Program

(Revised program as of Sept 30, 2016. Some panels may be subject to change.) All conference panels take place on the ground level of Tompkins Hall, home of the NC State University Department of English.

Friday, Oct 14

Coffee and light breakfast, 7:30a, Caldwell Lounge

Continental breakfast with Global Village coffee, pastries, assorted fruit.

Registration 8:00a-1:00p, Tompkins Hall First Floor

Session 1, 8:30-9:45a

1A Class and Crowds, G112

Moderator: Abigail Mann (UNC-Pembroke)

  • Frank Emmett (Independent scholar), The Plug Riots of 1842
  • Jessica Kuskey (Norwich U), Scrooge Science: Food, Thermodynamics, and Charles Dickens’s Christmas Books

1B Steam Engines, G113

Moderator: Rachel Mosher (NC State U)

  • Kathryn Powell (U of Tennessee), Full STEAM Ahead: Railway Safety Reform and Interdisciplinarity in Charlotte Riddell’s City & Suburb
  • Jean Fernandez (U Maryland Baltimore County), Imperial Technology and Historical Crises in Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Bridge Builders’

1D Alice Through New Glass, G126

Moderator: Jane S. Gabin (Independent scholar)

  • PC Fleming (Fisk U), Animating Alice: Corporate Form, Corporate History
  • Jamie Watson (U of North Carolina, Greensboro), “This Wicked Train”: Trauma and Troubling Technology in Alice: Madness Returns
  • Keaghan Turner (Coastal Carolina U), Victorian Heavy Metal: Making the Hatters Mad

Session 2, 10:00-11:30

2A Curing Women, G112

Moderator: Jill Ehnenn (Appalachian State U)

  • Shasta Lewis (North Carolina State U), The Practice of Competing Rhetorics in Victorian Women’s Madness
  • Emily Harbin (Converse C), Prescribing the “Work Cure”: Hysteria and its remedies in Sarah Grand’s The Heavenly Twins and Emma Brooke’s A Superfluous Woman
  • Amy Montz (U Southern Indiana), “Unbecoming a British Female”: The Politics of Artifice and Foreignness in Victorian Literature

2B Genres of Biopolitics, G113

Moderator: Lorenzo Servitje (UC Riverside)

  • Amy Huseby (U of Wisconsin, Madison), Of Long Poems and Exiled Populations
  • Michael Martel (U of California, Davis), Democratizing Public Health: Middlemarch‘s Local Political Institutions
  • Sophia Hsu (Rice U), Family and Population in The Woman in White
  • Lorenzo Servitje (U of California, Riverside), Arthur Conan Doyle’s Medico-Military War

2C Botany, G118

Moderator: Judith Page (U of Florida)

  • Mary Bowden (Indiana U), Plotting Plants and Plant Plots: Darwin’s Botanical Illustrations
  • Kimberly Farris (U of North Carolina), Florid Effusions: Literary and Botanical Language of Flowers in Harriet Prescott Spofford’s “The Amber Gods”
  • Judith Page (U of Florida), The Garden and the Wider World: Women and Gardening Education in Nineteenth Century England
  • Emily Dotson (U of Kentucky), Industrial Gardening: How Elizabeth Gaskell Uses Emerging Botanical Science to Cultivate a STEAM Alliance

2D Machines, G126 (31)

Moderator: Anita Rose (Converse C)

  • Jane S. Gabin (Independent scholar), Keys to Change: Women and Typewriters in the 1890s
  • Kiera Allison (U of Virginia), Proven Upon the Pulses? Victorian Stethoscopy and the Poetic Heart
  • Elizabeth Adams (Independent scholar), The Technologies of Writing: M. E. Braddon and Modes of Publication
  • Betty Torrell (Western Carolina U), The Hearth as Machine: The Role of the Stove in 19th Century Domestic Architecture

