MIDWEST VICTORIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION  –  CALL FOR PAPERS

VICTORIAN NEWS:  PRINT CULTURE & THE PERIODICAL PRESS

CFP:  Victorian News: Print Culture & The Periodical Press

Midwest Victorian Studies Association 2016 Conference

April 8-10, University of Missouri, Columbia

Taking as its starting point the remarkable explosion in the periodical press and the availability of cheap print in the Victorian Era, the conference aims to attract papers that reflect fresh and current thinking about the topic. Proposals for papers of twenty minutes in length are sought from scholars working in art history, musicology, history, science, philosophy, theater, and literature. Presentations that will contribute to cross-disciplinary discussion, a special feature of MVSA conferences, are encouraged.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to: new perspectives on Victorian print culture; innovations in the periodical press; print technologies and “cheap print”; periodicals and the arts: fiction, poetry, art, music, and theater; the specialist press; publications for children, women, hobbyists, and the professions; science and the press; the serialization of novels; poems in periodicals; technologies of illustration; interplay of text and image; the press and popular culture; crime, sensationalism, and the press; viral news and literature; the press in the Colonies; politics and the press; gender and print culture; criticism and reviews; journalism as a profession; the economics of periodical publishing; newspaper and magazine advertising; the role of the press in the construction of taste; “neglected” publications; and newspapers as historical sources.

MVSA’s 2016 Jane Stedman Plenary Speaker will be Leanne Langley, Associate Fellow at the University of London’s Institute of Musical Research, social and cultural historian of music, and leading authority on music journalism in nineteenth-century Britain.

MVSA is an interdisciplinary organization welcoming scholars from all disciplines who share an interest in nineteenth-century British history, literature, and culture.

For individual papers or panels, send a 300-word abstract and 1-page vita (as MWord documents) by October 31, 2015, to conferencesubmissions@midwestvictorian.org. Even if you do not submit a paper or seminar proposal, attendance is welcome.

For the third year, MVSA’s conference will feature three seminars open to faculty, graduate students, and independent scholars led by senior scholars on topics related to the conference theme.  Seminar participants pre-circulate 5-to-7 page papers; during the seminars, the seminar leader and participants will identify important points of intersection and divergence among the papers and identify future areas of inquiry and collaboration.  The seminar format allows a larger number of scholars to participate in MVSA and to seek financial support from their respective institutions to attend the conference and discuss a shared area of scholarly interest.  Seminars are limited to 12 participants.

All seminar proposals are due October 15, 2015 and are submitted directly to the seminar leader.  Seminar proposals that are not accepted may be submitted to the general pool of MVSA conference submissions, due October 31.

Detailed Seminar CFPs are available at the conference website: http://www.midwestvictorian.org/p/conference.html

MVSA 2016 Seminar Topics: