Special Session: Celebration and Commemoration in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals
The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) seeks proposals for a special session at the 2024 Modern Language Convention in Philadelphia, in keeping with the presidential theme of Celebration: Joy and Sorrow. We welcome abstracts of 250-400 words on any aspect of celebration and/or commemoration within the nineteenth-century periodical press. Topics
might include:
- Representations of celebrations and commemorations in nineteenth-century periodicals,
including weddings, balls, holidays, memorials and funerals; - Royal celebrations and commemorations in the nineteenth-century press, including jubilees,
coronations, royal birthdays, births of heirs, and funerals; - The food and drink of nineteenth-century celebrations and commemorations as they appear
in the press, including menus, recipes, pubs, picnics, and restaurants; - Nineteenth-century domestic ideology in the press and celebration, commemoration, joy,
and sorrow; - The celebration and commemoration of technical achievements (the railways, the
transatlantic cable, etc) in the press; - Joy, humor, pleasure, comedy, slapstick, and humor in the nineteenth-century press;
- Sorrow, melancholy, grief, and mourning in the nineteenth-century press;
- Celebrations and commemorations within nineteenth-century serial fiction;
- The design, contents, and rhetoric of special or commemorative issues;
- Christmas special issues and supplements;
- The visual rhetoric and technology of the nineteenth-century press as applied to celebrations,
commemorations, joy, and sorrow (page design, illustration, photography); - Celebrations and commemoration among communities of publishers, editors, writers,
printers, and others who produced periodicals (the Punch Brotherhood and others); - Celebrations and commemorative events within periodical studies.
Send Your Proposal In by March 13, 2023
Please send abstracts and a 1-page C.V. to Natalie Houston by March 13, 2023. Applicants do not need to be members of RSVP to submit. Authors of
accepted papers must be (or become) members of MLA by April 7.