Lunch, 11:30a-1:00p

On your own, or opt-in boxed lunches in Caldwell Lounge

Victorians Institute executive board meeting, H-Street Kitchen

Session 3, 1:00-2:15p

3A Women’s Education, G112

Moderator: Robin Barrow (U Tennessee)

  • Sharon E. Kelly  (West Virginia U), Women’s Rights through Women’s Education: A Lesson from Gloriana
  • Emily Wicktor (North Dakota State U), “Through a microscope, darling!”: The Sexual and Scientific Pedagogy of Victorian Pornography

3C Replicas and Replication 1, G118

Moderator: Julie Codell (Arizona State U)

  • Linda Hughes (Texas Christian U), Replicating Tennyson’s The Princess, 1847-1853
  • Julie Codell (Arizona State U), Rossetti’s Replicas: Auras and Markets
  • Emilie Taylor-Brown (U of Warwick), ‘Petty Larceny’ and ‘Manufactured Science’: Parasitology and the Politics of Replication

3D Reading Cultures, G126

Moderator: Jamie Watson (UNC-Greensboro)

  • Liz Shand (U of North Carolina), The Odd Women and the Female Reader: “I’ll see how I like this first”:
  • James Hood (Guilford C), “Novel Reading and Insanity”: Victorian Quakers and Literature
  • Daniel Hood (Boston C), Jokes and Poetry in The Fireman: Literacy, Readability, and Social Anxieties in the Late-Victorian Fire Service

Coffee Break, 2:15-2:45p, Caldwell Lounge

Session 4, 2:45-4:00p

4A Discipline & Pedagogies (1), G112

Moderator: Monika Brown (UNC-Pembroke)

  • Darren Cozzens (Surry Community C), “Humane Letters” vs. Job Prep: Arnold’s “Literature and Science” as a Prescription for Contemporary Education
  • Todd Starkweather (South U),”Obedient Workers”: Or what happens when Thomas Gradgrind becomes president of your University
  • Christy Rieger (Mercyhurst U), “See the Value of Imagination”: Sherlock Holmes, the Arts and Humanities, and the Fantasied Professional Man

4B STEAMed Food, G113

Moderator: Amy Montz (U Southern Indiana)

  • Cameron Dodworth (Methodist U), Fears of Consumption and Being Consumed: The Gothicization of Food in Victorian
  • Anita Rose (Converse C), “Can a Vegetarian Partake of Kidney Beans?”: Victorian Vegetarianism
  • Elle Everhart (Boston C), “be ready to cut off its head when it puts it out”: Animal Violence and Domestic Manuals

4C Replicas and Replication 2, G118 (47)

Moderator: Julie Codell (Arizona State U)

  • Sally Foster (U of Stirling), Replication of Things: The Case for Composite Biographical Approaches
  • Dan Bivona (Arizona State U), The Failure of Replication in Nineteenth Century Literature: Why it all Just Comes out Wrong
  • Suzanne Daly (U of Massachusetts, Amherst), Paisley/Cashmere: Mapping the Imitation Indian Shawl

4D STEAM Genres, G126

Moderator: Catherine Godbold (NC State U)

  • Emily Heady (Liberty U), Middlemarch: Industrial Novel?
  • Lara Musser (U of Virginia), “‘She is ever shaping new forms’: Romancing the boundaries of nature in Nature magazine”

4E Math, G123

Moderator: Judith Page (U of Florida)

  • Heather Lamb (Eastern Illinois U), The Shadow is Revived: Constructing Narratives in Victorian Literature and Science Fiction with Non-Euclidean Mathematics
  • Toni Wein (California State U, Fresno), Flatland and Transcendental Geometries of the Imagination
  • Amy Huseby (U of Wisconsin, Madison), “To be so separate having been so near”: Augusta Webster’s Set Theory

Keynote, 5:00-6:00p, Caldwell G107

Alison Byerly, President of Lafayette College
“Victorian STEAM to Digital Humanities: Mediations of Art and Technology”

Welcome reception, 6:00-7:30p, Caldwell Lounge

All registered conference attendees are invited to a reception with hors d’oeuvres and beverages following the keynote lecture.

