Dickens Universe 2023

At the tail end of July, Professor Nancy Henry and Graduate Students Eliza Alexander Wilcox, Henry Kirby, and Amber Walters-Molina made their way to the University of California- Santa Cruz for the 42nd annual Dickens Universe conference. This Universe focused on Dickens’ 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities and generated conversations about interdisciplinarity in Victorian studies, transatlantic materiality, and, of course, all things Dickens.

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  C19 Seminar Dickens Universe 2023 attendees. Left to Right: Eliza Alexander Wilcox, Amber Walters-Molina, Nancy Henry, and Henry Kirby.

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  C19 Seminar graduate students Eliza Alexander and Amber having dinner with fellow graduate students at the Dickens Universe welcome dinner.

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  Left to right: Eliza Alexander Wilcox, Nancy Henry, and Henry Kirby.

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  Eliza Alexander presenting key concerns to focus on from the first group discussion while Helena Michie broke it down into categories.

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  Graduate students ventured off campus for dinner in Santa Cruz. Featuring Henry Kirby.

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  Lively conversation and entertainment ensued at the Dickens Trivia Night hosted by the graduate student cruise directors.

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  Victorian Tea presented by the Friends of the Dickens Project.

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  Local turkeys attempting to get it into the lectures.

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  The Santa Cruz wildlife was in regular attendance at the conference.

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  Round table discussion with the Dickens Universe 2023 keynote speakers.

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  Dickens Universe members preformed a farce of “A Tale of Two Cities.”

The C19 seminar members all held various roles for the conference. Henry Kirby took the lead and acted as one of the graduate student cruise directors to help the Universe run smoothly. Eliza Alexander attended the graduate student writing workshop. Amber attended the publication workshop. Dr. Nancy Henry was a leader for one led the faculty-led Graduate Student Seminars.

To quote A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

Wednesday, February 22, 2023: C19 Seminar Reading selection of Dr. Josephine McDonagh work in anticipation of INCS

Looking ahead to Josephine McDonagh’s Keynote address at INCS in April, the C19 seminar is hosting a reading and discussion of selected chapters from Dr. McDonagh’s book Literature in a Time of Migration British Fiction and the Movement of People, 1815–1876 on Wednesday, February 22 at 2 o’clock in the University of Tennessee’s Humanities Center.

The University of Tennessee to Host Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS) Conference in 2023

Nancy Henry, a senior faculty member of the C19 Seminar at the University of Tennessee, is the head organizer of the annual INCS conference alongside other members of the C19 Seminar who are working on the INCS organizing committee! Occurring in Knoxville, TN, from April 13-16, 2023, the conference will focus on movement in the 19^th century.

Although our recent experience has been of restricted movement due to the pandemic, we live in a time of change to the ways we move (electric vehicles, space travel), mass dislocations and migrations around the world, and movements for political change (Black Lives Matter, #MeToo) tied to new communication tools.

The nineteenth century was also marked by accelerating movement(s): of peoples, commodities, ideas, technologies, and feelings. The period was characterized by the modernization of transportation,communication, and travel. Dance, theatre, sports, and literature flourished through new forms of physical movement that moved audiences in affectively novel ways. Political, social, and aesthetic movements reshaped culture and society. We welcome proposals on nineteenth-century movement and movements of all kinds.

INCS 2023 Call for papers Decription

Throughout the conference, INCS will feature Karla Slocum and Josephine McDonagh as keynote speakers and a large group Maria Edgeworth Transcribe-A-Thon. To learn more about INCS 2023, visit INCS2023.com.

November 10th, 2022: C19 Seminar Hosts Reading of Black Towns, Black Futures with Africana Studies Department

Cover of Black Towns, Black Futures by Dr. Karla Slocum

In preparation for the University of Tennessee to host the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies conference (INCS) in April of 2023, the C19 Seminar—alongside Africana studies— hosted a read of Dr. Carla Slocum’s work from Black Towns, Black Futures: The Enduring Allure of a Black Place in the American West, as she is one of the keynote speakers presenting in April at INCS. Dr. Delisa Hawkes led the forum in November of 2022, which covered the first three sections of Dr. Slocum’s book.

