The BAVS conference 2018 was held at the University of Exeter. You can download the programme here.
In addition to the BAVS Annual conference, which brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to discuss key issues in Victorian studies, here you can find a diverse range of events supported by BAVS funding.
Upcoming BAVS-funded events are:
Who Shall Deliver Me?’: Christina Rossetti and the Illustrated Poetry Book
17th – 18th December 2018
This conference accompanies a new art exhibition ‘Christina Rossetti: Vision and Verse’
at Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village
Organisers
Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village and the Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies, School of Arts
Location
17 December: Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village (Compton, Surrey). A shuttle service will be available from Guildford Station.
18 December: School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London (43-46 Gordon Sq, London)
Keynote
Professor Lorraine Janzen Kooistra (Ryerson University) and Professor Antony H. Harrison (North Carolina State University): ‘Visualizing Christina Rossetti’s Poetry in Print, Pigment, and Pixel’.
Christina Rossetti’s (1830-1894) poetry has inspired visual artists since it first began to be published in the 1840s. Artists who made designs to accompany her poetry in illustrated books include her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Frederick Sandys, Arthur Hughes, Laurence Housman and later Florence Harrison, Lucien Pissarro and Charles Ricketts. Those who engraved these designs include the prolific Dalziel Brothers firm and Joseph Swain. This Autumn Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village will host the exhibition ‘Christina Rossetti: Vision and Verse’, which is accompanied by a new publication Christina Rossetti: Poetry in Art (edited by Dr Susan Owens and Dr Nicholas Tromans, Yale University Press). This two-day symposium will bring together established and emerging scholars in the field to examine Rossetti’s work in the context of the mid-nineteenth-century illustrated poetry book. How did poets collaborate with publishers and artists in the production of illustrated poetry books? What role does ornament play in the formation of meaning? How did women poets work with illustrators and publishers?
Organised between the Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth –Century Studies and Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village, this two-day symposium will include an opportunity to tour the exhibition and a launch of the new digital edition of Goblin Market edited by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra and Anthony H. Harrison.
We welcome proposals for papers and will be particularly interested in the following topics:
The Pre-Raphaelite Illustrated Poetry Book
The Illustrated Decadent Book
The Illustrated Poetry Book in the Digital Age
In the engravers’ workshop: The Dalziel Brothers and the Illustrated Poetry Book
Ornament, Colour, and Lines: the Visual Culture of Poetry
Poetry as Collaboration
Women Poets and Women Illustrators
Christina Rossetti as a visual artist
Christina Rossetti and the Ut Pictura Poesis Tradition
Christina Rossetti, Illustrated.
Abstracts of 350 words and biographies of no more than 100 words should be sent to Tessa Kilgarriff at assistantcurator@wattsgallery.org.uk by Monday 1 October 2018. Papers should be 20 minutes in length.
Postgraduate bursaries
Four postgraduate bursaries are available. Each bursary will cover registration for both days and up to £60 towards travel expenses. To apply for a bursary please send a two-page CV and a 300 word supporting statement in addition to your abstract and biography. In the 300 word statement, applicants should explain the reasons why they are seeking financial sponsorship and how attendance at Rossetti and the Illustrated Poetry Book conference will contribute to their research and professional development. All application materials should be sent to assistantcurator@wattsgallery.org.uk with ‘Rossetti bursary application’ under the subject line by Monday 1 October 2018. Any enquiries should be similarly addressed.
Archaeology, Museums, and Collections: Exploring the Institutionalization of Archaeology
Location: King’s College London, Virginia Woolf Building
Time: 6pm
Website: https://exploringarchaeologyseminar.blogspot.com/
Museums in the mid-nineteenth century played an important role in the institutionalisation of archaeology during this time. As Andrew Christenson notes, ‘Museums were really the first professional homes for archaeology, giving tangible expression to archaeological excavations. The collections on display were the scientific equivalent to those of geologists and botanists and help to improve archaeology’s standing as a separate science’.
Museums in the mid-nineteenth century played an important role in the institutionalisation of archaeology during this time. As Andrew Christenson notes, ‘Museums were really the first professional homes for archaeology, giving tangible expression to archaeological excavations. The collections on display were the scientific equivalent to those of geologists and botanists and help to improve archaeology’s standing as a separate science’.
This monthly research group aims to examine the historical and contemporary intersections between archaeology, museums and collections. Using archives and archaeological collections in and outside of London, we intend to focus on the hidden histories of marginalised groups whose contributions to the discipline have been largely excluded in the current narrative that shapes the history of archaeology. By engaging with researchers, curators, archivists and art historians, our discussions will examine the various histories of archaeological collections in different forms such as sculptures, photographs, objects, plaster casts and discuss the various ways in which they challenge theories of archaeology that were developed in the nineteenth century.
We want to ensure that the discussions are diverse and cover a wide range of topics. The series will run from September 2018- May 2019 and will consists of talks from curators, lecturers and PhD students.
