Victorian Poetry

Conference Announcement: Tennyson 2026: Ecology, Landscape, Environment - cfp and details attached. Victorians scholars please circulate @lindakhughes.bsky.social @victorianreview.bsky.social @victorianpoetry.bsky.social @thevicsoc.bsky.social @victorianmasc.bsky.social @jofvictculture.bsky.social

@vicpoetrycaucus.bsky.social @hopkinspress.bsky.social @lindakhughes.bsky.social @hbwitcher.bsky.social @navsa.bsky.social

Another stellar issue of VICTORIAN POETRY is now live! The full issue is open access. Its contents are as follows: ANNA RIVERS, “‘Life whetted upon life’: Mathilde Blind, The Ascent of Man, and the Geological Record” BLANCA SANTONJA, “Musical Lights: Illuminating the Shadows in Tennyson’s The Princess” Syntheses of THE YEAR’S WORK in the field, featuring contributions by SUZANNE BAILEY (on Robert Browning), GALIA BENZIMAN (on Thomas Hardy), VERONICA ALFANO (on Gerard Manley Hopkins), FLORENCE S. BOOS (on Pre-Raphaelitism, Dante G. Rossetti, and William Morris), JUSTIN A. SIDER (on Algernon Charles Swinburne), LINDA K. HUGHES (on Alfred Lord Tennyson), and HEATHER BOZANT WITCHER (on women poets) Victorian Poetry also invites submissions for its 2025 Early Career Essay Prize, which recognizes exemplary essays by untenured scholars of all ranks and affiliations (including contingently employed and graduate student colleagues). Conferred on an annual basis, the prize carries an award of $500 and publication in Victorian Poetry. Strong essays that do not win the award may also be considered for publication as recommended by the prize committee. Applications are due 25 August 2025. Scholars wishing to be considered should submit anonymized MS Word essays and brief CVs to victorianpoetryjournal [at] gmail [dot] com with “Early Career Prize” in the subject line. Prior to submission, please consult our guidelines for authors. For more information about the journal’s latest initiatives, visit our Scholastica webpage. Direct proposals and queries to journal editor Devin M. Garofalo (University of California, San Diego) at victorianpoetryjournal [at] gmail [dot] com. Scholastica webpage address: https://victorian-poetry.scholasticahq.com

A new issue of Victorian poetry is live — open access and full of incredible new work! We are also continuing to accept submissions for the 2025 Early Career Essay Prize. See the image / alt-text for more info. Please share widely! muse.jhu.edu/issue/55160

Victorian Poetry invites submissions for its 2025 Early Career Essay Prize, which recognizes exemplary essays by untenured scholars of all ranks and affiliations (including contingently employed and graduate student colleagues). Conferred on an annual basis, the prize carries an award of $500 and publication in Victorian Poetry. Strong essays that do not win the award may also be considered for publication as recommended by the prize committee. Applications are due 4 August 2025. Scholars wishing to be considered should submit anonymized MS Word essays and brief CVs to victorianpoetryjournal@gmail.com with “Early Career Essay Prize” in the subject line. Prior to submission, consult our guidelines for authors. Winning articles will be selected according to three criteria: (1) significance of contribution to the field of Victorian poetry (including its involvement with Victorian studies and other areas of inquiry in or beyond literary studies); (2) excellence of research, interpretation, and method; and (3) efficacy of presentation. The journal continues to expand its purview to a wider compass of archives and approaches. We welcome work that capaciously (re)interprets the field's originary contexts and reconsiders Victorian poetry (broadly construed) in new, innovative, cross-disciplinary, theoretical, and / or experimental ways. For author guidelines, see the following link: https://victorian-poetry.scholasticahq.com

Excited to share the call for Victorian Poetry’s 2025 Early Career Prize! Please circulate widely. Happy to answer any questions (see the attached CFP for more details)!

Today's the day! I invite close readers to see if they can find the places where I channeled the most rage into this project. It is supposed to make you uncomfortable. You are supposed to try to dismiss it as "praxis" vs. "theory" and then you are supposed to be convinced otherwise.

Honored to feature your incredible work in it, Linda!

"Does aesthetics play a legitimate role in our evaluation of an argument’s validity? Are computational proofs beautiful?"