Wednesday, February 16: Invited Speaker Alisha Walters

The “Sallow Mr. Freely”: Sugar, Appetite, and Unstable Forms of Whiteness in George Eliot’s “Brother Jacob” 3:30 p.m., Wednesday, February 16 on Zoom https://tennessee.zoom.us/j/97160713573

Dr. Walters’ talk is part of her current book project,
Affective Hybridities: Race, Mixture, and British Nationality from 1850-1901.

Alisha R. Walters is an Assistant Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture at Penn State University, Abington College. Her work examines representations of race and racial mixture in the nineteenth century, and her research focuses on the tensions between scientific and affective ideas of race, particularly in depictions of people of color in Victorian fiction. She also writes about colonial and literary depictions of food, as she considers what Victorians wrote about food and the dynamic process of national identity formation. Her work has appeared in journals such as Victorian Literature and Culture, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, and Women’s Writing and Victorian Review.

Christmas in July

The c19 seminar celebrated the 40th Dickens Universe, featuring Charles Dickens’ most adapted novella, “A Christmas Carol,” with a Christmas feast at Emi’s beautiful home. This year, the c19 seminar and the University of Tennessee is sending graduate students Rochelle Davis, Josh Dobbs, Emi Gonzalez, Eliza Wilcox and Professor Nancy Henry to the virtual universe.

We are especially excited for Emi and Eliza’s first experience at the Universe! At the Universe, Emi and Josh will be co-teaching a graduate student led seminar on the novel as form to Universe attendees. Rochelle will be attending a seminar on conference presentation, and Eliza will be attending a Writing workshop

L: Rochelle Davis, Emi Gonzalez, Nancy Henry, Eliza Wilcox

Emi is most looking forward to the the panel “Marley was dead; to begin with’: Dickens, Death and Christmas” featuring Robert Patten (Rice), John Jordan (The Dickens Project/UC Santa Cruz) and Catherine Waters (University of Kent), “mainly because [death] is not something that you usually equate with Christmas time, but I know it is so central to the story, and I’m really excited to hear the speakers’ perspectives.”

Eliza is most looking forward to working with Dr. Ryan Fong (Kalamazoo) in her writing workshop; likewise, she is looking forward to “the panel on Black Adaptations of a A Christmas Carol [as it] seems like a wonderful opportunity to continue thinking about ways to re-invigorate and un-discipline the Victorian era and Victorian studies.”

Josh is excited to update his knowledge of contemporary research on A Christmas Carol: “…What I was looking forward to was learning what the more recent voices had to say concerning the novella and Dickens as an author. The Universe has done an amazing job of connecting Dickens to the current academic discussions, which has helped to keep Dickens as relevant as he has been through the years, and this year is no exception.”

Rochelle, Eliza, and Emi both are looking forward to the networking opportunities that is unique to Dickens Universe. As the conference started, Emi says she has been “enjoying the conversations that have been generating in both the graduate session [she is] leading, and the faculty led session [she is] attending.” As this is Rochelle’s second time attending the Universe, she has been glad to see graduate students from other institutions that she met at her first Universe and catch up on what new research they have been generating.

 

“I will live in the past, the present, and the future. The spirits of all three shall strive within me.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Helena Michie to Speak on November 7

On Tuesday, November 7, Helena Michie (Rice University) will give a talk titled “Middlemarch and Anniversary Thinking” at 3:30 pm in McClung 1210.

What does it mean to be celebrating George Eliotʼs 200th “birthday”?

Professor Michie will celebrate the bicentennial of George Eliot by exploring the cultural importance of the anniversary and what she calls anniversary thinking—that way of imagining time that records distance between events while acknowledging and relying
on repetition. She will go on to explore a specific set of anniversaries: three times (out of many) that she read Middlemarch and was inspired by noticing a different word. In the course of the talk Professor Michie will consider the act of rereading and its ties to other
forms of temporality; the intimacies of life as a reader; the power of difficult words; the relation between private and professional acts of reading; and the limits and possibilities of anniversary thinking.

