Amy WilcocksonComments Off on BARS Executive: Secretary Vacancy
Dear Members,
The BARS Executive is looking to appoint a new Secretary, following Jennifer Orr’s election to Vice President. The role will be co-opted in the first instance with the role open to election in the forthcoming round.
Although the role of BARS Secretary is primarily administrative (supporting the business of the Executive, setting up of meetings and circulation of documents and communications from the membership), it is an exciting opportunity to develop a portfolio in the individual’s areas of interest. We would particularly encourage Early Career colleagues to apply as it is an ideal way to become familiar with all aspects of the organisation. As an Officer role, we would hope that the occupant would be keen to shape the role according to their interests and to play a strategic role in the organisation.
The key responsibilities of the role are as follows:
Keeping and verifying minutes of BARS meetings
Liaising with Executive members to arrange 3 annual meetings online (Spring, Summer, Autumn) in consultation with the President and Vice President;
Liaising with the President and Vice President to organise the BARS Biennial General Meeting which takes place at the BARS Conference (chaired by President)
Preparation of Agenda for meetings and liaising with Executive members to procure short reports on each officer’s area of responsibility and to circulate these prior to meeting
Upkeep of BARS archive
Forwarding of queries to relevant officers
Circulating Conference Subvention requests to the Executive for approval and communicating the decision to the applicant
Joining ad-hoc working groups and committees as and when needed
Person specification
Excellent organisational skills
Communication skills
Attention to detail
Desirable experience
Experience of serving committees either inside or outside of academia
Preparation of minutes and other administrative documents
Experience in a public-facing communications role
Please send a one page Expression of Interest and short CV to the BARS Vice President (Jennifer.orr@ncl.ac.uk) and President (mandal@cardiff.ac.uk) by 9 July 2023. We anticipate that candidates will be notified no later than 17 July 2023.
Submissions to the Emerging Scholars Award and the Article Prize are due July 1, 2023. Winners will each receive a cash award of $500 to be presented at the Annual NCSA Conference.
The Emerging Scholars Award
The work of emerging scholars represents the promise and long-term future of interdisciplinary scholarship in nineteenth century studies. In recognition of the excellent publications of this constituency of emerging scholars, this award recognizes an outstanding article or essay published during the author’s doctoral studies or within the six years following conferral of a doctorate. The winning article will be selected by a committee of nineteenth-century scholars representing diverse disciplines. The winner will receive $500 to be presented at the annual NCSA Conference in 2024. Applicants are encouraged to attend the conference at which the prize will be awarded. Entries can be from any discipline and may focus on any aspect of the long nineteenth century (the French Revolution to World War I), must be published in English or be accompanied by an English translation, and must be by a single author. Submission of essays that are interdisciplinary is especially encouraged. Articles that appeared in print in a journal or edited collection in 2022 or between January 1, 2023 and June 30, 2023 are eligible for the 2024 Emerging Scholars Award; if the date of publication does not fall within that span but the work appeared between those dates, then it is eligible. Articles may be submitted by the author or the publisher of a journal, anthology, or volume containing independent essays.
The Article Prize recognizes excellence in scholarly studies from any discipline focusing on any aspect of the long nineteenth century (French Revolution to World War I). The winning article will be selected by a committee of nineteenth-century scholars representing diverse disciplines. The winner will receive a cash award of $500 to be presented at the Annual NCSA Conference. Entries can be from any discipline, must be published in English or be accompanied by an English translation, and submission of essays that are interdisciplinary is especially encouraged. Articles that appeared in print in a journal or edited collection in 2022 or between January 1, 2023 and June 30, 2023 are eligible for the 2024 Article Prize; if the date of publication does not fall within that span but the work appeared between those dates, then it is eligible. Articles may be submitted by the author or the publisher of a journal, anthology, or volume containing independent essays.
Articles submitted to the NCSA Article Prize competition are ineligible for the Emerging Scholars Award and vice versa; only one entry per scholar or publisher for one of the two awards is allowed annually. Nineteenth-Century Studies Association’s Officers, Board, Senior Advisory Committee, and Article Prize and Emerging Scholars Award Committee members are not eligible to receive the award until two years have elapsed since their service.
Amy WilcocksonComments Off on Stephen Copley Research Report: Yu-Hung Tien on John Keats’ Afterlives
Here we have the latest report from Yu-Hung Tien, the most recent winner of the Stephen Copley Research Awards, for more information about how to apply, please see here.
I’d firstly like to take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude to BARS for offering their Stephen Copley Research Awards in support of the continuation and celebration of Romanticism and its ever-evolving legacies. I used the funding to conduct two research trips, which included one to Rome in March and the other to London in May. Through these experiences, I as a first-year PhD student gained more solid contextual knowledge about the doctoral project that I am now working on, and developed a much clearer picture of its future direction.