From our new issue, read Imogen Forbes-Macphail's "The Four-Color Theorem and the Aesthetics of Computational Proof": www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Also check out our recent issue (ed. John Lamb) celebrating VP’s 60th anniversary. It revisits @lindakhughes.bsky.social ‘s formative 2003 issue, “Whither Victorian Poetry?” — a truly blockbuster constellation of thinkers across both issues! muse.jhu.edu/issue/52956

Table of contents for the new special issue, “Transition and Transformation”: Special issue preface by ERIK GRAY tracing Victorian Poetry’s recent transitions and celebrating the field’s debt to JOHN B. LAMB, journal editor from 2005 to 2024 LINDA K. HUGHES, “Queer Forms, Queer Grief: Reclaiming and Transcending Loved Remains in Tennyson’s In Memoriam and Michael Field’s The Longer Allegiance” MARY ELLIS GIBSON, “Sensation, Sati, and Retribution in Mary E. Leslie’s Sonnets on the Indian Mutiny” HERBERT F. TUCKER, “Compost Happens: Composition and Decomposition in Victorian Literature” BRITTA MARTENS, “From the Execution Ballad to the Dramatic Monologue: Criminal Confession Reconfigured” FLORENCE BOOS, “Morris the Skald: Icelandic Translation as Social Liberation”

Table of contents for 60th anniversary issue: JOHN B. LAMB, “Introduction: The Place of Victorian Poetry” ERIK GRAY, “Keeping Faith in Victorian Poetry” STEPHANIE KUDUK WEINER, “Reflections on Years in Victorian Poetry” LEE O’BRIEN, “Victorian Women’s Poetry and the Near-Death Experience of a Category” MICHELE MARTINEZ, “Undisciplining Art Sisterhood” HELEN GROTH, “Photography, Novelty, and Victorian Poetry” MONIQUE R. MORGAN, “Poetry, Politics, Possibilities” JASON RUDY, “Reaching Wider: Anecdotes from a Victorianist in the Australian Archive” LEE BEHLMAN, “Women and Light Verse: On May Kendall” MARION THAIN, “Reading Victorian Poetry as the World Burns” ANDREW M. STAUFFER, “Analog Intelligence” CHARLES LAPORTE, “Victorian Poetry in an Age of Cultural Secularization” LINDA K. HUGHES, “Whithering: Or ’Tis Twenty Years Since”

Victorian Poetry is thrilled to announce a new open-access special issue, “Transition and Transformation.” Guest edited by Erik Gray, it features contributions by Florence Boos, Mary Ellis Gibson, @lindakhughes.bsky.social , Britta Martens, & Herbert F. Tucker. muse.jhu.edu/issue/53644

Image of a season ticket for the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society from 1890, printed in warm brown ink. The left side of the ticket features an illustration of two artisans, one wearing an apron and holding tools, and the other dressed as a painter. They shake hands over a decorative emblem surrounded by floral motifs. The illustration includes text indicating the location, "121 Regent St. The New Gallery," at the bottom. On the right side, the ticket reads "Season Ticket 1890" in bold lettering, with additional text for "Admission" and instructions, along with the name "Ernest Radford, Secretary." The design of the ticket reflects the style of the Arts and Crafts movement.

End of term grading got you down? Why not take a break and work up a proposal for VSAWC's upcoming conference "Exhibiting the Nineteenth Century"? To find out more, click on the link below!

vsawc.org/events/

Patrick & I would be so grateful if ppl would circulate this to their smartest + most interesting academic friends. We are excited to welcome everybody to DC 🙏💙

Thanks to generous support from @hopkinspress.bsky.social, Victorian Poetry is co-sponsoring next year’s NAVSA conference. The CFP is now live—check it out and submit your work! So looking forward to all of it, including some new journal-related festivities. ✨

The Vcologies Working Group announces the 2025 Early Career Paper Prize. The prize recognizes work by rising scholars that exemplifies the Vcologies effort to consider ecological thinking in the Anglophone world from 1750-1945. Early career scholars working in any field are eligible. Graduate students and contingently employed colleagues are especially encouraged to submit. “Early career” is defined as a scholar of any rank or affiliation who is working toward a PhD, or who has received the PhD in the past three calendar years (2021 or later). PhDs from 2020 are also eligible to apply in cases where parental duties or medical leave have affected research. The winning paper will be selected according to three criteria: (1) Potential significance for Victorian studies and its relation to the study of ecology, broadly construed; (2) Quality and depth of scholarly research and interpretation; (3) Clarity and effectiveness of presentation. Papers will be anonymized before being forwarded to three judges. The prize award is $250 The prize is open to papers of no more than 3,500 words (not including notes, image captions, or references) written by early career scholars. Please submit papers in MS Word or PDF (with no identifying information on the document itself), along with (as a separate document) a cover sheet stating (1) your name, (2) year of Ph.D. (or year expected), (3) name of your degree-granting institution, (4) title of your essay, and (5) contact information, to Kathleen Frederickson at kfrederickson@ucdavis.edu.

Announcing the Vcologies Working Group’s 2025 Early Career Prize! Such a great opportunity—see the CFP below for more details.

I think I made a starter pack? go.bsky.app/fkgPH6

Lots of incredible work on C19 poetries in the forthcoming spring issue of @criticalinquiry.bsky.social (ToC previewed below on the back of the forthcoming winter issue), including brilliant work by Imogen Forbes-Macphail, leader of the Victorian Poetry Caucus! ✨ Watch for both issues!

