CFP: AVSA 2020, "Small Worlds", Monash University, Melbourne (due 20 Jan 20)

"Small Worlds: Connections, Collaborations, and Conflicts"
Australasian Victorian Studies Association Conference
17-19 June 2020
Monash University, Melbourne

Keynote speakers: Associate Professor Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Professor Lisa Surridge (University of Victoria, Canada)

Technological advances, imperial expansion, emigration to the colonies and beyond, and an increase in leisure travel made the nineteenth-century world seem smaller. Fuelled by industrialisation, the population of cities boomed, putting masses of people in closer proximity than ever before. The development of transportation, particularly the railways and steamship, meant culture could be disseminated more widely. The various ways in which ideas and people moved aided by technology such as the telegraph enabled new connections, cultures, and ideas to flourish. However, encounters with the unfamiliar and challenges to accepted ways of being provoked anxieties, injustices, and outright conflict.

We invite papers from a range of disciplinary backgrounds including Literature, History, Music, and Art History that interpret any aspect of the nineteenth century in relation to the conference theme of “Small Worlds”. 

Proposals might address such topics as the following:

·      Travelling, tourism and travel writing

·      Urbanisation and the city

·      Emigration

·      Empires, nationalism, colonialism

·      Race, ethnicity, indigeneity

·      Literature and the periodical press

·      Scientific and medical advancement

·      Intellectual, artistic, and political communities

·      Religion and missionary work

·      The Victorian city

·      Collaborative research within Victorian Studies

Paper proposals should comprise a one-paragraph abstract of 200-250-words with a title plus a 100-word biographical note. Please avoid the use of in-text references. Proposals should be emailed to conference convenors Dr Michelle Smith and Associate Professor Paul Watt and at michelle.smith@monash.edu by 20 January 2020.

All those giving a paper at the AVSA conference are required to be members of the Association.

AVSA aims to promote the activities and research of scholars in Victorian literary, history, and cultural studies and since 1973 has provided a meeting place for Victorian Studies scholars in the southern hemisphere. To find out more about AVSA, visit its website at www.avsa.unimelb.edu.au

Call for Papers: Antipodean George Eliot, 13-14 Feb. 2020, University of Sydney

Call for Papers: Antipodean George Eliot
13-14 February 2020
University of Sydney

‘Antipodean George Eliot’ provides the opportunity to examine George Eliot’s legacy from any and every angle. The conference theme plays on the dual senses of ‘antipodean’ as ‘Australasian’ and ‘in opposition to’, with the goal of stimulating original thinking on all aspects of George Eliot’s achievement, and the various contexts in which her work is pertinent.

In addition to George Eliot’s writings in all genres, possible topics include:
• how, where, and by whom has George Eliot been read?
• discussions of her magisterial range of intellectual interests: philosophy, science broadly
conceived, especially physiology and psychology, and religion
• writers and thinkers who influenced or were influenced by her

Proposals of 250-300 words for papers of 20 minutes duration, together with a brief
biographical note of no more than 100 words, should be submitted by email attachment to
antipodeanGE@gmail.com by Monday 31 July 2019.

Proposals for panels of 3-4 speakers are also welcome (600-750 words, with a biographical
note for each speaker).

In addition, we invite proposals of 100-150 words for ‘lightning talks’ of 5-7 minutes; this may be of particular interest to graduate students.

Confirmed speakers include:
Fionnuala Dillane (University College Dublin), author of Before George Eliot: Marian Evans
and the Periodical Press (2013); Tim Dolin (Curtin University); Moira Gatens (Philosophy,
University of Sydney); Helen Groth (University of New South Wales); Joanne Wilkes (University of Auckland).

Under the aegis of the School of Literature, Art and Media, The University of Sydney, and
the Australasian Victorian Studies Association

Conference organisers: Matthew Sussman and Margaret Harris. Enquiries to Margaret Harris: margaret.harris@sydney.edu.au

CFP: AVSA 2019, 25-29 September, Otago University (deadline 1 April)

The University of Otago was founded in 1869. This was a year in which many scientific, political, commercial, cultural and medical milestones were also recorded, including the first issue of Nature, the opening of the Suez Canal, the publication of the Periodic Table, Paul Langerhans’s discovery of pancreatic islets and the appearance of “The Subjection of Women” by John Stuart Mill.