Saturday, Oct 15

Coffee and light breakfast, 8:00a, Tompkins 123

Continental breakfast with Global Village coffee, pastries, assorted fruit.

Registration 8:00a-11:00a, Tompkins Hall First Floor

Session 5, 9:00-10:15a

5A Discipline & Pedagogies (2), G112

Moderator: Frank Emmett (Independent scholar)

  • Eric Lorentzen (U of Mary Washington), Hard Times, Critical Pedagogy and Cultural Studies: STEM as the New Utilitarianism
  • Amy Boyd (U of Virginia), The Politics of Victorian Disciplinarity

5B Gender Trouble, G113

Moderator: Amy Huseby (U Wisconsin)

  • Indu Ohri (U of Virginia), “Only the Weird Fancy of a Queer Girl”: Frances Hodgson Burnett and the Ghostly Female Literary Imagination
  • Katie Nunnery (U of Connecticut), Sexology, Imperialism, and the Male Narrator in Victoria Cross’s “Theodora, A Fragment”
  • Katherine Montweiler (U of North Carolina, Wilmington), The Materialized Maternal Body in the Works of Barrett Browning

5C Open and Closed Systems, G118

Moderator: Nathan Hensley (Georgetown U)

  • Nathan Hensley (Georgetown U), Dreams of Closure: Poovey, Armstrong, Rossetti
  • Anne O’Neil-Henry (Georgetown U), “Rien n’en sera perdu”:  Hugo’s Recycling in Les Misérables and Paris-Guide
  • Stefan Waldschmidt (Duke U), Financing the Panopticon

5D Forms of Mind (1), G126

Moderator: Cameron Dodworth (Methodist U)

  • Anna Gibson (Duquesne U), “That incongruous compound”: Francis Galton’s Composites and Fin de Siècle Novel Form
  • Maria Bachman (Middle Tennessee State U), What if . . . Dickens Had Been A Neuroscientist?
  • Michael Shelichach (CUNY Grad Center), “Being as a vulnerability”: Victorian Psychology, the Crisis of the Bildungsroman, and Great Expectations

Session 6, 10:30-11:45a

6A Science (in) Fiction, G112

Moderator: Betty Torrell (Western Carolina U)

  • Julie Wise (U of South Carolina, Aiken), The Time Gaps of Alice Meynell and William James
  • Jennifer Camden (U of Indianapolis), The Last Man: ‘Disciplinary Divides’ and the Beginning of End of the World Fiction
  • Abigail Mann (U of North Carolina, Pembroke), “She ‘Lift[s] up a Cannon as Easily as I Could a Pocket Pistol’: Ethnography, The Scientific Eye, and Gender in The Coming Race

6B Dark Materials, G113

Moderator: Christy Rieger (Mercyhurst U)

  • Mark Rollins (Young Harris College), Science, Technology, Engineering, and Marlow: Steam Power and “the devotion to efficiency” in Heart of Darkness
  • Mary Borgo (Indiana U), ‘The oxyhydrogen light of civilization’?: the Untold Story of Livingstone’s Lantern
  • Gretchen Braun (Furman U), Between Worlds: Post-Mortem Photography and Narrative Possibility

6C Children and STEAM, G118

Moderator: Indu Ohri (U of Virginia)

  • Eileen Gillooly (Columbia U), A is for Affect: Darwin’s STE(A)M
  • Laurie Langbauer (U of North Carolina), Natural History and Victorian Poetry for Children
  • Beverly Taylor (U of North Carolina), Volcanoes and the Politics of the Larder in EBB’s Juvenilia

6D Forms of Mind (2), G126

Moderator: Maria Bachman (Middle Tennessee State U)

  • Kimberly Stern (U of North Carolina), The Laws of Attraction: Oscar Wilde and the Science of Culture
  • Casey Cothran (Winthrop U), The Art and Science of the Detective Novel: Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone, and the Mind Constructing Meaning
  • Christie Cognevitch (Louisiana State U), Singing in an Inside Voice: Christina Rossetti’s Emotional Linguistics

Banquet Lunch, 12:00-1:30p

Chartered busses will leave out front of Tompkins Hall at 11:50a to transport conference attendees to the Hunt Library, where the banquet will be held. Please do not miss the bus!

