Tag Archives: Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies

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Call for Papers: Embarrassing Bodies: Feeling Self-Conscious in the Nineteenth Century, deadline 22 April 2016

Embarrassing Bodies: Feeling Self-Conscious in the Nineteenth Century
Friday 17th June 2016, Birkbeck, University of London

“I begin to think that instead of being, as I once thought I was, the most self-conscious person living, I am much less self-conscious now […] than almost anybody.”
(John Stuart Mill, Letters, 1834)

Why were the Victorians so keenly aware of themselves? Why is the articulation of embarrassment such a preoccupation of nineteenth-century culture? The period is one in which both ‘embarrassment’ and ‘self-conscious’ first take on their modern meanings, and in which scientific, literary, and visual cultures seek to explore the links between the body and emotional expression. How might we approach this anxiety surrounding awkwardness? And what might be the links between embarrassment and modernity?

This one-day symposium, funded by a Wellcome Trust ISSF Grant, will explore embarrassing moments in the nineteenth century, and consider the range of ways in which the period’s writers and thinkers represent and conceptualise these experiences. From the ungainly bodies of Dickens’s greatest comic creations to the highly-charged moments of shared shyness in the novels of Eliot, and from Darwin’s explorations of the physiology of blushing to Rossetti’s red-cheeked Fair Rosamund, nineteenth-century culture is fascinated and energised by such moments of bodily preoccupation. This symposium hopes to draw together researchers from a range of disciplines, to consider these articulations of embarrassment across literary, scientific, philosophical, and visual cultures of the period.

Possible topics could include, but are not limited to:

– Shyness and awkwardness
– The physiology of embarrassment
– ‘Embarrassing’ ailments or bodily functions
– Social display and social anxiety
– Clothing and ‘embarrassing’ fashions
– The comedy of embarrassment
– Gender and embarrassment

Proposals of up to 300 words for papers of 20 minutes should be sent to e.curry@bbk.ac.uk by Friday 22nd April 2016.

This event is funded by a Wellcome Trust/Birkbeck ISSF Grant and is in association with the Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies (www.cncs.bbk.ac.uk). Follow the conference blog at awkwardvictorians.wordpress.com.

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Birkbeck Forum for c19 Studies: next event Tuesday 23 February 2016

Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies
Spring 2016 Programme

When: Tuesday 23 February 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Where: Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD

The next event of the spring term for the Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies will feature Bethan Stevens (Sussex) presenting on ‘The Wood Engraver’s Self Portrait: the Dalziel Brothers 1839-1893’ on Tuesday 23 February 2016 from 7.30pm to 9.00pm in the Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD.

Abstract: The Dalziel Brothers were the dominant London wood engraving firm of the Victorian period. They had enormous cultural power at a key moment in history, and their output of around 54,000 prints published from 1839 to 1893 included everything from Dickens and Trollope illustrations to fitness manuals and Cadbury’s adverts. They produced many of the landmark images of the century, engraving all of John Tenniel’s designs for Lewis Carroll’s Alice books of 1865 and 1871, as well as numerous Pre-Raphaelite illustrations to Edward Moxon’s landmark edition of Tennyson’s Poems(1857).

In this paper I investigate the role of the Victorian wood engraver and their business of artistically producing someone else’s lines. Is this mechanics, or creation? From drawing to autograph, the line is a powerful element of the way we understand artistic identity. The line is essential to aesthetics; without it there can be no boundary, no form, no artwork. Curling into letters and forms, the line connects writing and the image. An expressive gesture, the line is what links the body of the artist – their hands and eyes in particular – with the artwork as object. Mainstream Victorian wood engravers such as Dalziel had the job of creating another person’s line, and according to common beliefs about artistic identity and work, this is a paradox, which undermines many of our assumptions about what lines mean in art. My aim here is to explore Dalziel’s activity of making the other’s line, and to find a new method for understanding the wood engraver’s supposedly mechanical labour in relation to the imaginative and figurative artwork it produced. I think through the unique kind of authorship this involved, examining the wood engraver as line-maker, self-portraitist, signatory, stylist, and as (disembodied) hand and eye for hire.

The session is free and all are welcome, but since the venue has limited space it will be first come, first seated.

Please email c19@bbk.ac.uk to join our mailing list or to obtain further information about the series.