The Centre for Research on Colonial Culture and the Australasian Victorian Studies Association warmly invite you to join them in critically reflecting on these various approaches to knowledge creation and production during the 1860s and beyond, and across disciplines as well as cultures in all areas of human endeavour. Confirmed keynote speakers include Professor Marion Thain (King’s College London) and Megan Potiki (University of Otago), alongside invited speakers Dr Tina Makereti (Massey University), Lisa Chatfield (Producer, The Luminaries) and Professor Liam McIlvanney (University of Otago), with more to be announced!

The conference will combine a traditional academic programme with a range of public heritage festival events, special forums and social  engagements. We invite paper, panel and poster proposals from researchers, policy makers, industry and anyone with an 1869-related story to tell that addresses the conference theme from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Cross-disciplinary panels would be particularly welcomed.

Topics linked to the legacies of Victorian scientific and cultural production include:
• Indigenous knowledges;
• Literary production;
• Colonialism and its legacies;
• Museums, archives and collecting;
• Medical innovation;
• Ecology and the environment;
• Migration, movement, and mobilities;
• Artefacts and archaeological records;
• Mass tourism and popularisation of leisure;
• Scientific advancements;
• Commercial and economic development;
• Art, fashion and design;
• Architecture and built environments;
• Conflict, contestation and resistance;
• Crime and sensation.

Papers: 250-300 word abstract, up to 5 keywords and 50-word biographical statement.
Panels: Panel proposals for three linked papers are encouraged to include presenters from more than one disciplinary background, and from different career stages. 250-300 word individual abstracts, 50-word biographical statements for each presenter, accompanied by a 200 word summary of the overarching theme(s) of the panel.
Posters:
Posters will be on display for the duration of the conference and there will be a timetabled slot for contributors to stand by their  posters so that participants can come and discuss the research.
250-300 word abstract, up to 5 keywords and 50-word biographical statement

Please submit proposals as Word attachments to the conference email address: 1869@otago.ac.nz by 1 April 2019.
Decisions on acceptance will be made by early May, with registration opening in June.

Keep up to date with the latest news and announcements via our Twitter account: @Otago1869

CFP: Australian Historical Association 2019 Conference (Deadline: 28 February 2019)

‘Local Communities, Global Networks’: Australian Historical Association 2019 Conference
8-12 July 2019, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba

How have the local and the global intersected, inspired and transformed experiences within and from Australia’s history? How do the histories of Indigenous, imperial, migrant and the myriad of other communities and networks inform, contest and shape knowledge about Australia today? The conference theme speaks to the centrality of History for engaging with community and family networks. Constructing livelihoods within an empire and a nation that have had a global reach, local communities have responded in diverse ways. The varieties of historical enquiry into this past enrich our understanding of Australian and world history.

We welcome paper and panel proposals on any geographical area, time period, or field of history, on the conference theme ‘Local Communities, Global Networks’.

Abstracts due 28 February 2019

Conference website

CFP: BAVS 29-31 August 2018, "Victorian Patterns", Exeter (Deadline 3 April)

Call for Papers: BAVS Annual Conference 2018
"Victorian Patterns"
University of Exeter, Streatham Campus
29-31 August 2018
Organised by the Centre for Victorian Studies, University of Exeter

Keynote Speakers: Professor Jason W. Moore (Sociology, Binghamton University); Professor Grace Lees-Maffei (Design History, University of Hertfordshire); Professor Marion Thain (Liberal Studies, NYU)

Global Victorians Roundtable Speakers: Professor Robert Aguirre (Wayne State University); Professor Nicholas Birns (NYU); Dr. Paul Young (University of Exeter)

