RSVP Annual Conference

The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) will hold its annual conference in downtown Chicago, July 10-12, 2025. The conference will be an in-person event. RSVP remains committed, however, to making our gatherings accessible to as wide a range of member as possible. The two keynote addresses and Annual General Meeting will be transmitted live and freely available without registration. In addition, we are planning a series of online Digital Events on the conference theme in the weeks leading up to the conference (tentatively June 13, 20, and 27, pending interest).

Call for Papers

RSVP invites submissions on the conference theme of “Voices and Visions” by November 1, 2024. Periodicals provided a platform for an enormous range of voices and visions throughout the nineteenth century. This year’s conference will explore the dynamic interplay between the diverse voices featured in newspapers and periodicals and the broader visions that guided these publications. Papers addressing any aspect of nineteenth-century British and colonial periodicals are welcome, but RSVP particularly encourages proposals relating to voices and/or visions.

Areas of focus might include:

• The representation of marginalized, emerging, or dissenting voices and viewpoints
• The evolution of editorial visions
• Spaces for non-editorial voices (e.g. letters to the editor, Spirit of the Press sections, advertisements)
• Tensions between periodical form (miscellaneity) and editorial control
• Reprints or “scissors-and-paste” and their relation to voices and visions
• The press’s role in shaping public discourse and personae
• The promotion of political ideologies, agendas, or movements
• Voices and visions of the non-human realm: religion, spiritualism, or the supernatural
• The construction and dissemination of ideas about national identity and imperialism
• Varying mediums and modes of oral expression, including representations of song, speech, interviews, and other oral formats
• The role of illustrations, typography, layout, and graphic design in establishing a publication’s voice or vision (their “brand”)
• Readers’ responses to and perceptions of periodicals’ branding and identity formation
• Speculations about future social, political, aesthetic, scientific, or technological developments Viewing periodicals from different disciplinary perspectives (art; engineering; scientific; medical; judicial; technical)
• Visions of Chicago in the British and colonial press
• Visions of the world as depicted in periodical coverage of World’s Fairs (Chicago was the site of the 1893 World’s Fair)
• Visions for the future of periodical studies, pedagogy, or research methodologies

We also welcome papers related to our host city, Chicago which underwent dramatic changes in the nineteenth century: rapid urbanisation, industrialization, and rebuilding in the wake of the Great Fire of 1871, events that led writers in the periodical press to rethink how to “see” or envision a city in an interconnected age. (Our local hosts are planning optional outings in Chicago, including an architecture tour).