BIGGER, Better, More! — Growth and Expansion in the Victorian Press
University of Missouri-Kansas City, September 9–10, 2016
The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals invites proposals for its 2016 conference on the theme of growth and expansion in the Victorian press. We encourage broad interpretation of what “Bigger, Better, More!” means for Victorian newspapers and magazines, with possible topics including:
• Proliferation of news events, headline stories, scandals
• Serialization, sequels, symposia, rejoinders,
recurring columns
• Developments in printing technology, formats,
editorial vision
• Increased readership, population, urban and imperial
expansion
• Economic growth, profits, investments, windfalls,
boom-and-bust cycles
• Excess, hyperbole, filler
• Malignant growth, plagues, floods, parasites
• Natural growth, plants, parks, green spaces
• Education, maturation, age, experience, longevity
• Emerging taxonomies, catalogs, indexes, censuses
• Developing networks, movements, professional and
amateur organizations, bureaucracies
• Growth of periodical studies, methodologies, pedagogies, archives
RSVP is an interdisciplinary and international organization welcoming all scholars interested in the richly diverse world of the 19th-century British press. Please send a proposal (250 words maximum) and one-page CV to rs4vp2016@gmail.com by February 1, 2016. Individual presentations should be fifteen to twenty minutes, and proposals for panels of three are welcome; be sure to include a brief rationale for the panel along with an abstract and CV for each presenter. A limited number of travel grants will be awarded to graduate students and independent scholars; please indicate in your email if you would like to be considered for one of these grants.
We are pleased to announce that the eighteenth annual Michael Wolff Lecture will be given by James Mussell, Associate Professor of Victorian Literature at the University of Leeds and author of Science, Time and Space in the Late Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press (2007) and The Nineteenth-Century Press in the Digital Age (2012)
The RSVP conference also features the Robert and Vineta Colby Lecture, given by the winner of the Colby Prize for the year’s best book on the Victorian press. This year’s recipient will be announced in spring 2016.
For more information, please visit the conference website: rsvp2016-kc.com.
Find RSVP on the web at rs4vp.org and follow us on Twitter @RS4VP, #RSVP2016.