Pattern in the nineteenth century was a much-debated topic. The execution of repetitive forms of design became both industrialized and institutionalized thanks to new techniques of mechanized production. Everywhere the surfaces of material culture were alive with a profusion of ornamental patterns. An insatiable appetite for pattern affected the appearance of public spaces, domestic interiors, clothing and the objects of everyday life. At the same time, revolutions in science and technologies, in the global circulation of people, commodities and ideas, and in the conception and creation of new forms explored and exploited the ways in which patterns, both cultural and natural, shape and organize experience and subjectivity. Pattern was (and is) often seen as repetitive, constraining, unimaginative, and dead, but patterns also live, energizing, structuring, and acting both within and beyond the reach of human intentionality and subjectivity. This conference will explore the life of pattern in the nineteenth century and the way in which in its contradictions, its reproducibility and its close connections with materiality and the everyday, pattern can be seen as a representative natural, aesthetic, cultural and techno-scientific mode.

We invite proposals for individual papers of 15 minutes or 3-paper panel sessions, and we would particularly welcome alternative session formats designed to foster discussion or pose research problems for discussions (eg poster presentations, 3×5 minute position papers, roundtables or working groups, etc) on, but not limited to, the following topics:

Patterns in nature: temporal (geologic, seasonal), energy, physics, evolution.

Scientific and technological patterns: mathematics, markets, engineering, textiles, city-planning.

Patterns of imagery: language, style, and genre.

Design and decorative patterns: arts, crafts, ornament, textiles, The House Beautiful, book design.

Music and metrical patterns, poetics, performance.

Global patterns: travel and circulation; settlement and empire; inheritance.

Repetitions, replications, rhythm, habits, habitus, disruption of pattern, linearity, circularity, randomness, emergence, chaos.

Patterns of behaviour and mood.

Please submit an individual proposal of 250-300 words or a group proposal of 1000 words to BAVS2018@exeter.ac.uk by the deadline of Tuesday 3rd of April. All proposals should include your name, email address and academic affiliation (if applicable).

CFP: NAVSA 2018, "Looking Outward", St Petersburg, Florida 11-14 October 2018

NAVSA 2018 will be held October 11-14, 2018 at the Hilton St. Petersburg Bayfront Hotel.

We are excited to announce our three plenaries: Erika Rappaport, Belinda Edmondson, and Sally Shuttleworth. These keynotes anchor three foci of the conference, and we hope there will be lively conversations on Caribbean Studies, Global Victorians, and Science/Medicine, even as the conference overall ranges more widely.

Deadline for paper and panel sessions on the theme "Looking Outward" is 4 March 2018.

Full details at the conference site: https://sites.clas.ufl.edu/english-navsa2018/

Extended CFP: 'Forgery and Imitation', Victorian Network, Deadline 15 December 2017

Victorian Network is an open-access, MLA-indexed, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to publishing and promoting the best work across the broad field of Victorian Studies by postgraduate students and early career academics. We are delighted to announce that our twelfth issue (Summer 2018) will be guest edited by Aviva Briefel on the theme of Forgery and Imitation.

Recent scholarship has drawn attention to the increase in art and literary forgery in the nineteenth century, and to the preoccupation with themes of illicit imitation in the Victorian cultural zeitgeist. Critics have highlighted the manifold, intricate, and sometimes surprising ways in which forgery was woven into the social and cultural fabric of the era. The forged, the fake, and the imitative became pressing issues for artistic reproduction as growing demand and changing technology shaped the way in which texts, images, and objects circulated. The spectrum encompassed forged and imitative objects faked with criminal intent, as well as cultural and economic productivity.

Anxieties surrounding the concepts of originality and fakery also permeated nineteenth-century discussions of social authenticity – did forging an identity in a changing world open the door to faking social class, race, or gender? Did cleaving closely to imitate cultural peers maintain the status quo, mask individual dishonesty, or constitute plagiarism? Frauds, cheats, liars, and copycats of every ilk caught the public imagination. The range of depictions was broad and ambivalent. From villainous cheats like Count Fosco to romantic depictions of Chatterton, forgery and imitation marked for the Victorians a point of uneasiness that called for intricate negotiation. Furthermore, as channels of patronage and influence became increasingly fragmented, new ways of conceptualising artistic indebtedness were required. Here, too, forgery and imitation did moral battle. Appropriation, pastiche, and homage had their dark doubles: deceit, plagiarism, and hack work. Navigating intertextuality meant gauging where boundaries of influence could be crossed and where they should be policed.