My project looks at the literary afterlives of John Keats through a less explored transatlantic lens, particularly in Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was initially fascinated with the ways in which the notions of mortality and immortality are interwoven by Keats. I then started to ponder whether or not Keats might have expected to ‘immortalise’ himself through his words. I was thereafter drawn to his last surviving letter written in Rome, dated 30 November, 1820, to Charles Brown. In this letter, Keats confesses with poignancy if not with a great ambition, ‘I am leading a posthumous existence’. My interests in probing his ‘posthumous existence’ were thereby forged—I have ever since then been keen to explore the ways in which Keats might have been kept ‘alive’ in other writers’ words.
Whereas my thesis’s approach is to look at Keats’s transatlantic legacies—an approach that is less adopted in the existing ‘Keats Reception Studies’—at its preliminary stage, I decided to retrace the ways in which his afterlife started to take shape, which is expected to help lay a solid foundation for my succeeding argument. I thus made up my mind to dedicate my first research trip to Rome, particularly to the Keats-Shelley House, the place where Keats embarked on his path to reach the state of immortality, and now, to review it in hindsight, a starting point from which my research journey departs to immortalise Keats.
My admiration for Keats’s life and writing was indeed amplified by all the public collections at the Keats-Shelley House. What inspired me the most, however, was an invaluable opportunity with which the Keats-Shelley House granted me to consult a few works stored in their library. All of them are extremely beneficial to my current project. For example, The Poetical Works of John Keats: With a Life (1863) published by Little, Brown and company in Boston that I consulted reshaped my perception of how Keats might have been received in the US in the late nineteenth century. I was particularly drawn to the chapter ‘The Life of Keats’ written by J. H. L., through which I developed a renewed insight into how readers on the other side of the Atlantic might have perceived the ways in which Keats’s ‘intellect was satisfied and absorbed by his art, his books, and his friends’ (19). Another book that I consulted, John Keats: The Principle of Beauty (1948) by Lord Gorell refreshed my approach to Keats’s aesthetics, which will play an important role in some of my close readings.
My second research trip to London was primarily dedicated to my visit to the British Library. Among all the materials that I consulted, I was particularly inspired by A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors from the Earliest Accounts to the Later Half of the Nineteenth Century, Vol. II (1870) by S. Austin Allibone, and the Index of English Literary Manuscripts, Vol. IV 1800-1900, Part 2 Hardy – Lamb (1990) by Barbara Rosenbaum. The former informed me of the critical reviews that Keats received in the long nineteenth century—of which I was not aware—that shape the portrayals and (re)presentations of his reception. Through the latter, I was impressed to see how Keats’s autographs and manuscripts are kept on both sides of the Atlantic. This discovery, on the one hand, enlightened me with an insight suggesting the transatlantic journey that Keats’s poetry has undertaken as not just on a figurative but also on a physical level. It also on the other hand hinted at some future research trips for me to take on the other side of the Atlantic, which would assist me in rebuilding the poet’s transatlantic afterlives in a more comprehensive manner.
As Keats writes in the beginning of his Endymion, ‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: / Its loveliness increases; it will never / Pass into nothingness’. To end with my report, I’d like to again express my deep gratitude to BARS for offering this research award. With its support, I gained a clearer idea of the potential pathways for me to undertake in the near future to help complete my current project. More fundamentally speaking, I was inspired by the materials which I consulted during the research trips outlined above. Through them, I developed a refreshing insight into Keats’s poetry. I started to approach it as such ‘a thing of beauty’ bringing me endless joy and inspiration, whose ‘loveliness increases’ and hopefully through my own research ‘will never / Pass into nothingness.’
Yu-Hung Tien is a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, UK. His research interests lie in Romanticism and its transcultural legacies. His current project explores the afterlives of John Keats from a transatlantic perspective, with a particular focus on the poet’s literary survival in Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Yu-Hung has recently published an article in the Symbiosis journal. He is also a Communications Fellow for the Keats-Shelley Association of America (K-SAA).
Francesca KilloranComments Off on ESSAY PRIZE: Forum Essay Prize deadline extended
The General Editors of Forum for Modern Languages have agreed to extend the deadline for submissions to the 2023 Forum Prize. This is now the 1 July 2023. All other details remain the same.
Romantic submissions very much encouraged!
Entries are invited for the 2023 Forum Essay Prize, on the subject of:
“Courageous Art(s)”
We are looking for bold, visionary and persuasive essays that use academic research to pursue innovative questions. The winning essay will be that judged by the panel to have best addressed the topic with flair, ambition and resonance.
