John Addington Symonds, literary tourism and the colour of Venetian canals

Amber K. Regis (University of Sheffield) In the weeks leading up to the recent NAVSA/BAVS/AVSA conference, hosted by Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, I read the following passage from John Addington Symonds’s The Fine Arts, the third volume in his Renaissance in Italy series: Venice, with her pavement of liquid chrysoprase, with her palaces of porphyry and marble, her frescoed facades, her quays and squares aglow with the costumes of the Levant, her lagoons afloat with the galleys of all

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Issues in the Digital Humanities: A Key Skills Package for Postgraduate Researchers

Jen Morgan (University of Salford) It is surprising, given the increase in both the production and use of digitised materials by people who wouldn’t necessarily describe themselves as ‘digital humanists’, that it is so difficult to find a general, introductory course on what is involved in producing such resources. That was the position that Elinor Taylor (@ElinorMTaylor) and I found ourselves in when, having bid successfully for funding to run a course for post-graduate students and early career researchers on

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Images of Victorian Motherhood, Effaced and Exposed

Recently I’ve been contemplating motherhood as it is represented in Victorian hidden mother portraits and Victorian breastfeeding portraits, two fascinating photographic trends. A little over a year ago, I stumbled upon Chelsea Nichols’ post about hidden mothers in Victorian photographs on her blog, The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things. These images typically depict a shrouded woman holding or standing behind a baby or child, ostensibly to keep the child still for the camera while remaining out of the image.  The

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Brontë by Polly Teale

By Charlotte Mathieson, University of Warwick In May 2013, the Capitol Theatre in Manchester staged a production of the play Brontë, by Polly Teale. Originally staged by Shared Experience in 2005 (of which you can view a short trailer online), the play explores the life and writing of the Brontës through key episodes from their lives and scenes from their writing. I went to watch the production with fellow Victorianist and life-writing specialist Amber Regis, and in this filmed conversation

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The Secret of Lincoln Jail

Review by Guy Woolnough, Keele University. Time Team Specials, Channel Four, 30th June 2013. The excellent ‘Secret of Lincoln Jail’ showed how history can and should be presented.  The medium was used to deliver an interesting programme which did neither sensationalised its subject nor patronised its audience. It engaged with the serious issues without being overly complex or tedious. Lincoln gaol (the spelling I prefer) was used as the star, and enabled the presentation of a history of incarceration since

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‘Cruel beyond belief’? Secrets from the Workhouse, ITV, episode 1, 25 June 2013.

Lesley Hulonce (Swansea University) Secrets of the Workhouse followed a similar path to the BBC’s successful Who Do You Think You Are? However, its exploration of the workhouse experiences of the ancestors of not one, but four celebrities guaranteed heartbreak and regular celebrity tears throughout. Episode One (of two) looked at the family histories of Brian Cox’s antecedents in Glasgow, Fern Britton’s in rural Kent and the experience of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s mother and grandmother in Ripon. Kiera Chaplin, the

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Free Access to the JVC Graduate Prize Essay Published Articles

In honor of the June 30th deadline for this year’s JVC Graduate Prize Essay, we are offering free access to the published articles of several previous winners. Take a look at the exciting and innovative work done by these up and coming scholars! 2011 (17.3) Bob Nicholson “You Kick the Bucket; We Do the Rest!’: Jokes and the Culture of Reprinting in the Transatlantic Press’ 2009 (15.1) Tiffany Watt-Smith ‘Darwin’s Flinch: Sensation Theatre and Scientific Looking in 1872 2007 (13.1)

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The Reading Project

By Susan Cook (Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, NH) In the fall of 2012, I taught a version of my department’s Major Author Studies course on Charles Dickens.  As this was my second time teaching a course dedicated to Dickens (and my fourth time teaching Bleak House), I knew I had to pull out all the stops to convince my students—many of whom were non-majors or students who otherwise had no familiarity with Victorian literature—to care about three tomes of

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Venice: the sacred and the profane

Rachel Webster (University of Leeds) Walking through Venice, late Sunday afternoon (2nd June, 2013), in search of gelato, I found myself in St. Mark’s Square, and was absorbed into a crowd of people. Crowds in Venice, particularly in tourist hotspots, are not unusual, but it was apparent straight away that this crowd had spontaneously formed with a common intention: to observe a religious service. Before I could take in the details of what exactly was going on, I was overwhelmed

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Wild Woman to New Woman: Sex and Suffrage on the Victorian Stage

Gabrielle Malcolm, Visiting Research Fellow in English Canterbury Christ Church University ‘A Pageant of Great Women’ and some remarkable men (with apologies to Cicely Hamilton) were in attendance for the opening of : WILD WOMAN TO NEW WOMAN: SEX AND SUFFRAGE ON THE VICTORIAN STAGE a collaborative exhibition (14th-31st May, 2013) by: The International Centre for Victorian Women Writers, Canterbury Christ Church University The Centre for Gender, Sexuality & Writing, University of Kent Alyson Hunt, post-graduate researcher at Canterbury Christ

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