Research Associate in Victorian Cultural and Material History at Lancaster University Looking for a new job opportunity in academia? Check out this job opening for a Research Associate in Victorian Cultural and Material History on jobs.ac.uk!

The advert for our Research Associate post in Victorian Cultural and Material History is now up on jobs.ac.uk - www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DKS158/r...
Please spread the word!!!!

A minor change: “and, of course, in honor of”—poorly phrased, we need an edit button!

Some words in remembrance of Sandra M. Gilbert (and, of course, Susan Gubar), whose field-shifting work on women writers like Elizabeth Barrett Browning shaped not only feminist literary and Victorian studies, but also Victorian poetry in transformative and still-ongoing ways.

📢 CfP: Delighted to invite submissions for the British Association for Romantic Studies ECR & PGR Conference, 'Romantic (Un)Consciousness'.

🗓️ Trinity Hall, Cambridge, 4-5 September, & Online, 12 September 2025

Abstracts due on 6 January 2025.

🔗 More Details: barsconference2025.wixsite.com/home

Hi again Victorianist peeps! It's lovely to follow so many folks doing such fascinating work. Also to see lots of old friends. I'm re-upping this because VIC has been so quiet lately, and yet it's a great place for longer-form C19 queries, answers, and discussions than can easily be posted here.

Would love to hear more, sounds wild!

Who out there is working on “bad” Victorian or Victorian-adjacent poetry and its aesthetic categories?

We are pleased to announce that the Hamilton Prize winner for 2024 is Olivia Krauze for the essay "What is a Violent Emotion?" We look forward to publishing Olivia's essay in an upcoming issue. The runner up is Lucy Lawrence for an essay on "The Evergreen: A Northern Seasonal (1895-97)."

Job Opportunity at Lancaster University: Research Associate in Victorian Cultural and Material History The Department of History at Lancaster University are seeking to appoint a Research Associate in Victorian Cultural and Material History. We are looking for a talented scholar of Victorian culture to ...

📢 @jbhist.bsky.social & I are very pleased to announce that we are seeking a f/t 2-year Research Associate in Victorian Cultural and Material History to join our major @ahrcpress funded research project on the Victorian Hand. Closes 6 December. Spread the word!!! hr-jobs.lancs.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

Hello! It's nice to see you here. Check out our latest issue, VR 49.2 muse.jhu.edu/issue/53136 and stay tuned for 50.1, coming soon, featuring a forum on Victorian studies and the climate crisis and our 2023 Hamilton Prize winner.

Starter pack for journals of literary scholarship. Please share so we can add to the list as more journals create accounts here. go.bsky.app/2Asc5P2

Check out this amazing issue on INFRASTRUCTURE just out in Victorian Literature and Culture!

I’m always so proud of the work that we do with Global c19 Studies! Congrats, all! @clarehooper.bsky.social @livunipress.bsky.social

Victorian Poetry is thrilled to announce that Emma Davenport (Emory University) is the inaugural winner of the journal’s new early career prize! Davenport's forthcoming essay, “Crediting Women’s Poetic Labor: Paradise Lost and Toru Dutt’s ‘Our Casuarina Tree’,” offers a startling, skillful, and persuasive new reading of Dutt as an astute and critical reader of Paradise Lost. Building on evidence that Dutt knew Paradise Lost intimately, the essay shows us how Milton’s association of the Indian banyan tree with sin provides a rich intertext for Dutt to engage, answer, and revise. In a bravura close reading of the text, the author shifts our attention from the tree to the vine that is wrapped around it. Where most readers have read the vine as a figure for the snake—and Satan—in this account we see how Dutt associates the vine with Eve. Furthermore, through the association of Dutt’s name with an Indian vine (the Torulota or Tarulatta), the essay brilliantly demonstrates how Dutt reclaims India and the woman poet from Milton, by way of Milton’s own text. This poetic analysis complicates the binary logic in postcolonial scholarship on Dutt and makes a powerful argument about decolonizing our own analytic frames for reading colonial poetry. Richly researched, beautifully written, and highly original, this essay makes a dazzling new contribution to the project of undisciplining Victorian studies. Keep an eye out for its appearance in print very soon! For more information about the annual early career prize and the journal’s latest initiatives (including its new keyword series), visit our Scholastica webpage. Queries can be directed to the editor, Devin M. Garofalo (University of California, San Diego) at victorianpoetryjournal@gmail.com.

Delighted to announce that @emmadavenport.bsky.social is the inaugural winner of Victorian Poetry’s early career prize! Watch for her brilliant essay, “Crediting Women’s Poetic Labor: _Paradise Lost_ and Toru Dutt’s ‘Our Casuarina Tree’.” Read more abt it below or in the alt-text. Congrats, Emma! ✨

@hopkinspress.bsky.social meant to tag you, thx in advance for any help signal boosting!