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.
2024
13-15 June 2024
University of Stirling
Stirling, Scotland
2023
6-9 July 2023
Université Caen Normandie
Caen, France
2022
15-17 September 2022
Held virtually on Whova/Zoom
2021
8-12 September 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
10-12 September 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
25-27 July 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
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
27-29 July 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
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”>/p>
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