All conference attendees are welcome to the banquet lunch, included with the registration costs. The lunch concludes with a very brief Victorians Institute business meeting.

Tours of the Hunt Library, 1:30p

Self-guided tours or group tours will be available for exploring the James B. Hunt Library, honored internationally for its architecture as well as cutting-edge facilities.

Session 7, 3:00-4:15p

7A Women and Mobility, G112

Moderator: Emily Wicktor (North Dakota State U)

  • Purna Banerjee (Presidency U, Kolkata), “On their Own Steam:” Women Authors of Victorian Travel Narratives of Empire
  • Sarah Lentz (Elon U), “The engine of all of our actions:” Mobility as Metaphor in Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina
  • Henna Messina (U of Georgia), Vibrant Villette: Domesticity, Narrative Space, and Female Agency

7B “serpeants of smoke”: Carlyle, Dickens, and Mill Measure the Mechanical Age, G113

Moderator: Kiera Allison (U of Virginia)

  • John Lamb (West Virginia U), “Not to be carried on by steam”: Thomas Carlyle and the Arithmetical Mill
  • David Bradshaw (Warren Wilson C), Dickensian Entropy: Victorian Steam Becomes Smoke, Mudfog, and Muddle
  • Albert Pionke (U of Alabama), Measuring Hot Air in the Age of Steam: Mill on Carlyle on Hudson

7C New Takes on Tech, G118

Moderator: Paul Fyfe (NC State U)

  • Kurian Therakath Peter (U of British Columbia), Opening the Black Box: Steampunk as Bruno Latour’s “Dissenter”
  • Herbert Tucker (U of Virginia), Dark Arts, High Tech

7D Other Worlds, G126

Moderator: Leila May (NC State U)

  • Jessica Straley (U of Utah), The Iguanodon and the Aztecs: From the Crystal Palace to The Lost World
  • Tim Hayes (Chowan U), The Beachcomber’s Dilemma: Interracial Assimilation in Stevenson’s Pacific Writing
  • Vera Foley (Auburn U), The Fruits of the Orient: Christina Rossetti, Harriet Prescott Spofford, and the Fantasy of Exotic Consumption at Home

Session 8, 4:30-5:45p

8A Science Past and Prologue, G112

Moderator: Anne Wallace (UNC-Greensboro)

  • Suzanne Bailey (Trent U), The Victorian-ness of Contemporary Debates on Evolution
  • Lesley Goodman (Albright C), Against Science: Imperfect Mechanisms in The Time Machine

8B Gothic Disciplinarity, G113

Moderator: Vera Foley (Auburn U)

  • Lauren Pinkerton (U of North Carolina), ‘The Fault of Our Science’: Knowledge Formation and the Limits of Disciplinarity in Bram Stoker’s Dracula
  • Mary Leigh (Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts), The Disciplinary Conflicts of Jekyll & Hyde
  • Carlie Wetzel (U of North Carolina), Teaching Dracula: The Intersection of Science and Culture in Victorian Burial Practices

8C In Transit, G118

Moderator: Antony Harrison (NC State U)

  • Janet Myers (Elon U), “An Ordinary Hand-bag”: The Extraordinary Story of an Object in Transit
  • Kathrin Levitan (C of William & Mary), Migration, Empire, Technology, and the Penny Post
  • Alan Rauch (U of North Carolina, Charlotte), Novel Highways and Information Turnpikes

Conference After-Party, 8:00p-

The VI2016 conference will conclude with a steampunk dance party in the Doubletree Hotel. Wind down with your colleagues and enjoy the aethereal fun of That Darling DJ Duo. Dancing not required. Cosplay is welcome.