We invite submissions of approximately 7,000 words on any aspect of the theme in Victorian literature and culture. Possible topics include, but are by no means limited to:

Fakery and cultural identity, the (cultural and/or economic) value of forgeries and imitations
Fakes as cultural participation
Identities of forgery and forged identities (individual, cultural/national)
Illegitimacy, genealogy, and heredity theory
Imitation in nature and evolutionary or scientific theory
Artistic reproduction (eg. photographs, prints, and casts), copying, and forgery: the original versus the copy
Forgery and imitation as gendered activities
Public persona: masks and makeup
Fashions, trends, and crazes
Acting as imitation; theatricality versus authenticity
Fraud, counterfeit money, financial corruption, white-collar crime
The forgery of memory; history-writing; misremembrance
Originality, the Romantic genius, and Victorian imitation
Imitation as literary practice: (mis-)quotation, adaptation, plagiarism, piracy
Literature as imitation: re-creating other mediums in words (ut pictura poesis)
Imitating the Victorians: the re-creation of Victorian texts in neo-Victorian writing and fan cultures

All submissions should conform to MHRA house style and the in-house submission guidelines. Submissions should be received by 15 December 2017.
Contact: victoriannetwork@gmail.com

CFP: Victorian Network journal, "Forgery and Imitation" (1 Nov. 2017)

Call For Papers: Forgery and Imitation

Victorian Network is an open-access, MLA-indexed, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to publishing and promoting the best work across the broad field of Victorian Studies by postgraduate students and early career academics. We are delighted to announce that our twelfth issue (Summer 2018) will be guest edited by Aviva Briefel on the theme of Forgery and Imitation.

Recent scholarship has drawn attention to the increase in art and literary forgery in the nineteenth century, and to the preoccupation with themes of illicit imitation in the Victorian cultural zeitgeist. Critics have highlighted the manifold, intricate, and sometimes surprising ways in which forgery was woven into the social and cultural fabric of the era. The forged, the fake, and the imitative became pressing issues for artistic reproduction as growing demand and changing technology shaped the way in which texts, images, and objects circulated. The spectrum encompassed forged and imitative objects faked with criminal intent, as well as cultural and economic productivity.

Anxieties surrounding the concepts of originality and fakery also permeated nineteenth-century discussions of social authenticity – did forging an identity in a changing world open the door to faking social class, race, or gender? Did cleaving closely to imitate cultural peers maintain the status quo, mask individual dishonesty, or constitute plagiarism? Frauds, cheats, liars, and copycats of every ilk caught the public imagination. The range of depictions was broad and ambivalent. From villainous cheats like Count Fosco to romantic depictions of Chatterton, forgery and imitation marked for the Victorians a point of uneasiness that called for intricate negotiation. Furthermore, as channels of patronage and influence became increasingly fragmented, new ways of conceptualising artistic indebtedness were required. Here, too, forgery and imitation did moral battle. Appropriation, pastiche, and homage had their dark doubles: deceit, plagiarism, and hack work. Navigating intertextuality meant gauging where boundaries of influence could be crossed and where they should be policed.

