Below is a list of annual conferences held nearly since the Society’s inception. More recent conferences include links to the conference program or a description of conference activities. For information about this year’s annual conference, please visit the main Conference page.
2026
July 23-25, 2026
Trinity College-Dublin
Dublin, Ireland
Wolff Lecture
Colby Keynote Conversation
2025
July 10-12, 2025
Loyola University – Water Tower Campus
Chicago, IL USA
Wolff Lecture
Colby Lecture
Plenary Keynote Address
2024
June 13-15, 2024
University of Stirling
Stirling, Scotland
Wolff Lecture
Colby Lecture
2023
July 6-9, 2023
Université Caen Normandie
Caen, France
Wolff Lecture
Colby Lecture
2022
September 15-17, 2022
Held virtually on Whova/Zoom
Wolff Lecture
Colby Lecture
2021
September 8-12, 2021
Held virtually via Zoom
Revolution(s), Evolution(s), Circulation(s)
Wolff Lecture: Marysa Demoor, “The Revolution of the Specialized Journal: The Case of the Lancet“
Colby Lectures: Elizabeth Tilley, The Periodical Press in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, and David Finkelstein, The Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press: Volume 2, Expansion and Evolution, 1800-1900
2020
September 10-12, 2020 (Postponed)
Held virtually via Zoom and Twitter
RSVP Digital Salon
Due to concerns about safe travel during the global Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020 conference, to be held at Temple University, was postponed to September 2021. In lieu of an in-person conference, RSVP hosted a series of free online events designed to engage our members and newcomers alike. The inaugural “RSVP Digital Salon” consisted of four sessions convened over the original conference dates.
2019
July 25-27, 2019
University of Brighton
Brighton, UK
Work/Leisure, Duty/Pleasure
Wolff Lecture: Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Lisa Surridge, “What to Expect When You’re Expecting: Tracing the Vocabulary of Pregnancy in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press”
2018
July 26-28, 2018
University of Victoria
Victoria, BC Canada
The Body and the Page in Victorian Culture
A Joint Conference of RSVP and VSAWC
Joint Wolff/McMaster/Lansdowne Lecture: Sally Shuttleworth, “Fearful Bodies in Late Victorian Medicine and Culture”
Colby Lecture: Co-editors Alexis Easley, Andrew King, and John Morton, “The Shape of Water: Victorian Periodicals Research Now”
2017
July 27-29, 2017
Freiburg University
Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
Borders and Border Crossings
Wolff Lecture: Paul Fyfe, “Ways of Seeing Victorian Periodicals”
Colby Lecture: Co-editors Andrew King, Alexis Easley, John Morton, “Periodical Collaborations: Past, Present, and Future”
2016
University of Missouri-Kansas
Kansas City, MO USA
Wolff Lecture
Colby Lecture
2015
10-11 July 2015
University of Ghent
Ghent, Belgium
Life and Death in the 19th-Century Press
Wolff Lecture: Alexis Easley, “The Victorian Press: New Feminist Critical Strategies”
Colby Lecture: Caroline Bressey, Empire, Race and the Politics of Anti-Caste
2014
September 12-13, 2014
University of Delaware – Wilmington Campus
Wilmington, DE USA
Places, Spaces and the Victorian Periodical Press
Wolff Lecture: Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, “Reading between the Lines of Time and Space: Remediation and the Illustrated Periodical”
Colby Lectures: Fionnuala Dillane, “‘In type’ for Maga: Aesthetics, Affect and the Victorian Periodical” and David Latane, “William Maginn and the Denial of Authorship”
2013
July 12-13, 2013
University of Salford
Manchester, UK
Tradition and the New
Wolff Lecture: Andrew King, “Negotiations of Modernity: The Bankers’ Magazine and the Professionalisation of Banking”
Colby Lecture: Aileen Fyfe, “‘Creating a Proper System of Publishing’: The Technological Trials and Tribulations of Chambers Edinburgh Journal“
2012
September 14-15, 2012
University of Texas-Austin
Austin, TX USA
Sentiment and Sensation in Victorian Periodicals
Wolff Lecture: Margaret Beetham, “Anti-sensation? The Angel Abroad: Missionary Wives and Bad Mothers”
Colby Lecture: Joel H. Wiener, “Newspaper Sensationalism”
2011
July 22-23, 2011
Canterbury Christ Church University
Canterbury, UK
Work and Leisure
Wolff Lecture: John Drew, “An Uncommercial Proposition? At Work on Household Words and All the Year Round”
Colby Lecture: Patrick Leary, “Lost Voices”
Listen to the Colby lecture and download its presentation slides to follow along.
