Free Hybrid Conference on Victorian Humour in the Digital Age
Join Us on November 7-8
The Punch’s Pocket Book Archive team warmly invites RSVP members and friends to join us for our debut hybrid conference, “‘We Are Amused’: Victorian Humour in the Digital Age” to be held November 7-8, 2024, Maison de la Recherche (MRSH), Caen University-Normandie, France, and online.
This conference aims to examine the intersections between nineteenth-century humour, under all its definitions and expressions, and the digital. In line with the ongoing Punch’s Pocket Book Archive project, which will ultimately create a fully searchable, open-access archive from a complete collection of Punch’s Pocket Book – some thirty-nine volumes representing approximately 5,000 pages – the conference will investigate the migration of jokes, squibs, spoofs and parodies, verbal and visual, from the pages of comic periodicals to 21st century screens, opening new lines of inquiry into the distinctiveness of computerized Victorian humour.
Beyond a range of presentations from scholars around the globe with plenty of time for conversation, other highlights include:
- Keynote presentations by Bob Nicholson, “Pickings From Punch: Reprinting Humour in the Transnational Press,” and James Mussell, “Endings: Seriality, Sustainability, and Carrying on”
- An interactive workshop covering a brief history of pocketbooks and opportunity to create your own hand-bound pocketbook
- A roundtable with Punch’s Pocket Book Archive team members covering our recent discoveries, lessons learned, and future plans for this burgeoning online archive project
And best of all, registration is free and open to the public!