We invite submissions of approximately 7,000 words on any aspect of the theme in Victorian literature and culture. Possible topics include, but are by no means limited to:

Fakery and cultural identity, the (cultural and/or economic) value of forgeries and imitations
Fakes as cultural participation
Identities of forgery and forged identities (individual, cultural/national)
Illegitimacy, genealogy, and heredity theory
Imitation in nature and evolutionary or scientific theory
Artistic reproduction (eg. photographs, prints, and casts), copying, and forgery: the original versus the copy
Forgery and imitation as gendered activities
Public persona: masks and makeup
Fashions, trends, and crazes
Acting as imitation; theatricality versus authenticity
Fraud, counterfeit money, financial corruption, white-collar crime
The forgery of memory; history-writing; misremembrance
Originality, the Romantic genius, and Victorian imitation
Imitation as literary practice: (mis-)quotation, adaptation, plagiarism, piracy
Literature as imitation: re-creating other mediums in words (ut pictura poesis)
Imitating the Victorians: the re-creation of Victorian texts in neo-Victorian writing and fan cultures

All submissions should conform to MHRA house style and the in-house submission guidelines. Submissions should be received by 1 November 2017.
Contact: victoriannetwork@gmail.com

CFP: AVSA 2017 Conference, "Victorian Materialities", Deakin University, Australia (Deadline extended: 27 Feb 2017)

Call for Papers
Victorian Materialities, AVSA Conference 
Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia
14-16 June 2017
Keynote speaker: Alexis Easley (University of St Thomas)
Deadline now extended to 27 February 2017.

In The Buried Life of Things: How Objects Made History in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 2014), Simon Goldhill observes that the profusion of objects inhabiting a Victorian drawing room “speaks insistently not simply of a history of taste, but also of the interconnected forces of the industrial revolution, which changes the modes of the production of things, and the imperial project, which changes the modes of circulation of material objects and their owners”. This interdisciplinary conference on “Victorian Materialities” takes up the “material turn” in Victorian Studies to examine the cultural meanings and significance attached to material objects by contemporaries. It aims to explore how objects both produced and reflected Victorian culture. In an era in which the industrial revolution rapidly urbanised Britain and escalated the production and consumption of goods, “things” came to have an increasingly intimate, and sometimes porous, relationship with human experience since the material world was almost always open to self fashioning. A critical focus on material objects can reveal a wealth of information about their users.

We invite papers that explore any aspect of Victorian material culture. Possible topics include:
- The expansion of commodity culture and department stores

- The circulation of goods throughout the British Empire

- Colonialism and “portable property”

- Displays and practices of collecting

- The Great Exhibition

- Periodicals and advertising

- The book as material object

- Cosmetics, clothing and bodies

- Dirt, cleanliness, and sanitation

- The Victorian household and domestic objects

- Visual culture (photographs, paintings, illustrations)

- Representation of objects in literature

- The Victorians and industry
- Space, architecture and design
- Science and technology

- Material culture and gender

- Affect, emotion and sensation

Please send abstracts of 250 words to Michelle Smith michelle.s@deakin.edu.au  along with a brief biographical note of approximately 100 words. 

CFP: "Family Ties" Symposium, 12-14 February 2017, University of Otago, Dunedin

Adam Walker and  His Family by George Romney (1796-1801)
(c) National Portrait Gallery, London

Family Ties: Exploring Kinship and Creative Production in Nineteenth-Century Britain
12-14 February 2017, Dunedin New Zealand

Plenary Speakers:
Judith Pascoe, University of Iowa
Devoney Looser, Arizona State University

Conference website

In 1800, poet and playwright Joanna Baillie dedicated her Series of Plays to her physician brother Matthew Baillie for his “unwearied zeal and brotherly partiality”; Matthew himself had recently edited the anatomical research of their uncles, John and William Hunter. At century’s end, Oscar Wilde cited his mother Jane Wilde’s translation of Sidonia the Sorceress (1849) and his great-uncle Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) as his “favourite romantic reading when a boy.” Family played an important role in the literary and artistic productions of the long nineteenth century, from the Burneys to the Brontës, and the Rossettis to the Doyles. Critical approaches ranging from Noel Annan’s “Intellectual Aristocracy” to Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory have provided useful ways of assessing and contextualising the role of family in the creative production of writers and artists, but still the role of the family remains underexplored.

