Study Day: Victorian Popular Fiction Association
Saturday, November 13th
Institute of English Studies, University of London, 2-5pm
This study day will explore issues of thematic interest in the work and lives of Victorian popular novelists. The life and work of Florence Marryat will be used as a starting point but themes under discussion will include female detectives, identity, the Victorian press, and marriage reform.
Speakers:
Greta Depledge (Royal Holloway)
Female detectives in late nineteenth-century fiction and Florence Marryat’s ‘In the Name of Liberty’
Georgina O’ Brien Hill (University of Chester)
(Re)claiming Identity in Florence Marryat’s ‘Her Father’s Name’ and Wilkie Collins’s ‘No Name’.
Tatiana Kontou (University of Sussex)
1865: Literature, culture and Florence Marryat
Beth Palmer (University of Surrey)
Florence Marryat and the Victorian Press
Eyetopia Symposium Fri November 5
Victorian Dreams of Place & Vision
Friday November 5; 1pm-6pm
Anatomy Theatre, Strand Campus, King’s College London [location]
How and what did the Victorians see? From blinking, to staring, observing, voyeurism, to conjuring spectral visions of the dead, the Victorian imaginaire derived much of its power from the aqueous life of the eyeball. But to what worlds, both real and imagined, did these manifold forms of visualisation take them?
The subjects discussed will be Darwin and observation, photography and poetry, Victorian mourning photography and the Victorian microscope and the aesthetics of wonder.-
Speakers
Professor David Amigoni (Keele), Professor Isobel Armstrong (Birkbeck), Audrey Linkman (Independent) and Alison Wood (KCL)
Refreshments will be provided and there will be a wine reception afterwards. All welcome and entrance is free.
Contact
Dr Louise Lee | Tammy Ho
louise.lee@kcl.ac.uk | t@asiancha.com
Raymond Williams Society Annual Lecture
‘Raymond Williams and the Communist Party’
Dr Ben Harker (University of Salford)
Saturday 20 November
2-3.30pm
Working Class Movement Library
51 The Crescent, Salford
The lecture will be followed by the Society’s AGM.
For more information and RSVP details see: RWS_lecture_2010 (PDF)
CFP: Lost and Found: In Search of Extinct Species
Explora International Conference
31 March–1 April 2011
CAS (EA – 801) / Toulouse Natural History Museum
Call for Papers: 20 November 2010
“Extinction has always fascinated and intrigued men, be they men of science or men of letters. The history of the Earth has been marked by five major mass extinctions, the most famous being undoubtedly the one that saw the end of the dinosaurs on Earth at the close of the Cretaceous period. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the increasing number of paleontological discoveries challenged certainties about the origins and place of man on Earth. The scientists’ search for extinct species and their conclusions, or surmises, undermined literalist readings of the Bible. Hinting at the issue of extinction, the discoveries paved the way for the development of evolutionary theory, climaxing with the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of the Species in 1859. The study of fossils was thus poised between conflicting interpretations of the evolution of life on Earth: fossils crystallized conflicts, bringing to light the tensions between science and religion and epitomizing the period’s questionings as to the past and future of man on Earth.
This interdisciplinary conference aims to look at the way in which extinct species and past ecosystems have been represented and sensationalized from the nineteenth century to the present time. It will examine how man’s sudden awareness of species extinction (from the Dodo bird and the Moa to the more recent American pigeon) and/or the threat of extinction have informed literature and the arts, particularly focussing on the impact of climate change in literary and non-literary narratives, on the issue of man’s (in)significance in the history of the Earth and on the literary and artistic significance of end-of-world scenarios.’
20-minute papers that engage with, but are not limited to, the following topics are invited:
- the history of paleontology and fossil classification
- the history of fossil collecting
- the popularisation of geology and paleontology
- the reconstructions of extinct species
- representations of extinct species in literature and the arts
- representations of ecosystems in literature and the arts
- extinct species, ecology and the development of ecocriticism
- theories of mass extinction
- end-of-world scenarios
Send 300-word proposals (attached as a .doc-file) together with a short biographical note to exploraextinctspecies@yahoo.com.
Talking Amazonian: Cranford at the London Gaskell Reading Group
“This interdisciplinary reading group unites Gaskell enthusiasts, undergraduates, postgraduates and academics from across the city and the south to discuss one of the most distinctive voices in nineteenth-century fiction. All welcome. Please join us for a glass of wine and some lively discussion.”
Wednesday October 20, 2010, 6-8pm,
King’s College London,
Strand Campus (S2.39)
Designated Reading: Cranford (1851)
Introductory talks:
Claire Rain, TV costume designer, “Mid-Victorian Dress & the Cult of Mourning”
Fariha Shaikh, KCL, “Moving Cranford: Objects and their Mobile Worlds”
* If you are interested in attending, please email one of the organisers:
Alison Lundie (alisonlundie at tiscali.co.uk) or Louise Lee (louise.lee at kcl.ac.uk)
London Gaskell Reading Group:
(Honorary President: Prof. Barbara Hardy)
Douglas Board on Graduate Researchers
An excellent short talk from Cumberland Lodge and eminent careers adviser Douglas Board, on how to think about the strengths and supposed weaknesses of your PhD skills.
(Links directly to an audio file)
http://www.cumberlandlodge.ac.uk/Resources/Cumberland%20Lodge/Audio/Douglas%20Board.mp3
