This talk will serve as a preview of\u2013and invitation to\u2013\u2018New Directions\u2019, the 26th Annual 18th- and 19th-Century British Women Writers Conference to be held at UT April 11-15, and an occasion for Carol MacKay to review her contributions to some of its previous conferences. She will identify the recurring need to recover little-known women writers and also highlight cutting-edge approaches to such canonical authors as Jane Austen and George Eliot\u2013and take us into the early 20th century with Annie Besant and Virginia Woolf. Carol MacKay is the J.R. Millikan Centennial Professor of English Literature and an Honorary Junior Fellow of British Studies. She teaches and publishes on Victorian fiction, women\u2019s and gender studies, and life-writing. Her most recent book-length publications are Creative Negativity: Four Victorian Exemplars of the Female Quest (2001) and a critical edition of Annie Besant\u2019s 1885 Autobiographical Sketches (2009).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This talk will serve as a preview of\u2013and invitation to\u2013\u2018New Directions\u2019, the 26th Annual 18th- and 19th-Century British Women Writers Conference to be held at UT April 11-15, and an occasion for Carol MacKay to review her contributions to some of its previous conferences. She will identify the recurring need to recover little-known women writers […]","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/04\/18-03-30-BSLS.mp3","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"61.91M","filesize_raw":"64916288","date_recorded":"30-03-2018","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":""},"tags":[7,19,8,20,18],"categories":[],"series":[2],"class_list":{"0":"post-40","1":"podcast","2":"type-podcast","3":"status-publish","5":"tag-british","6":"tag-new-directions","7":"tag-studies","8":"tag-victorian","9":"tag-women-writers","10":"series-bsls","11":"entry"},"acf":{"related_episodes":"","hosts":[{"ID":949,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2021-01-20 19:50:06","post_date_gmt":"2021-01-20 19:50:06","post_content":"\n
Wm. Roger Louis is head of the British Studies Lecture Series. He is an American historian and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin<\/a>. Louis is the editor-in-chief of The Oxford History of the British Empire<\/a><\/em>, a former president of the American Historical Association<\/a> (AHA), a former chairman of the U.S. Department of State's Historical Advisory Committee, and a founding director of the AHA's National History Center in Washington, D. C.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Wm. Roger Louis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"wm-roger-louis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2021-01-20 19:50:06","post_modified_gmt":"2021-01-20 19:50:06","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/?post_type=speaker&p=949","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"guests":[{"ID":787,"post_author":"40","post_date":"2020-06-23 18:55:47","post_date_gmt":"2020-06-23 18:55:47","post_content":"\n Carol MacKay is the J.R. Millikan Centennial Professor of English Literature and an Honorary Junior Fellow of British Studies. She teaches and publishes on Victorian fiction, women\u2019s and gender studies, and life-writing. Her most recent book-length publications are Creative Negativity: Four Victorian Exemplars of the Female Quest (2001) and a critical edition of Annie Besant\u2019s 1885 Autobiographical Sketches (2009).<\/p>\n","post_title":"Carol MacKay","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"carol-mackay","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-23 18:55:47","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 18:55:47","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/?post_type=speaker&p=787","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"transcript":" Sam Baker is going to introduce our speaker this afternoon just so
\n\ue5d4
\nthat we are very glad that Colonel is going to be able to speak to us about woman’s writers. I want to say a few
\nother things first. We have a very distinguished visitor with us this afternoon.
\nI’ve been forced to just say a word to James. Very
\nrare. Mainly. He
\nstarted his career as being repressed
\nin the 60s and went on to run the African
\nwriters series of which was the most profitable one
\nof books ever. And he also
\nstarted his own press, very publishers, which continue to
\npublish academic and literary books on Africa. Those
\nof you who’ve been here have a history here at least a decade. Do you remember
\nthe time when the press on the African writers you said, thank
\nyou, James. We’re very glad to have you with us. I want to
\nsay again that we try to encourage members of the British study seminar to put copies
\nof recent reviews. This is the one way that we are able to read each other’s work.
\nThere is a review that I just wrote about our speaker next week. His recent
\nbook. And I think that he may not like it very much. We’ll see.
\nI also want to say that this is the penultimate addition
\nof the one hundred and fifty books that are to be recommended, recommended to all
\nundergraduates to read or at least be familiar with before they graduate.
\nAnd I’ll pass this around just so you’ll be able to get some idea of it. But for those of you who would
\nactually like a copy, just let Holly know and we will
\nget it to you. It will be. This is a project that’s been going on for some three years
\nnow. And this is about ready to go to press. It will be about half the size
\nand the spa about bounder and binder. And we’ll be distributed to all
\nthe students in liberal arts at the beginning of the semester
\nwith along with a poster that has just the titles of all of them.