Invitation for submissions
We invite submissions for “Family Ties,” a three-day symposium at the University of Otago and Otago Museum focused on British literary and artistic families in the nineteenth century. Topics for 20-minute papers might include:

Interdisciplinary Influences
Collaborations and/or Dissents
Authorial Identity/ies
Communities and Networks
Families and Emotions
Redefining Family Units
Stages of Life (births, marriages, deaths)
Reimaginings of nineteenth-century families
Families, Creativity, and Empire
Economics of Family Authorship
Literary and Artistic Legacies
Little-known Relations
Generational Influences
Please send abstracts of 250-300 words by 15 November to Dr Thomas McLean and Dr Ruth Knezevich at familyties@otago.ac.nz.

The symposium coincides with “Keeping it in the Family: British and Irish Literary Generations 1770-1930,” an exhibition at Otago’s Special Collections, and precedes the 16–19 February RSAA conference in Wellington, New Zealand. There are direct flights between Dunedin and Wellington, and we hope many participants will attend both events. “Family Ties” is made possible by generous support from the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund. It will be an opportunity to share the first results of the three-year Marsden funded project, “Global Romantics: How the Porter Family Shaped Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature.”

Call for Chapters: International Migrations in the Victorian Era (Ed. Marie Ruiz) [Abstracts due 1 April 2016]

Call for Chapters: International Migrations in the Victorian Era, Leiden: Brill, 2017.

Edited by Marie Ruiz (Université Paris Diderot, LARCA)

Migration in the Victorian era has been identified as a paramount feature of the history of worldwide migrations and diasporas. Contrary to popular belief, the Victorian era was not only marked by an

extensive exodus from Britain to the USA and the British colonies, but the Victorians also experienced a great degree of inward migration with the arrival of Catholic Irish, and oppressed Jews and Germans among others. Inward, outward and internal movements were sometimes a  response to economic hardships and employment opportunities, but this  cannot solely explain the extent of international migrations in the Victorian era.

In the Victorian period, mass migration played a significant role in shaping the nation’s identity, as well as Britain’s relationships with the outside world. This raises the question of the impact of migrations on the Motherland, as the Victorian migration trends also attracted numerous immigrants and transmigrants, who ended up remaining in Britain rather than emigrating to the USA or the British colonies. Yet, while the origins of these immigrants and transmigrants are now difficult to trace, the question of their potential impact on

the Victorian society needs to be addressed. Fears of racial degeneracy permeated the Victorian discourses on migration, and demographic and social balances were expected to be reached through people's displacements.

This edited volume aims at offering a global perspective on international migrations in the Victorian era including emigration, immigration and internal migration within Britain. Papers relating to the following themes, though not exclusively, are welcome:

Child migration

Civilising missions

Community migrations

Cultural and artistic migrations

Emigration and philanthropy

Emigration and Trade-Unions

Emigration societies

Factors determining migration

Family migration and individual migration

Female migrants and reproductive labour

Female migration in the Victorian era

Forced migration

Free passages to the New Worlds

Impact of demographics on migration

Impact of industrialisation on migration

Indentured migration

Internal migration / rural exodus

Invisible migrants

Inward migration/outward migration

Labour transportation

Land grants

Middle-class migration

Migrant stories and diaries

Migration and Empire-building

Migration and patriotism

Migration and surplus populations

Migration in the press

Migration and the Transport Revolution

Migration and xenophobia

Migration in the visual arts

Migration on screen: representing Victorian migration

Migration regulations and public policies

Migration within the British Isles

Missions and missionaries

Networks of migrations

Patterns of migration

Ports of emigration

Poverty-related migration

Promoting migration

Religious migration

Seasonal and permanent migrations

Servitude migration

Settlement patterns

Trade migration

Transmigration through Britain

Voluntary migration / involuntary migration

350-word abstracts, along with short academic biographies, should be  submitted to mariejruiz@yahoo.fr. The deadline for submission of abstracts is April 1, 2016.