The topic may be addressed from the perspective of any of the literatures and cultures (including literary linguistics, translation and comparative approaches) normally covered by the journal: Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Please note that material of a predominantly social science or sociological nature falls outside our scope.
We are seeking submissions that focus on literature, film, art, or other cultural outputs that manifest courage in their content or form and/or which provoke us to be courageous in how we read, write, research and teach in our discipline(s). Possible approaches to the subject include, but are not limited to:
courage of convictions;
courage in face of danger, prosecution, speaking to power, intimate or large-scale violence;
fear and fearfulness;
narratives of courageous self-expression;
dangerous mission and rescue stories;
art forms that dare to break moulds
The competition is open to all researchers, whether established or early career. Previous competitions have been won by scholars in both categories.
The winner will receive: 1. Publication of the winning essay in the next appropriate issue of Forum for Modern Language Studies 2. A prize of £500.
A panel of judges will read all entries, which will be assessed anonymously. At the judges’ discretion, a runner-up prize of £200 may be awarded. The Editors may commission for publication in Forum for Modern Language Studies any entries that are highly commended by the judges.
Entry requirements and Submission details for the ForumPrize 2023
The closing date for entries is 1 July 2023.
Entries must be written in English, be between 6,000 and 8,000 words in length (including notes), should conform to MHRA style, and must be accompanied by an abstract (approx. 150 words) summarizing the principal arguments and making clear the relevance of the essay to the competition subject.
Francesca KilloranComments Off on CfP: English journal on ‘Precarity in Perspective’.
The peer-reviewed journal English is seeking contributions for a special issue (eds. Archie Cornish, Kate De Rycker, and Cathy Shrank) which will bring together fresh perspectives on precarity, both as a topic for literature, and as an aspect of literary careers of the past and present.
We invite the following three types of contribution:
a) 2000-4000 word think-pieces, reflections on practice or other opinion pieces on our key themes
b) longer pieces of finished research that engage with our themes on an intellectual, historical, theoretical or practice-based level (7000-8000 words)
c) suggestions for relevant book reviews (books published from 2020 onwards)
Cathy Shrank (Sheffield), Archie Cornish (Sheffield), and I are guest editing a special issue of ‘English’ (the Journal of the English Association), and we’re looking for articles (7,000-8,000 words), shorter think-pieces (2,000-4,000) and suggestions for book reviews on the theme of ‘precarity in perspective’.
We’re keen to hear from PhDs/colleagues working on precarious contracts, as well as in different sectors- e.g. school teachers, librarians, archivists.
Further details and suggestions for topics within that theme are available here in the CfP:
We are glad to announce the publication of the most recent issue of The BARS Review (No. 59, Autumn 2022). The issue contains ten reviews of recent scholarly work within the field of Romanticism, broadly conceived. Four of the reviews comprise a ‘spotlight’ section on ‘Rethinking Romantic Concepts’.
If you have comments on the new number, or on the Review in general, we’d be very grateful for any feedback that would allow us to improve the site or its content. As always, Mark Sandy would be very happy to hear from people who would like to review for BARS.
Editor: Mark Sandy (Durham University) General Editor: Anthony Mandal (Cardiff University) Technical Editor: Matthew Sangster (University of Glasgow)
Amy WilcocksonComments Off on CfP: NASSR 2024 Romantic Insurrections / Counter-Insurrections
August 15-18, 2024 Georgetown University, Washington D.C.
We convene the 30th Annual NASSR Conference in Washington D.C., a city that witnessed on January 6, 2021 an insurrection, which Padma Rangarajan has described as a “a rebellion in miniature.” Thinking from this place, we invite participants to reflect on the nature of insurrection and the counter-insurrections that follow in the wake of uprisings. Romanticism has often been associated with the politics of “revolution,” which suggest a wholesale inversion or overturning. We wish to ask about other motions and scales of action and repressive reactions that took place in the nineteenth century. Where did seemingly small acts of resistance spark enormous consequences? How do we understand the relationship between political insurrection and the subjective “state of insurrection and turmoil” that Victor Frankenstein describes or Jane Eyre’s “brain in tumult and…heart in insurrection”? Are there lessons that we can draw from nineteenth-century insurrections – social and textual – and bring to bear upon our present political realities? How might recent uprisings and the often-aligned state and white supremacist counters to them revise our reading of the past?
Please submit abstracts of 250 words, panel proposals of 750 words (including details of individual papers plus a rationale for the panel) using the submission form by January 5, 2024.