\nHundred and fifty books. Sam, it’s a it’s a real privilege and honor to introduce
\nCarol Mackay, who doesn’t really need introduction to so many views
\nsince she’s such a stalwart of actually in various studies seminar
\nand that the junior fellows lunches as well and English
\ndepartment and of the general community here at u._t. Also, it’s
\nit’s intimidating to introduce an expert. I’m biography and autobiography
\nbecause, you know, when is thrown into reflections on the on the
\ngenre. And a lot of what I know about the genre, I feel like I know from
\ntalking with Carol about it over the years. She’s our expert in the English Department on life writing
\nand also, of course, really are essential
\nin centrally active Victorian UST. Those two topics go together. I think
\nit’s fair to say that one of the things you most enjoy about Victorian authors
\nis the very
\ndetailed sensibility they have for thinking about all the factors that they
\nmake for a life and for the lives of the characters they introduced to
\nus for their own tales of their own formations.
\nIn that that nuance we associate with the Victorians
\nis something that Carol has made a career of studying,
\nmaybe most
\nambitiously today in her wonderful book, Creative Activity for Victorian Exemplars
\nof the Female Quest, which I Stanford published and
\nwhich I Really remember enjoying reading when I first arrived at your team is getting to know
\neverybody here in the scene here because I feel like Carol’s project there and all
\nof her work really resonates with the vast Timothy English department in British
\nstudies has done over the years. Carol’s a fantastic teacher.
\nThe section on teaching awards on her long CV is
\nvery hardy with. The region sets any teaching award heading
\nit up and also the area of service.
\nCarol, is second to none English department. In a big project that’s still underway right now, which
\ncombines, I think, really research, teaching and local services.
\nThe British Women Writers Conference upcoming here in April at U.T.,
\nwhich we’re all very excited about and which we’ll be hearing more about in her talk. And in our
\ndiscussion afterwards. Well, thank you, Sam, for that introduction. You haven’t had to do
\nthat for me before. I think I’ve had to do it for you maybe once or twice, but we’ll continue passing
\nit back and forth. I’m going to pass around a few items
\nthat I think will give you something to glance at while I’m talking. But before I
\ndo, I’d like to introduce Casey, Slone, Casey, wave at everyone
\nwho is a post-doc here in the English department right now. And she is one of the co-organizers
\nof the conference. She will stay around afterwards to help answer questions. And I may be
\nasking her a few questions as we go along. So what I’m going to do is pass around
\nan overview of the conference, which just lists the general schedule and the keynote
\naddresses. I’ll start with Roger here and then something on the special events
\nthat are going on in conjunction with the conference and Elizabeth Garver
\nback at the back. And Diana light wave to we’ll be
\nconducting a session at the HRC where there will be an exhibit
\navailable on Friday between 11 and one o’clock in the deniece room.
\nAnd for that last half hour, they will be talking about the collection here and
\nhow people could be making good use of it who are arriving for the first time. We’re also going to have
\ntwo events at the PCL. One is just the exhibit
\nthat has been put together called New Frontiers Women Writers and the British Raj.
\nAnd then on the afternoon of Friday, on Thursday,
\nwe will be having a research workshop in the Perry Logan Library
\nfor especially the attendees who would like to be learning more about, again, our libraries
\nand research tactics. But it will also be available to others of you if you wish to stop by.
\nSo that’s this one. And then the last thing is a list of the
\nprevious papers I’ve given to British women writers conferences going back to nineteen ninety six.
\nAnd on the back, some of the panels that I’ve chaired. And I’m doing this to provide
\nan opportunity for you to see all the different kinds of topics that kind of range and depth
\nthat I think has been going on for this conference over the last twenty five years.
\nTwenty six years ago in nineteen ninety two, a group of scholars whose
\nwork was focused on 18th and 19th century British women writers meant to draft
\na mission statement and hold the first annual conference that time at the University of
\nOregon. That mission statement reads as follows in an effort
\nto encourage further scholarly efforts, including collaboration and discussion.
\nThis conference moves beyond strict literary boundaries and includes presentations
\non women’s, political, legal, medical, religious and scientific writing.
\nOur goal is to truly expand the canon, which means in part, redefining literature.
