RSVP Annual Conference

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The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals holds its annual conference each summer or early fall at a different location in North America or Europe, on a theme relating to Victorian culture and society as reflected in its periodicals. RSVP offers a limited number of travel awards for graduate students and independent or retired scholars to assist with the costs of presenting at the conference. All those giving a paper at the RSVP conference are required to be members of the Society.

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2023 Conference CFP

Currents in the Periodical Press

July 6-9, 2023

Caen, France

(with some hybrid and online options)

Applications open 1 December 2022 and are due 15 January 2023.

We seek paper proposals on any topic related to the study of the periodical and newspaper
press during the long nineteenth century in Great Britain and the British Empire, as well as in
transatlantic and European contexts. We are particularly interested in receiving paper
proposals that engage with the theme of currents – currency, undercurrents, and crosscurrents – in the Victorian periodical press.

Held in Normandy, where history reverberated through local and global communities, the RSVP Conference in Caen invites scholars to consider currents in the Victorian periodical press. The conference topic invokes not only the news – the representation of current affairs and topicality in the press – but also issues relating to progress and change in periodical titles,
themes, forms, and roles over time. We are also interested in the notion of currency in
business, industry, and information, as well as in the actual financial workings of periodicals and publishers. Undercurrents and crosscurrents allude to divergences and convergences as well as trends and influences, both in the Victorian periodical press and in twenty-first-century periodicals scholarship.

Currents

• How do periodical forms – or their iterations across time and space – suggest notions
  of currents and flow?
• How are flows of information contained, redirected, or impeded by the
  periodical press?
• How are periodical rhythms altered by economics, taxes, the health of the
  editor, the vagaries of the marketplace, etc.?
• How was the experience of war and other current events in distant geographic locales represented and contested in the periodical press?
• How is our study of the periodical press informed by de-colonial, pan-European, and/or transatlantic currents and perspectives?
• How have recent advancements in digital remediation of periodicals and newspapers affected the way we conceive of global, regional, and local periodical discourse?

Currency

• How might the idea of currency influence our study of individual titles or particular
  formats (e.g., monthlies vs. weeklies)?
• How did worker strikes, trade embargoes, pandemics, new scientific ideas, agitations for equal rights, etc., influence the shape of the periodical press?
• How was this reflected in the starts, stops, and adaptations associated with particular periodical titles?
• How did the periodical press respond to/construct ideas of xenophobia and protectionism?

Undercurrents

• How is the “mainstream” in periodical publishing challenged or undergirded by divergent undercurrents/alternative publications from the resisting margins of counterculture (based on race, gender, sex, class, and locality), both within the UK and its colonies/dominions as well as across Europe and North America?
• How might Continental European and British periodical cultures be in synch or in oppositional relationship to each other?

Crosscurrents

• How might our scholarship engage with global economies, newspapers, travel,
  and international publication networks?
• How might it theorize crosscurrents between local and provincial papers, networks, and readerships?
• How are inclusion/exclusion, as well as differences in language and dialect (e.g., the representation of local/foreign accents), registered in the periodical press?

Submission Guidelines

The RSVP conference committee invites proposals for:

• Individual papers: Please submit an abstract (200-300 words) and a biographical note (100 words)
• Panels (3-4 presenters): Please submit a panel rationale (200 words), abstracts for all presenters (200 words per person), and biographical notes (100 words per person)
• Roundtables (max. 6 people): Please submit a roundtable rationale (300 words) and biographical notes for all participants (100 words per person).

Proposals must be submitted via RSVP’s online application portal by 15 January 2023. Applicants will learn of the acceptance decisions by approximately 20 February 2023.

Hybrid Options

We plan to make plenaries and keynote addresses available in a hybrid format. We are also planning for a limited number of slots for remote presentations in a hybrid setup at the local conference. When submitting your abstract to the portal, an option for “remote presentation required” will be provided. If you have any questions regarding this hybrid option, please email the conference organizers.