spent the last dozen years in the archives of 19th-century Indian newspapers and is the author of Empire News: The Anglo-Indian Press Writes India (SUNY Press, 2021). She has also published articles on: advertisements in Indian newspapers (in Victorian Periodicals Review); the India exhibit of the Crystal Palace (in Museum History Journal;); “scissors-and-paste” journalism in Indian newspapers (in Amodern). Trained as a literary scholar (she has published on canonical authors of the period such as Dickens, the Brontës, Frances Trollope, Henry Mayhew, George Eliot, and Edwin Chadwick), she well remembers the trepidation with which she presented her work on periodicals, something she had never been trained in. That first RSVP conference at Roehampton, however, put her at ease instantly: everyone was welcoming, curious and encouraging about the project, and infinitely generous in sharing resources and ideas.

Matt Poland is currently finishing his PhD in English at the University of Washington. His dissertation is titled “The Global Remediation of George Eliot and Charles Dickens: Books, Newspapers, Archives.” His work focuses on transnational periodical studies and nineteenth-century media history, as well as how these approaches enrich literary criticism and critical theory. His recent publications include “Commemorative Print: Serial Monuments during the Shakespeare Tercentenary Debates” (Journal of Victorian Culture 26.1 [April 2021]). His article “Middlemarch in Melbourne” is forthcoming in the Middlemarch 150th anniversary issue of George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies. His is also a contributing editor to At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837-1901. As RSVP’s outgoing Graduate Student Representative for North America and founding member of the RSVP Digital Events Committee, Matt is pleased to continue helping RSVP attract new and diverse members and audiences in the years to come.

Catherine Waters is Emeritus Professor of Victorian Literature and Print Culture at the University of Kent. She has been a member of RSVP since 2000. In 2009, she won the Robert and Vineta Colby Prize for her monograph, Commodity Culture in Dickens’s Household Words: The Social Life of Goods (Ashgate, 2008) and became a member of the Editorial Board of Victorian Periodicals Review in the same year. She has served several judging panels and committees for RSVP over the years, including previous tenure as a Director of the Board from 2017-19. Her most recent monograph, Special Correspondence and the Newspaper Press in Victorian Print Culture, 1850–1886, based upon research from her AHRC-funded project investigating of the writing of the Victorian ‘special correspondent’, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019. With Ruth Brimacombe, she has also curated an online exhibition from this project, Picturing the News: The Art of Victorian Graphic Journalism. She is the author of various essays on Dickens, Sala and Victorian print culture.

Teja Varma Pusapati is an Assistant Professor in English at Shiv Nadar University, India. She was educated at the universities of Delhi (B.A., M.A., M.Phil in English) and Oxford (D.Phil in English). Her doctoral thesis elucidated how a few exceptional Victorian women broke into the male dominated avenues of political journalism and offered professional models for aspiring women journalists. She has held a TORCH Women in the Humanities writing fellowship at the University of Oxford (January–April 2017) and an Andrew W. Mellon fellowship at the Huntington library in California (May–June 2017). Her articles on Victorian women’s foreign correspondence, feminist journalism, and celebrity culture have appeared in Victorian Periodicals Review, Women’s Writing and Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies. She contributed a chapter on the English Woman’s Journal’s campaign for female doctors to Women, Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain 1830s-1900 (ed. by Alexis Easley, Clare Hill and Beth Rodgers). Her book chapter on Eliza Lynn Linton’s early radical writings has been accepted for publication in the Routledge Companion to Literature and Feminism. Her monograph, Model Women of the Press: Gender, Politics and Women’s Professional Journalism, 1850-1880, is forthcoming with Routledge. Her new project examines specialised nineteenth-century imperial journals. She received an RSVP Curran Fellowship (2017) for this project.

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.