For further information about the Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, see: http://www.cncs.bbk.ac.uk/

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Call for Papers: ‘Victorian Periodicals Through Glass’, deadline 29 February 2016

Victorian Periodicals Through Glass: Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Digitising Nineteenth-Century Newspapers and Magazines

The Athenaeum Club, Pall Mall, London.
Friday 15 July 2016

VPTG

When the flagship Journal of Victorian Culture announced its intention in 2008 to “act as a forum for digital research on the nineteenth century and for discussion of its relationship with traditional scholarship,” it was an acknowledgement that a wide range of nineteenth century research communities had become actively engaged with the imaginative and critical possibilities opened up by the digital world. Since then, its ‘Digital Forum’ section has included challenging work from a wide range of perspectives and chronicled the growth of this discipline over the past eight years.

Similarly, since Dickens Journals Online was launched publicly in 2012, the digital reception and exploration of Victorian periodicals and Dickens’s work has enjoyed an exponential growth; last year’s Being Human festival offered a showcase for some of the most interesting and innovative digital Dickens projects happening today, including The Drood Inquiry and the Our Mutual Friend reading project and Twitter group.

Most recently, Birkbeck’s online academic journal ‘19’ (itself an innovation in digital studies of the long nineteenth century) devoted its entire 10th anniversary edition for Winter 2015 to lengthier meditations on an array of exciting endeavours within the burgeoning nineteenth-century digital archive, including the digitization of Blake’s work and the cultivation of new research networks and discourses through digital projects.

Join us then for ‘Victorian Periodicals Through Glass’, a one-day conference running in conjunction with the Sally Ledger Memorial Lecture on Friday 15th July 2016 at The Athenaeum Club, Pall Mall. At this stunning and evocative venue, we are gathering together the leading thinkers and practitioners on the use of digital resources as research tools in 19th-century literary scholarship. We warmly encourage 19th-century scholars of all kinds to join us for a stimulating programme of theoretical discussions and practical expositions. We also encourage and call for proposals for both 20-minute spoken papers and 10- to 15-minute A2 poster presentations from

    • current or recent postgraduate students who use of digital resources in their research on Victorian periodicals or any other aspect of 19th-century literary studies
    • teams or solo practitioners working on digital editions or digital representations of nineteenth-century periodicals, whether Open Access or subscription-based

Topics may include, but are not confined to:

  • Research projects that are explicitly predicated on the use of digital material
  • The boons and methodological challenges of using such material
  • Comparisons between digital and older forms of resource
  • Creative uses of digital material in your work
  • How digital resources have shaped or will shape your research

Deadline for proposals: 29 February 2016. 500 words max; 1 page attachment; mail to djo@buckingham.ac.uk Successful proposals will be announced by 20 March 2016

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Marta Weiss, with Colin Ford: ‘Julia Margaret Cameron: New Discoveries’, 26 Jan 2016

‘Julia Margaret Cameron: New Discoveries’

Marta Weiss (Victoria & Albert Museum)

Responding: Colin Ford (Former head of the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford)

When: Tuesday 26 January 2016, 6:00 – 8:00pm

Where: Keynes Library, Birkbeck School of Arts, 46 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD

This seminar will explore the new material Martha Weiss discovered while researching the current must-see exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, marking the bicentenary of the birth of Julia Margaret Cameron, 150 years after she first exhibited her work there. Colin Ford has worked extensively on this important photographer, most notably in the comprehensive catalogue Julia Margaret Cameron: Complete Photos (Getty, 2002).

This event is presented in collaboration between the Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies and the History and Theory of Photography Research Centre.

The session is free and all are welcome, but since the venue has limited space it will be first come, first seated.

Learn more about the Julia Margaret Cameron Exhibition at the V & A here: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/julia-margaret-cameron/about-the-exhibition/

Download Julia Margaret Cameron: Complete Photos (Getty, 2002) here: http://www.getty.edu/publications/virtuallibrary/0892366818.html

For further information on the History and Theory of Photography Research Centre, see: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/research/photography

For further information on the Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, see: http://www.cncs.bbk.ac.uk/

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Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies: Thursday 26 November 2015

Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies
Autumn 2015 Programme

The next event of the autumn term for the Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies will feature Ruth Phillips (Carleton University) presenting on ‘Mississauga Methodist: Peter Jones and the Visual Mediation of Ojibwe Identity in Nineteenth-Century Canada’ on Thursday 26 November 2015 from 7.30pm to 9.00pm in the Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD.

The Reverend Peter Jones, or Kahkewaquonaby, was born in 1802 into an Indigenous world in what is now southern Ontario and died in 1856 as a respected member of a settler society on the brink of achieving self-government within the British empire. The son of a Mississauga mother and a Welsh father, he married into a prominent British Methodist family and devoted his life to missionary work amongst fellow Mississauga traumatized by the rapid dispossession, dislocation, alcoholism and family violence they suffered during the first half of the nineteenth century. This lecture explores Jones’s visual and textual modes of self-fashioning as mediations of these struggles, his own bicultural heritage and the divided loyalties he sought to reconcile.

