The Gaskell Journal invites submissions from PhD and MA students for its biennial Graduate Student Essay Competition. The winning essay (6,000–7,000 words) will offer an original contribution to Gaskell studies, and will be published in The Gaskell Journal. Its author will receive £200 from the Gaskell Society, and a complimentary copy of the journal. Essays will be judged by members of the Gaskell Journal Editorial Board, with the final decision being made from a shortlist by a leading scholar in Gaskell studies.

Submissions should be sent to the journal’s editor (and founding member of the Nineteenth-Century Research Group at Lincoln), Dr Rebecca Styler <rstyler@lincoln.ac.uk>, by the deadline of 10 February 2016. (Please note the amended deadline.)

Further details are available here.

There are two events taking place in Lincoln next week that may be of interest to our readers. On 11 February, Margot Finn will deliver a paper at Lincoln concerning her recent Leverhulme-funded project on the East India Company in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And the next day, Alice Crossley is offering a Valentine’s-themed talk uphill at Bishop Grosseteste. Please see below for details.

Wednesday 11 February 2015, 4.15 p.m., MC0024 (University of Lincoln)

Professor Margot Finn (UCL)

‘The East India Company at Home: New Pathways to Old Histories’

Thursday 12 February 2015, 4 p.m., Hardy Building – Teaching Room 2 (Bishop Grosseteste)

Dr Alice Crossley (Bishop Grosseteste)

‘Victorian Valentines: From Sentiment to Satire’

Last Wednesday we heard from four newly minted PhD candidates in the College of Arts. Tasked with explaining their topic in five minutes just a few months into their doctorates, the students produced a number of suggestive research questions and fruitful lines of discussion.

Ben Perkins (English) began with the paradoxes that characterise Tennyson’s handling of the non-European subject—at once peddling mysticised dreams of religious tolerance and propagating racist stereotypes.

John Davies (History and English) took us through his labours in the Tennyson Research Centre, including rarely seen examples of Tennyson’s annotations and doodles, as a way of introducing questions both curatorial and theoretical.

Grace Harvey (English) persuasively spoke of the male experience of sociability in the late eighteenth century, triangulating philosophy, literature, and biography in her account of William Godwin and his circle.

Finally, Tom Kupper (Art History) is working on amateur ecclesiastical design and decoration between 1830 and 1880. Tom poignantly evoked the forgotten amateurs who furnished Britain’s churches, such as Æneas B. Hutchison, vicar in a number of parishes during the Victorian period, of whom we know little more than his (magnificent) name and his enthusiasm for restoration.

Thanks to all presenters for their thought-provoking contributions. We hope to have each of you back for an extended research paper further into your projects.

Below: A number of Tom Kupper’s examples of amateur ecclesiastical design were drawn from St Mary and All Saints, the parish church of Bingham—less than an hour’s drive from Lincoln.

Drumroll please…our programme for the semester! Including our first session this Wednesday, when we’ll hear from our own PG students.

All sessions take place on the University of Lincoln’s Brayford Pool campus, in MB1013 (Minerva Building).

28^th January 2015: PhD Research Panel – 4.15 p.m.

We will hear from a number of PhD candidates in the College of Arts whose research focuses on topics in the long nineteenth century.

11^th March: Dr Katherine Mullin (University of Leeds) – 5 p.m.

‘Barmaids and Reading’

15^th April: Dr Claudia Capancioni (Bishop Grosseteste University) – 4.15 p.m.

‘At Poggio Gherardo with Janet Ross: Literary Legacy and Intellectual Communities’

All welcome. Refreshments served fifteen minutes before the talk starts.

Image at top: Richard Hamilton, ‘Bronze by Gold’ (1987), © Trustees of the British Museum.

The next event of the Midlands Interdisciplinary Victorian Studies Seminar is to be held on Friday 23 January 2015 at the University of Northampton.

The theme is ‘Victorian Education’ and the keynote speaker is Dr Phillippa Bennett, whose theme is ’Educate and Agitate: William Morris and the Meaning of Education’.

Proposals are invited for papers of 20 minutes in length, which should be sent to Rebecca Styler rstyler@lincoln.ac.uk by/on 28 November. A more detailed CFP is pasted in below. The committee hopes to confirm the programme by 5 December.

If you are interested in leading a discussion on the day’s theme, then please also get in touch with Rebecca by the same date.

—

CFP: ‘Victorian Education’

 “Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life…”

 23 January 2015, University of Northampton (time tbc – approx. 11–4)

 Keynote Speaker: Phillippa Bennett – ‘Educate and Agitate: William Morris and the Meaning of Education’

The next Midlands Interdisciplinary Victorian Studies Seminar, hosted by the University of Northampton, will explore the theme of Victorian education. We seek papers that address this theme from various disciplinary and multi-disciplinary perspectives. Topics could include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Nineteenth century theories of education / Victorian and C21 pedagogies
• Sites of learning (schools, museums, clubs)
• Methods of teaching in etiquette books, guides and domestic manuals
• Children’s literature, didacticism, anti-didacticism
• Education of the poor / Purposes of education
• The figure of the teacher / Literary representations of education
• Nature and education / the Romantic legacy in Victorian education
• Public schools (‘flogging and fagging’)
• Educational Reforms
• Women and education

Please send ideas for papers of 20 minutes length to Rebecca Styler (rstyler@lincoln.ac.uk) by Friday 28 November.

This is an informal event and we do not require full conference-type proposals – and please do not exceed 250 words. You do not have to live or work in the Midlands, but preference may be given to those who do.

As usual, travel bursaries will be available to postgraduate students on a first come first served basis – there will be 5 bursaries of £20, though if there is not much uptake we may be able to provide more help with travel costs to individuals. Please contact Kate Hill (khill@lincoln.ac.uk) if you are interested in applying for a travel bursary.

MIVSS is supported by the British Association for Victorian Studies.