1. Naomi Daw, PhD student, Univeristy of Sussex (17th September 2018)-Stereoscopic photography, travel and the idea of edutainment
2. Alexandra Jones, Curator, V&A (8th October 2018)-Curating the Maqdala 1868 galleries at the V&A and the importance of the collections at the museum
3. Dr Eleanor Dobson, Lecturer in nineteenth-century literature (November 2018)-Howard Carter’s Tutankhamun publications and manipulation of events and issues of creative licence
4. Nicole Cochrane, PhD student, Kingston Upon Hull (December 2018)-On British collections of ancient sculpture
5. Rebecca Wade (January 2019) title tba
6. Emma Payne (February 2019) title tba
7. Alice Procter (March 2019) title tba
8. Amara Thornton, UCL (April, 2019)- Archaeologies in Print
Regionalism Across the World in the Long Nineteenth Century
Southampton Centre for Nineteenth-Century Research
Conference, 20 September 2018.
Keynote speaker: Dr Fiona Edmonds (Director of the Regional Heritage Centre, Lancaster University) ‘The myth of regions? Nineteenth-century interpretations of northern England’s medieval past.’
Many national and regional borders are currently undergoing high-profile reassessments. This topical and timely conference explores the relationship between regionalism, mobility, politics and the arts in the nineteenth century – a period which saw many such borders being drawn, re-drawn and hotly contested around the world. Co-organised by the Departments of English (Faculty of Humanities) and Social Statistics and Demography (Faculty of Social Sciences) under the aegis of the interdisciplinary Southampton Centre for Nineteenth-Century Research (https://www.southampton.ac.uk/scnr), it will bring together established international scholars, postgraduates, and early career researchers of literature, history, sociology, cultural geography, political science, ethnography, labour history, language, and linguistics, to debate the nineteenth-century precedents of an issue that is of critical importance in many parts of the world today: the intimate, sometimes symbiotic, often fractious relationships between regional identity, politics, culture, economics, and the arts.
On the day following the conference, 21 September, we are offering a limited number of places on a guided tour of the Dorset County Museum (price £3.60 per person, inclusive of minibus travel. Pre-booking essential).
Conference price: £65 (full) and £35 (concessions), includes refreshments, lunch, and evening wine reception but excludes conference dinner. The registration link is available here between 30 June and 17 September 2018: http://go.soton.ac.uk/9s1
Keynote Speakers: Pamela Fletcher Tapati Guha Thakurta In the nineteenth century the circulation of works of art developed into its recognisably modern form. The forces of increasingly globalized capitalism, imperial routes and new means of transport, coupled with the growing reach of advertising and the press caused an unprecedented movement of artists, goods and materials. …
A one-day interdisciplinary conference with keynote by Professor Mary Hammond (University of Southampton)
Keynote Speakers:
Professor Kate Flint, University of Southern California, Dana & David Dornsife College
Professor Mike Huggins, University of Cumbria
Professor Sir Christopher Ricks, Boston University
Opening Roundtable Speakers:
Edwina Ehrman, Victoria and Albert Museum
Dr Kate Hill, University of Lincoln
Professor Francesco Marroni, University of G. d’ Annunzio, Chieti-Pescara
This two-day conference, scheduled for the 10th to 11th August 2017, aims to re-evaluate the charge of ‘coarseness’ so often directed at the Brontë family. In early critical appraisals of the Brontës’ writings, accusations of ‘coarseness’ appear frequently. Although Jane Eyre(1847) was an instant bestseller, Elizabeth Rigby famously attacked the book as ‘coarse’ and accused Charlotte of …
A one day Symonsposium Keynote Speakers: Marion Thain (New York University) Nick Freeman (Loughborough University) Arthur Symons (1865-1945) is the dominant figure in English Decadent verse of the late nineteenth century. Some of his best poems had already perfected some of the techniques often attributed to the modernists, distilling the energy of the impression in …
This three day conference will be held from Wednesday 19th to Friday 21st of July 2017 in the Old Aberdeen Campus of the University of Aberdeen. It will explore all aspects related to the Scottish upbringing, education and heritage of the cleric, polymath and writer of fantastic literature George MacDonald. It aims to fathom the importance of this facet in his enduring …
A Victorian Popular Fiction Association (VPFA) NUI Galway Study Day
This day of talks, seminars and interactive displays, will focus on The Woodlanders, on the 130th anniversary of the publication of what Hardy once called his ‘best novel’
Omnipresent yet largely ignored, this one-day conference brings water in the long nineteenth century into focus
A two-day conference organised by the Cultural Currents (1870-1930) Research Group
A two-day conference that aims to bring together new research into Dickens’s afterlife and legacy, from his influence on Victorian literature, social reform and literary criticism to biographies, reminiscences and re-imaginings in the twentieth century and beyond.
A two-day conference exploring the intense fascination with ancient Egypt that permeated the cultural imagination in the nascent nineteenth century and beyond
A conference that is concerned with the complexity and diversity of Victorian consumer cultures and also seeks to consider our contemporary consumption of the Victorians.
Including a reception in the Impressionist galleries, with access to the Victorian art gallery, followed by an organ recital and conference dinner, National Museum Cardiff, and a house tour of Cardiff Castle, with interior decoration by Victorian architect William Burges.
A two-day conference exploring forgotten geographies in the fin de siècle