CFP: RSVP 2016 Conference: Bigger, Better, More! (deadline 1 Feb 2016)

CFP: Research Society for Victorian Periodicals
BIGGER, Better, More! — Growth and Expansion in the Victorian Press

University of Missouri-Kansas City, September 9–10, 2016

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals invites proposals for its 2016 conference on the theme of growth and expansion in the Victorian press. We encourage broad interpretation of what “Bigger, Better, More!” means for Victorian newspapers and magazines, with possible topics including:

Proliferation of news events, headline stories, scandals
Serialization, sequels, symposia, rejoinders, recurring columns
Developments in printing technology, formats, editorial vision
Increased readership, population, urban and imperial expansion
Economic growth, profits, investments, windfalls, boom-and-bust cycles
Excess, hyperbole, filler
Malignant growth, plagues, floods, parasites
Natural growth, plants, parks, green spaces
Education, maturation, age, experience, longevity
Emerging taxonomies, catalogs, indexes, censuses
Developing networks, movements, professional and amateur organizations, bureaucracies
Growth of periodical studies, methodologies, pedagogies, archives

RSVP is an interdisciplinary and international organization welcoming all scholars interested in the richly diverse world of the 19th-century British press. Please send a proposal (250 words maximum) and one-page CV to rs4vp2016@gmail.com by February 1, 2016. Individual presentations should be fifteen to twenty minutes, and proposals for panels of three are welcome; be sure to include a brief rationale for the panel along with an abstract and CV for each presenter. A limited number of travel grants will be awarded to graduate students and independent scholars; please indicate in your email if you would like to be considered for one of these grants.

We are pleased to announce that the eighteenth annual Michael Wolff Lecture will be given by James Mussell, Associate Professor of Victorian Literature at the University of Leeds and author of Science, Time and Space in the Late Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press (2007) and The Nineteenth-Century Press in the Digital Age (2012). The RSVP conference also features the Robert and Vineta Colby Lecture, given by the winner of the Colby Prize for the year’s best book on the Victorian press. This year’s recipient will be announced in spring 2016.

The University of Missouri-Kansas City is a vibrant public research institution located in the heart of the city. It is walking distance to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, built on the estate of a nineteenth-century newspaper tycoon. The museum houses one of the world's largest collections of daguerreotypes. Attendees will find lodging on the Country Club Plaza, an outdoor retail and dining destination, the first of its kind when it was established in 1922. Nearby is historic Westport, site of a Civil War battle and final stop on the way to the Western Frontier, with its many locally owned eateries, live music venues, and funky shops.

For more information, please visit the conference website: rsvp2016-kc.com.

Find RSVP on the web at rs4vp.org and follow us on Twitter @RS4VP, #RSVP2016.

CFP: 2016 AVSA Conference Stream at AHA Conference, Ballarat, 7-9 July 2016 (Deadline 3/2/16)

Call for papers: AVSA 2016, "Victorian Margins",  Ballarat, Victoria, 7-9 July 2016 (Abstracts due 3 Feb 2016)
Keynote speaker:  Prof. Joseph Bristow (UCLA)

In 2016, AVSA will join the Australasian Historical Association conference in Ballarat from 5-8 July, with a stream of AVSA papers and Keynote scheduled on 7-8 July, and a program of local sightseeing on Sat 9 July.  This is a welcome opportunity to connect with Australasian colleagues in history with shared interests in the long 19th century, and for AVSA members to visit one of Australia's finest Victorian cities. The conference will be held in Ballarat's historical precinct.  Delegates may wish to allow time to explore local sites such as the Ballarat Mechanics' Institute's extensive library of 19th-century books, periodicals and newspapers.

AVSA's Keynote Speaker will be Professor Joseph Bristow (UCLA), on “Homosexual Blackmail in the 1890s,” drawing on research for his new study of Oscar Wilde’s two criminal trials.
Papers (20 minutes) or panel proposals (2-3 papers) are invited on the AVSA conference theme ‘Victorian Margins’ – some possible angles include:
• geographic margins (in the UK; in the Empire; elsewhere)
• marginalised groups (marginalised by ethnicity; class; sexuality; region; nationality)
• temporal margins (1830s; fin de siecle)
• marginalised forms of culture
• economic margins (profits and losses; costs and benefits)
• margins as gaps
• margins as liminal spaces
• marginal values
• marginalia
• margins and centres

The AVSA stream committee welcomes papers relating to Victorian Margins from any discipline in the humanities. Proposals consisting of an abstract (400 words), together with a brief author bio/note of affiliation (particularly for postgraduates) , should be submitted to Meg Tasker m.tasker@federation.edu.au by Wednesday 3 February 2016.