2010
September 10-11, 2010
Yale University
New Haven, CT USA
The Material Cultures of Periodicals
Wolff Lecture: Brian Maidment, “From Caricature to Cartoon – The Comic Image and the Periodical Press 1820-1850”
Colby Lecture: Mark Schoenfield, “The Taste for Violence in Blackwood’s Magazine”
2009
August 21-22, 2009
University of St. Thomas
St. Paul, MN USA
Victorian Networks and the Periodical Press
Wolff Lecture: Simon Potter, “A Public Sphere for the Angloworld?”
Colby Lecture: Catherine Waters, “‘Much of Sala, and but Little of Russia’: ‘A Journey Due North’, Household Words and the Birth of a Special Correspondent”
2008
July 4-5, 2008
Roehampton University
London, UK
Characters of the Press
Wolff Lecture: Linda Peterson, “Characterising Regina’s Maids of Honour and their Heirs”
Colby Lecture: Kathryn Ledbetter, “‘Ideologic Tokens’: Poetry in Victorian Periodicals; or, More on What the Wellesley Left Out”
2007
September 14-16, 2007
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, VA USA
Time and Victorian Periodicals
Wolff Lecture: Joel Wiener, “‘If there’s no news, I’ll go out and bite a dog’: Some Reflections on Transatlantic Journalism in the Nineteenth Century”
Colby Lecture: David Finkelstein, “Re-evaluating Blackwood and Its Magazine”
2006
September 14-15, 2006
Graduate Center
The City University of New York (CUNY)
New York, NY USA
Victorian Geographies
Wolff Lecture: Linda Hughes, “What the Wellesley Index Left Out; or, Why Poetry Matters to Periodical Studies”
Colby Lecture: Roundtable featuring Michael Clarke, Linda Peterson, and Alexis Easley, “Unequivocal Virtues: The Legacy of Robert and Vineta Colby”
2005
September 16-18, 2005
George Washington University
Washington, DC USA
Victorian Periodicals and Politics
Wolff Lecture: Leslie Howsam, “Narratives and Editors: History and Historians in Victorian Periodical Research”
2004
July 9-10, 2004
University of Ghent
Ghent, Belgium
Image and Text, Image in Text
Wolff Lecture: Lynda Nead, “Living Pictures on Dead Pages”
2003
September 19-20, 2003
Varscona Hotel
Edmonton, AB Canada
The Victorian Periodical Press: Texts and Contexts
Wolff Lecture: Josef Altholz was to have spoken on “Whimsy, Serendipity and Chutzpah: The Improbable Success of RSVP,” but passed away shortly before the conference.
2002
August 16-17, 2002
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI USA
Enriching the Empire: Social, Scientific, and Cultural Developments at Home and Abroad
Wolff Lecture: Joanne Shattock, “Reviewing Generations: Professionalism and the Mid-Victorian Reviewer”
2001
September 14-15, 2001
The City University of New York (CUNY)
New York, NY USA
Rethinking Victorian Periodicals in the 21st Century
Wolff Lecture: Joanne Shattock’s lecture was postponed to 2002 due to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
2000
July 20-22, 2000
Birkbeck, University of London
London, UK
Victorian Encounters: Publishers, Editors, and Readers
Wolff Lecture: Aled Jones, “The Dart and the Damning of the Sylvan Stream: Journalism and Political Culture in the Late Victorian City”
Previous Conferences (1969-1999)
- New Haven, CT 1999
- Wolff Lecture: Laurel Brake, “Star Turn? Magazine, Part-issue, and Book Serialisation”
- Vancouver, BC 1998
- Chicago, IL 1997
- Portland, OR 1996
- Edinburgh, UK 1995
- Tampa, FL 1994
- Ann Arbor, MI 1993
- Manchester, UK 1992
- Washington, DC 1991
- Waco, TX 1990
- Pasadena, CA 1989
- Chicago, IL 1988
- Aberystwyth, UK 1987
- New York City, NY 1986
- Toronto, ON 1985
- Cambridge, MA 1984
- Leicester, UK 1983
- New York City, NY 1982
- Tacoma, WA 1981
- Philadelphia, PA 1980
- St. Louis, MO 1979
- New York City, NY 1978
- Chicago, IL 1977
- Leicester, UK 1976
- Toronto, ON 1975
- Minneapolis, MN 1974
- Washington, DC 1973
- Cambridge, MA 1972
- Urbana, IL 1971
- New York City, NY 1969 & 1970