In October 1849, the poet John Clare wrote to his son Charles from Northampton asylum about all the things he was missing back in Northborough, and in Helpston, his first home. Along with his garden, the woods, and various friends and family members, there was a particular kind of landscape he longed for: ‘I shall be glad to get out o’ thought & out o’ sight in the Fens as usual’. The purpose of this study day is to revisit the enduring importance of fens in Clare’s work, taking in the broad scope of how they shaped his poetic imagination, his interest in the environment, his understanding of mental and physical wellbeing, and his sense of community. A mixture of literary discussion and field-work, the day will offer a selection of short talks and group poetry readings that explore Clare’s fens in writing, before embarking on a guided walk of one of the areas surrounding Helpston familiar to Clare, led by the artist Kathryn Parsons, and Sarah Lambert, a botanist and ecologist who often works with Langdyke Countryside Trust.
This one-day event, organised by the Centre for John Clare Studies and Kathryn Parsons and held partly at the John Clare Cottage in Helpston, is open to anybody who is interested in thinking with Clare about the importance of these strange, liminal, and – in our present moment – much-altered landscapes.
There are a limited number of spaces available, so registration in advance is essential. Please email Sarah Houghton-Walker at sh250@cam.ac.uk to register your interest in attending in the first instance. A full programme and finer details of the day will be sent to those on this list in due course, along with information on how to secure your booking through our secure payment site. Please note that a place can’t be guaranteed until payment has been received.
Cultural understandings of the East, specifically of India, in British Romanticism have opened up numerous lines of inquiry in Romantic and eighteenth-century studies. Phiroze Vasunia, Michael J. Franklin, Andrew Rudd, and others have commented at length on the ways in which English writers related to India during the Romantic period. Works by writers like William Jones, Phebe Gibbes, Robert Southey, Sydney Owenson, and Wilke Collins reveal the extent to which India became a point of creative fixation as well as cultural appropriation. The translations of many works of ancient and medieval Indic texts were important to the galvanization of the British literary imagination. We might ask if there is a way of amending some of the injurious perspectives that evolved over the course of the nineteenth century viz. India as the British Empire expanded its foothold, though not without appreciation for many areas of genuine exchange and learning between the philosophical traditions of Britain, Europe, and the Indian subcontinent that simultaneously occurred. English interest in India began during the Renaissance; however, during the Romantic period, the British Empire pivoted to India as its influence in the Atlantic weakened, following the American and Haitian Revolutions.
This panel explores how Anglophone writers translated and interpreted foundational religious texts in the Hindu tradition, such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, as well as Sanskrit literary works such as Kalidasa’s Shakuntala. We are particularly interested in papers that reflect on the underlying spiritual message and worldview of these texts and how it impacted literary creativity on both sides of the Atlantic.
All proposals are due on June 15. If you have any questions, you can reach the presiding officer for the session, Dr. Divya Nair, at soundlogic888@gmail.com
Francesca KilloranComments Off on Call for Papers – Provocative and Provoking: Fifty Shades of Byron
26th-27th April 2024
Newstead Abbey
“But words are things, and a small drop of ink
Falling like dew, upon a thought produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.”
2024 marks the bicentenary of Lord Byron’s death. It is therefore fitting that the 2024 Newstead Abbey Byron Conference not only commemorates his death but also celebrates the life and works of both the multifaceted man and his dazzlingly diverse poetry. The theme for this year’s conference, Provocative and Provoking: Fifty Shades of Byron has been chosen to encourage papers exploring every aspect of Byron’s life, his poems, and his contemporary and current reception across the globe.
We could offer a lengthy list of potential topics, but it would be impossible to include them all – so instead, we invite you to join us and discuss your Byrons – the poet and the playwright, the lover and the misanthrope, the pacifist and the warleader, the atheist and the spiritualist, the witty correspondent and the shrewd satirist. We also invite you to share your insights and observations regarding Byron’s poems, the profound fluctuations in his popularity over the last two hundred years, and the enduring significance of the poet and his poetry for so many cultures and communities today.
The conference will be held in Newstead Abbey, and delegates will have the opportunity to tour the house and gardens during the conference. In addition, to mark this special occasion, we will also be expanding the conference to include additional cultural events, both in the Abbey and at nearby locations connected with Lord Byron and his family. Details will be made available later in the year once the events are finalised.
The deadline for the Call for Papers is the 2nd of January. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words, together with a short professional biography (of no more than 100 words), to Dr Emily Paterson Morgan (newsteadbyronconference@gmail.com).
The Byron Society will be providing a small number of bursaries for students and early career researchers. Details will be made available later in the year. If you would like to be considered for one of the bursaries, please include a short statement in your submission, outlining why you require the bursary.
