The Nineteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Reading Group meeting on the Gothic. ‘Christabel’ as Gothic comes from Meegan Capsopoulos, and Marcus Clarke’s Preface and Ken Gelder’s article on Australian Gothic are from Peter Kirkpatrick. Thanks to both for their contributions.

September 4, 1-3 p.m., Rogers Room, John Woolley Building. Coffee and tea provided: feel free to bring lunch.

Reading 1:
‘Christabel’ as Gothic: The Abjection of Instability Jerrold E Hogle Gothic Studies; May 2005; 7, 1; ProQuest Direct Complete pg. 18

Reading 2:
Marcus Clarke, Preface to Gordon’s Pouns 1876, From The Writer in Australiu: A Collection of Literary Documents 1856 to 1964, ed. John Barnes, Oxford University Press, Melbourne

Reading 3:
Ken Gelder, Australian Gothic, From The Routledge Companion to Gothic, ed. Catherine Spooner and Emma McEvoy, Oxford: Routledge, 2007

Art History Visiting Scholar Seminar

Dr Matthew Potter, University of Leicester

Thursday 10th September, 3-5pm, Room 111A (room adjoining Visual Resources Library), R.C. Mills Building, Fisher Road, University of Sydney

(Re)collecting ‘home’: acquisitions and imperial identities in Australian art galleries.

At the beginning of the twentieth century the worlds of art and empire appeared to be experiencing simultaneous and comparable change, achieving new levels of self-determination. In art the innovations of modernism promised a new age of autonomy; in politics the colonial system of empire was replaced by the more independent structure of Federation. How accurate is this model though: does this perspective perpetuate the ‘modernist myth’ regardless of the facts? This paper explores an alternative reading of the sophisticated exchanges and negotiations that continued to take place between Australian art galleries and their London agents at this time and how in turn these impacted on patterns of art collecting. British painting played an important role in the activities of a nation seeking to negotiate its own version of a British identity.

Theatricality and the Performative in the Long Nineteenth Century
Dramatic expression and self-conscious performances marked almost every aspect of nineteenth century life and artistic culture, as theatrical turns and performative mindsets introduced in the 17th-18th centuries expanded in the 1780s through the beginning of World War One. We invite paper and panel proposals that explore these themes and subjects in the long Nineteenth Century (1780-1914).

Papers might address the theatrical shows-whether serious drama, circus displays, vaudeville, operas, or Shakespearean revivals-that appeared in cities and towns on both sides of the Atlantic (as well as in more distant lands). Or they might investigate how politics, social events, military engagements, domestic affairs, public trials, crime reports, religious rituals, architectural spaces, sculptural moments, exhibition halls, artistic and musical compositions, and the early moving pictures of the cinema, assumed a theatrical sensibility. Welcome also are proposals for papers and panels that bring scholarly and theoretical interests in performativity to bear on concepts of identity, individuality, and audience in the given era.

Please submit abstracts of approximately 500 words along with a brief (one page) c.v. to the Program Co-Chairs, Janice Simon (U of Georgia) and Regina Hewitt (U of South Florida) at the conference address ncsa2010@earthlink.net by Sept. 15, 2009. Speakers will be notified by or before Dec. 15.

Any graduate student whose proposal is accepted may at that point submit a full-length version of the paper in competition for a travel grant to help cover transportation and lodging expenses. Conference sessions will be held at the University of Tampa, a campus with both the historic late-19th century Plant Hall (formerly the Tampa Bay Hotel) and a state-of-the-art conference center.

Accommodations will be available at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Tampa, a short walk from campus. For further information-available in midsummer-please visit the NCSA website http://www.english.uwosh.edu/roth/ncsa/ or contact
Elizabeth Winston, Local Arrangements Director (U of Tampa), at the conference address ncsa2010@earthlink.net.