Helena Michie is the author of five books in Victorian Studies and the study of gender and sexuality. Her most recent book, Love Among the Archives: Writing the Lives of Sir George Scharf, Victorian Bachelor, with Robyn Warhol, won the North American Victorian Studies Associations 2015 Best Book of the Year prize. Professor Michie teaches courses in feminist theory, literary theory, and Victorian literature and culture. She also teaches classes and workshops on professional writing. Professor Michie has served over the years in a number of administrative positions, including English Department Chair, director of the Program for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, and the founding Faculty Advisory Board Chair for the program in Writing and Communication.

Nancy Henry attended NAVSA 2019, held in Columbus, Ohio. The theme of this year’s conference was “media. genre. the generic.”

Nancy Henry with Alison Booth (UVA), Pearl Brilmyer (Penn) and Carolyn Williams (Rutgers).

Nancy Henry moderated two panels: “Victorians on Italy and it’s Pasts” and “George Eliot at 200: Reassessing Genres.”

Ruth Livesey at UTK on October 15

On Tuesday, October 15th, Ruth Livesey (Royal Holloway University of London) will give a talk titled “George Eliot and Vincent Van Gogh: Everyday Life in Colour” at 3:30 pm in The Human Social Sciences Building, Room 051.

Not many people know that George Eliot’s fiction had a huge influence on the work of Vincent Van Gogh. When he sent a copy of his iconic brilliant yellow painting, Bedroom at Arles (1889), to his sister he said he was trying to paint something of Eliot’s novel, Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), set in ‘Treby Magna’, a fictional version of Nuneaton. Other paintings reference the landscape of provincial life Eliot depicted in Scenes of Clerical Life, Adam Bede, and Silas Marner. Ruth Livesey will use Van Gogh’s paintings to look again at George Eliot’s places. What do these two great artists share in the way they depict everyday life? What do they do in their work to make everyday places and ordinary people seem full of radiant color and significance – and why does that matter now, more than ever?

L: Nancy Henry, Ruth Livesey, Amy Billone

Ruth Livesey is Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature and Thought in the Department of English, Royal Holloway, University of London. Her books include Socialism, Sex, and the Culture of Aestheticism in Britain, 1880-1914 (2007) and Writing the Stage Coach Nation: Locality on the Move in Nineteenth-Century (2016). During 2019-2020 she is an Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellow, researching provincialism, literature and culture in the nineteenth century. As part of that project she is working in partnership with the George Eliot Fellowship and Writing West Midlands to engage readers and writers with George Eliot during her bicentenary year.

C19 Seminar Welcomes Fall 2019

L front: Hilary Havens, Nancy Henry, Jennifer Smith, Robin Barrow, Josh Dobbs                            R front:  Erin Bistline, Rochelle Davis, Caroline Wilkinson, Amberly Walton, Amy Billone

The c19 Seminar met Tuesday, August 27th to kick off the Fall 2019 semester. We welcomed new members and spoke about our plans for the upcoming semester.

We are looking forward to talks from visiting speakers Professor Ruth Livesey (Royal Halloway University of London)  on Tuesday, October 15th and Professor Helena Michie (Rice University) on Thursday, November 7th. We plan on preparing for their talks by reading and discussing recent articles written by both speakers.

Our members will also present their work-in-progress.  Graduate student Jennifer Smith will present her conference paper, “Uncanny Bedfellows in Cassandra Clare’s Infernal Devices Trilogy,” which she will be presenting at the Victorian Popular Fiction Association’s Study Day on Sept. 20 in Dublin, Ireland. Lecturer Erin Bistline will also present a revision of her dissertation chapter, “Changing the Lives of Horses: Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty and the British and American Book Trade.”

This year also marks the bicentenary of numerous births of prominent Victorians such as Queen Victoria, John Ruskin, and George Eliot. We plan on celebrating this important milestone at the end of the semester.