The 42nd Wordsworth Summer Conference

Monday 5 August to Thursday 15 August 2013

Rydal Hall, Rydal, Cumbria, England

Keynote Lecturers:

Part 1: 5-10 August: Sally Bushell, Gregory Leadbetter, Stacey McDowell, Christopher Simons, Seamus Perry, Sharon Ruston

 Part 2: 10-15 August: David Chandler, Deirdre Coleman, Tim Morton, Ralph Pite, Adam Potkay, Heidi Thomson

Format and Costs: The conference is in two parts of 4 full days each, with a changeover day on Saturday 10 August. The registration fee, which includes up to seven excursions, offers exceptional value at £240 for ten days (£190 for five days).

Full Board at Rydal Hall is available at prices ranging from £600 to £880 (ten nights), and at the adjacent Youth Centre from £450 (ten nights). All participants will take all meals at Rydal Hall.

All enquiries about accommodation, costs etc. should be e-mailed to the Conference Administrator, Stacey McDowell

Midlands Interdisciplinary Victorian Studies Seminar

Friday 05 July 2013     UoB, Lecture Room 3 Arts Building      11:15am - 5pm

The theme of the next MIVSS meeting is 'Books, Authors, Audiences' and will feature papers on reading and writing gender and class identities, recovering marginalised texts, and a paper from Dr Jim Mussell entitled 'Moving Things: Circulation and Repetition in Victorian Print Culture'. The day will finish with a discussion of using digital resources in researching and teaching the Victorians. Attendance is free and all food and refreshments will be provided. Please contact Helen Williams to register on hxw813@bham.ac.uk

New Approaches to the Victorian Short Story - 4th July 2013

Thursday 04 July 2013        UoB, Room 119 Arts Building     12:45 - 5:15pm

This symposium aims to address the lack of critical attention that the Victorian short story has received by bringing together academics working on different aspects of the form. Owing to the popularity of the periodical press, the genre flourished throughout the period; Dickens, Gaskell, Collins, Eliot and James as well as lesser-known authors all produced short stories. The limitations of the form allowed for a degree of experimentation which may have been too much of a commercial risk in a full length work. As John Bowen writes, “the short story is in many ways a marginal form, which often takes marginal or outlaw figures as its central concern. It troubles itself, and thus its readers, with remarkable or strange events, with the inexplicable, disorderly or queer.” We aim to start a critical conversation regarding the nature and functions of the short story genre within the larger context of Victorian literature. If you would like to attend please contact Dr Lizzie Ludlow on  e.ludlow@bham.ac.uk

Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies

We would like to announce the publication of the latest issue of Hortulus. The journal is a fully peer-reviewed, born-digital publication, founded in 2004. The journal is available to read online with no subscription fee, and is also available for download as a pdf or ebook. You can see the new issue here: http://hortulus-journal.com/journal/volume-9-number-1-2013/ !

This issue features the theme of Wounds, Torture and the Grotesque, and includes content ranging from a study of the carnivalesque in medieval Japanese prose, to familicide in Beowulf, and an argument that in certain late medieval stories, Christ's blood is capable of causing damnation. We also have reviews of seven recent publications in medieval studies. 

We would like to invite all those interested in medieval studies, no matter your level of expertise, to read the journal and consider making a contribution. The journal can be found at the following address: hortulus-journal.com