Other Worlds – Victorian Network Conference Dec 3 2011

Visit Conference Website for Details

Michael Slater, ‘Charles Dickens: An Attempt on His Life’

Event: Michael Slater, ‘Charles Dickens: An Attempt on His Life’
Date: February 29, 5pm
Location: Liverpool Hope University
Further Details:

To celebrate the Dickens bicentenary this February, the English Department has invited Michael Slater, Emeritus Professor of Birkbeck College, University of London, to give a one-hour lecture on Wednesday 29th February at 5pm.

Professor Slater is the author of an acclaimed biography of Dickens, which was published in 2009. In a review, which appeared in The Guardian, Simon Callow wrote: ”The book is an incomparable portrait of the writing life of Dickens. Cumulatively, it is profoundly moving, chronicling the constant restless interaction between the life and the work“.

Professor Slater, who has written extensively on Dickens, is a past President of the International Dickens Fellowship, and former editor of its journal, The Dickensian. He served for many years as a Trustee of the Charles Dickens Museum, including several periods as Chairman.

Link to full details: Charles Dickens: An Attempt on His Life

Gaskell Journal Essay Prize

Joan Leach Memorial Interdisciplinary Essay Prize 2011-2

“The Gaskell Journal is pleased to inaugurate its Graduate Student Essay Prize in honour of Joan Leach MBE, founder and president of the Gaskell Society. The essay competition is open to all graduate students currently registered for an MA or PhD in Victorian Studies. Preference will be shown to essays with a clear interdisciplinary focus, i.e. those that consider Elizabeth Gaskell within contemporary Victorian cultural, aesthetic and scientific debates, or else, through recent critical theory.

Essays that treat Gaskell’s work in more traditional ways, but which nonetheless demonstrate a compelling style and focus, are also very much welcomed. In all cases, clarity of argument and expression is paramount.

The winning essay will be published in the 2012 edition of the Gaskell Journal and its author will receive £200 from the Gaskell Society, as well as a year’s free subscription to the Journal.

Essays should be no longer than 7,000 words and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. The closing date for the essay prize is April 30, 2012.

Essays will be judged by members of the Gaskell Journal Editorial Board, with the final decision being made by the International Editor, Prof. Jill L. Matus.

Please see the Gaskell Journal website for further submission details.”

VanArsdel Prize 2012

Graduate students are invited to submit essays for the 2012 VanArsdel Prize for the best graduate student essay on, about, or extensively using Victorian periodicals. The winner will receive $300 and publication in Victorian Periodicals Review. Manuscripts should be 15-25 pages and should not have appeared in print. Send e-mail submissions to vpr@rs4vp.org by May 1, 2012. Submissions should be formatted as Word files in Chicago style with identifying information removed. In the accompanying e-mail, applicants should include a description of their current status in graduate school.

More information at the RS4VP website

CFP:Transforming Objects

Organisation: Transforming Objects
Theme: Transforming Objects
Closing Date for CFP: March 4
Date of Event: May 28 – 29
Location: Northumbria University

Further Details:

“…This two-day conference invites papers that consider the transformation of objects and the transformations effected by objects from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Approaches to this theme are welcomed from established scholars and especially from postgraduate research students.

Object theory and discourses of materiality largely engage with objects as stable items of a permanent nature; this conference seeks to address those moments which slip through the gaps of such readings. We wish to explore the method and process of transformation, the between-ness or not fully realised state of an object or discipline, and to consider its effect upon the culture….”

Link: Transforming Objects

Charles Dickens and the Mid-Victorian Press

Event: Charles Dickens and the Mid-Victorian Press
Date: March 28 – 31
Location: University of Buckingham
Further Details:

With papers from Laurel Brake, Iain Crawford, Judith Flanders, Holly Furneaux, Louis James, Gail Marshall, Robert Patten, Joanne Shattock, Michael Slater, John Sutherland, John Tulloch and Cathy Waters. Please visit the conference pages (linked below) for more information.

Link to full details: Charles Dickens and the Mid-Victorian Press

Journal CFP: Extending Families

Publication: Victorian Review
Theme: Extending Families
Closing Date for CFP: April 1
Further Details:

“…“Extending Families” Special Issue: Victorian Review, Fall 2013

We aim to showcase the subjects not usually considered in the nuclear family: the servant, the grandparent, the poor relation, the foster child, the ex-spouse. What does family look like when we see it as a permeable, flexible, shifting configuration? Thus, we particularly invite essays that resist the privileging of the nuclear family and work against the teleological narrative of the (heteronormative) courtship plot…”

Link: Victorian Review