The session is free and all are welcome, but since the venue has limited space it will be first come, first seated.

For more information, see: http://www.cncs.bbk.ac.uk/

Please email c19@bbk.ac.uk to join our mailing list or to obtain further information about the series.

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Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies Summer Term 2015 Programme

Thursday 23 April 2015, 6.00 – 8.00 pm
Roundtable on the ‘Sculpture Victorious’ exhibition, featuring Michael Hatt (Warwick) and Jason Edwards (York)

The first event of the summer term for the Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies will feature Professor Michael Hatt (Warwick) and Professor Jason Edwards (York) discussing the ‘Sculpture Victorious’ exhibition at the Tate. The event will take place on Thursday 23 April 2015 from 6.00pm to 8.00pm in the Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD, and will be chaired by Professor Lynda Nead (Birkbeck). For information on the exhibition, click here.

Future Summer Term events include:

Wednesday 29 April 2015, 6.00 – 8.00 pm
Sean Grass (Iowa): ‘”What money can make of life”: Willing Subjects and Commodity Culture in “Our Mutual Friend”‘

Thursday 28 May 2015, 6.00 – 8.00 pm
Sue Zemka (Colorado): ‘Prosthetic Hands and Phantom Limbs’

Thursday 4 June 2015, 6.00 – 8.00 pm, venue TBC Panel on ‘Adapting “Our Mutual Friend”‘
Featuring Sandy Welch (screenwriter, BBC TV adaption), Mike Walker (writer, Radio 4 adaptation), Jeremy Mortimer (producer, Radio 4 adaptation)

Unless otherwise noted, all sessions take place in the Keynes Library (Room 114, School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD). The sessions are free and all are welcome, but since the venue has limited space it will be first come, first seated.

For more information, click here.

Please email c19@bbk.ac.uk to join our mailing list or to obtain further information about the series.

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New Issue of 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century

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19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century

Volume 19 (2014)
The Victorian Tactile Imagination

Whilst the art historian Bernard Berenson introduced his theory of the ‘tactile imagination’ in the late 1890s, the articles gathered here point to its flourishing much earlier in the nineteenth century. Contributors chart how reconceptualization of the touch sense in scientific and psychophysiological discourses made it a particularly important mode through which to question the distinction between mind and body, and explore issues of agency and will, and the nature of the real. A range of Victorian tactile episodes and practices are given new emphasis and attention here, including the merging of tree and human in Thomas Hardy’s fiction; the figure of the fidget; the haptic turn in mountaineering; the hand in literature; the disturbing power of touch in dreamscapes; and the search for authenticity in sculpture. Special forum sections extend the reach of the Victorian tactile imagination by considering how cultural and educational commentators disciplined blind people’s touch, and the importance of accounting for touch, as well as vision, in our interpretation of object culture.

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Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies

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Dear all,

The first meeting of the Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies will take place this Thursday, 23rd October, at 6pm in the Keynes Library. Hilary Fraser will be in conversation with other Birkbeck colleagues on the subject of her new book, ‘Women Writing Art History in the Nineteenth Century: Looking Like a Woman’. To see the full programme of events for this term, and for information on other nineteenth-century events within the University of London and beyond, please email c19@bbk.ac.uk to sign up to our mailing list.

Best wishes,
Emma Curry
Events Intern for the Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies
c19@bbk.ac.uk

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The Arts and Feeling in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture – 16-18 July 2015

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CFP: The Arts and Feeling in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture Birkbeck College, University of London, 16-18 July 2015

Keynote Speakers: Professor Caroline Arscott (Courtauld Institute of Art, London); Professor Tim Barringer (Yale University); Meaghan Clarke (University of Sussex); Professor Kate Flint (University of Southern California); Professor Michael Hatt (University of Warwick); Professor Jonah Siegel (Rutgers); Alison Smith (Tate Britain)

“She saw no, not saw, but felt through and through a picture; she bestowed upon it all the warmth and richness of a woman’s sympathy; not by any intellectual effort, but by this strength of heart, and this guiding light of sympathy…” (Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun, 1860)

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CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS: OUR MUTUAL FRIEND TWEETS – May 2014 – November 2015

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On 1st May 2014, Birkbeck’s Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies will begin a project to read Dickens’s final completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, in its original monthly instalments. The reading project will run from May 2014 to November 2015, matching the 150th anniversary of the novel’s original serialised publication (May 1864 – November 1865).

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