Those who would like to have their papers considered for an issue of the Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies on the theme, please indicate this with your abstract and aim to have the paper in a suitable form for publication as well as oral delivery by the time of the conference.  Thanks!

The Australian History Association theme is ‘From Boom to Bust.’ AVSA members may offer papers on either theme, or neither, but all paper-givers must be financial members of either AVSA or AHA.  Registration details available early in 2016, and venues will be in Ballarat CBD.

Please note that this joint conference is being organised by the Collaborative Research Centre for Australian History at Federation University, with Dr Jolanta Nowak as Administrative Officer.  General enquiries to:  aha2016@federation.edu.au please.

CFP: Texts and Contexts: The Cultural Legacies of Ada Lovelace (Deadline 28 Aug 2015)

Texts and Contexts: The Cultural Legacies of Ada Lovelace

“That brain of mine is more than merely mortal; as time will show.”

A workshop for graduate students and early career researchers
Tuesday 8th December 2015, Mathematics Institute and St Anne’s College, Oxford

The mathematician Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), daughter of poet Lord Byron, is celebrated as a pioneer of computer science. The notes she added to her translation of Luigi Menabrea’s paper on Charles Babbage’s analytical engine (1843) are considered to contain a prototype computer program. During her short life, Lovelace not only contributed original ideas to the plans for this early computer; she also imagined wider possibilities for the engine, such as its application to music, and meditated on its limitations. Lovelace leaves a legacy not just as a computer scientist, but also as a muse for literary writers, a model to help us understand the role of women in science in the nineteenth century, and an inspiration for neo-Victorian and steampunk traditions.

As part of the University of Oxford’s celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary of Lovelace’s birth, this one-day workshop will bring together graduates and early career researchers to discuss the varied cultural legacies of this extraordinary mathematician. The day will feature an expert panel including graphic novelist Sydney Padua and biographer Richard Holmes.

The day will conclude with a reception and buffet when there will be opportunities to meet with speakers from the Ada Lovelace 200 Symposium, which will also take place in the Mathematics Institute on the following two days (9th-10th December). Researchers from all disciplines are invited to submit proposals for papers on the influences of Lovelace’s work, on topics including, but not limited to, literature, history, mathematics, music, visual art, and computer science. This might include:

Lovelace’s place in the study of the history of science.
Lovelace and women in science in the nineteenth century
Early nineteenth-century scientific networks, including Lovelace’s relationship with such individuals as Charles Babbage and Mary Somerville.
Lovelace and discussions about the role of the imagination in scientific practice in the nineteenth century.
Lovelace as translator and commentator.
Mathematics and music, and the musical possibilities Lovelace envisaged for Babbage’s engine.
Lovelace’s own textual legacies, such as her correspondence, childhood exercises and mathematical notes held in the Bodleian.
Lovelace’s technological legacies, from her seminal work on Babbage’s Analytical Engine to her impact on computer programming today.
Lovelace’s role in the steampunk tradition, from Gibson and Sterling’s The Difference Engine to Sydney Padua’s The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, and neo-Victorian fashion.
Efforts and activities to commemorate and memorialise Lovelace, from the recent Google Doodle to the annual Ada Lovelace Day.

Proposals, not exceeding 250 words, for 15-minute papers should be submitted to adalovelaceworkshop@ell.ox.ac.uk by 5pm, Friday 28th August 2015. Those who are accepted to speak at this graduate workshop will also be offered free registration for the Ada Lovelace 200 Symposium taking place on the following two days. For more information, please visit https://adalovelaceworkshop.wordpress.com.