2013 1874

The Northeast Victorian Studies Association

1874: Boston University

Friday, April 5

1:30 pm Tour of Victorian Boston with Martha Vicinus 

2:00-3:30 pm Registration (ground floor, 236 Bay State Road)

3:45 pm Welcome (Kenmore Room, 9th floor, 1 Silber Way)

4:00-5:45 pm: Literary Culture, 1874: Will Lee (Yeshiva U), Moderator (Kenmore Room)

  • Maia McAleavey (Boston College), “Aurora Floyd (1874)”
  • Sarah Weaver (U of Cambridge), “Tennyson Turns Playwright”
  • Laura Green (Northeastern U), “Bathsheba Everdene, Young Brown, and Zelda the Gypsy: At Home in Cornhill Magazine, January, 1874”
  • Dennis Taylor (Boston College), “Catholicism and Literary Culture in 1874”

5:45-7:15 pm Welcome Reception (Kenmore Room)

7:30-9:30 pm Optional dinner off campus (Please see instructions below)

Saturday, April 6

Book Exhibit (Slater and Barristers Hall)

All panels will take place at BU School of Law, 765 Commonwealth Avenue; the building is off Commonwealth Ave, with entrance near the river—please see map for location.

8:00-9:00 am Breakfast and Registration (Slater and Barristers Hall,

9:00-11:00 am Keynote panel: James Eli Adams (Columbia U), Moderator

  • Isobel Armstrong (Birkbeck, U of London)
  • Robert J. Richards (U of Chicago)
  • Herbert Tucker (U of Virginia)

11:00-11:15 am Coffee Break

11:15 am-12:45 pm Science, 1874: Vanessa Ryan (Brown U), Moderator

  • Elisha Cohn (Cornell U), “Playful Atoms and Beautiful Cells: Scientific Aestheticisms, 1874-1890”
  • Kyle Fetter (SUNY Buffalo), “Anxious Scribblings: Genre, Heredity, and Periodization in Samuel Butler’s First Notebook of 1874”
  • John Mulligan (Brown U), “Richard Proctor’s Sense of Scientific Duty and the 1874 Transit of Venus”

1:00-2:30 pm Lunch (14th Floor, BU School of Law).

The Saturday lunch, a long-standing tradition, is a convivial event at which topics are proposed and voted on for the following year.

2:30-4:00 pm Technology and Design, 1874: Aaron Worth (Boston U), Moderator

  • Dory Agazarian (CUNY Graduate Center), “Past into Present: The 1874 Design Debate over the Completion of St. Paul’s Cathedral”
  • Christopher Keep (U of Western Ontario), “Bodies, Machines, and the QWERTY Keyboard”
  • Ayla Lepine (Yale U), “Watts and Company, Founded 1874: Religion, Decorative Arts, and Political Controversy”

4:00-4:15 pm Coffee Break

4:15-5:45 pm Philosophy, 1874: Vincent Lankewish (Professional Performing Arts School), Moderator

  • Patrick Fessenbecker (Johns Hopkins U), “Sidgwick, Meredith, and Parfit on Reasons and Egoism”
  • Matthew Sussman (Harvard U), “Henry Sidgwick and the Methods of Aesthetics”
  • S. Pearl Brilmyer (NYU), “Schopenhauer’s Drive: Sex, Agency, and Victorian Literary Feminism”

6:00-7:00 pm Reception (The Castle, 225 Bay State Road)

7:00 – 9:30 pm Dinner Banquet (The Castle)

9:45 pm After-Dinner Drink (Beacon Street Tavern, 1032 Beacon St., Brookline, MA)

Sunday, April 7

All events take place in Slater and Barristers Hall, BU School of Law, 765 Commonwealth Ave)

 

8:00-9:00 am Breakfast

9:00-10:30 am Empire, 1874: Sebastian Lecourt (Rutgers U), Moderator

  • Lucy Sheehan (Columbia U), “Present Pasts: Performances of Slavery and Abolition in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda”
  • Mark Doyle (Middle Tennessee State U), “The Bombay Riots of 1874: Liberty and Violence in an Imperial City”
  • Jane McGaughey (Concordia U), “The Orangeman in Winter: Ogle Gowan, Masculine Frailties, and the Rise of the Orange Order”

10:30-10:45 am Coffee Break

10:45 am -12:15 pm Teaching 1874: Lisa Rodensky ( Wellesley College), Moderator

  • Rosemarie Bodenheimer (Boston College)
  • Anne Humphreys (Lehman College)
  • Timothy Alborn (Lehman College)

12:15-1:00 pm Conference Wrap-Up

  • John Plotz (Brandeis U)
  • Jonathan Loesberg (American U)

2:00 Second Option for Tour of Victorian Boston with Martha Vicinus