\nWe support an atmosphere of genuine inquiry and interaction among conference participants
\nwho include graduate students and established scholars alike. Last spring,
\nthe 25th annual conference was held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
\nand the conference was entitled Generations. It celebrated the accomplishments of the British
\nWomen Writers Association over the previous quarter century as a retrospective
\ngenerations considered in what ways we had fulfilled the vision set forth in nineteen ninety
\ntwo, how we had grown as a community of scholars, what authors we had recovered,
\nand our impact on academia at large. A year later,
\nscholars and graduate students here at the University of Texas at Austin are taking up the gantlet
\nby staging the twenty sixth annual British Women Writers Conference under the rubric
\nNew Directions. Our call for papers encourage turning to the future
\nto ask crucial methodological, theoretical and content based questions
\nabout our various fields and asking questions like What do we mean by British,
\nby women, by writers? We indicated that we would welcome papers and panel
\nproposals addressing change, development, destabilisation and potential.
\nIn both of both British women writers and the field of British women writers scholarship
\nenvisioning panels focused around the stability of gender, nation
\nand profession based abstractions, as well as research on individuals living at the margins
\nof those terms. We further specified our time span as incorporating British women’s
\nwriting between the 18th and early 20th centuries. We received well
\nover 200 proposals and had been able to accommodate some 150 of them.
\nPresenters include graduate students and faculty from around Texas. U.T. Austin
\nsouth-western, Texas State University. Texas Christian University. Baylor
\nReisz, Texas A&M and Southern Methodist University. And across the continental
\nUnited States, as well as Canada, Taiwan, Australia and the United Kingdom.
\nToday, I intend to provide you with a preview of our conference by highlighting some of its chief
\ninterests and concerns and in particular to invite you to one or more of
\nour three keynote lectures. More on that later. I want to characterize some of our perennial
\nthemes and point toward new and evolving strategies in the interdisciplinary fields
\nthat we bring to bear in our studies of British women writers recovering. That is
\nuncovering, discovering and publishing or republishing unknown or
\nlittle known authors. Ineffect, expanding the canon continues to be one of
\nour main goals. But now we have innovative technological tools to aid us
\nall along. Issues of individual identity have been central to our concerns, and now
\nwe are increasingly attuned to questions of national, ethnic, racial, religious,
\nsexual and gender identity which demand our attention and consideration.
\nPost-colonial studies at their core emerged from scholarship into the 18th and 19th
\ncentury British imperial history, but we’ve only begun to explore their application
\nto a wide range of genres. Hence the plural term literatures, further requiring
\nus to steep ourselves in the legal, publishing and political realms we took for
\ngranted. And children’s literature, once thought to be a minor field and
\nincidentally, primarily the purview of women writers, is now coming to the fore,
\nrevealing new insights to psychological and anthropological investigations.
\nHere I recommend a panel entitled travelers’ Hobbling Haydn’s and Good
\nLittle Girls. New forms of agency, literary
\nand cultural criticism in the 21st century has opened up new vistas and the works of
\nthe genesis of many of these evolving critical approaches. Eco criticism
\nand in particular feminist eco criticism seems especially useful for understanding. Emily
\nBronte’s poetry, for example, and I find an especially intriguing title
\nscheduled Eco feminism is an agricultural act using George
\nEdgerton’s keynotes and discards to reinterpret Victorian eco criticism
\nmeeting here at the Harry Ransom Center. None of us would take issue with the importance of our KIBEL study
\nand our conference, says one panel devoted to navigating the archives with three papers
\nentitled New Frontiers Empire. Pauline Clairemont and Shelley
\nGodwin Circle distributed authorship and feminist archival Recovery.
\nNancy Canards, literary, laborer’s and vanishing Victorians
\nresearching lost British authors in the age of Google. This
\nlast title moves us into the territory of digitalisation and textual editing,
\nwhich is addressed in one panel that includes a paper with the provocative title, The Unsaid
\nTrying to meet the challenges of encoding what manuscripts say without words.
\nNeedless to say, open access is also a topic for discussion. A case where
\nco\u00f6perate co-operative editing and online publishing can offset the trend
\ntoward an unmediated electronic record of our written heritage.
\nCertainly some paper and panel titles in our conference program employ jargon that
\nmay be mystifying to the uninitiated on a regular basis. I can recall
\nhow the Modern Language Association meetings in New York City prompted the New York Times to gleefully
\nreproduce what it considered the most outrageous titles, predominantly ones that
\nbetrayed its own preoccupation with sexual topics. Much more on those controversial
\nsubjects later. I would contend, however, that the titles for our conference papers
\nusually invoke and thereby ground their analysis. Specific
\ntexts and authors and you will be hearing from me about a mixture of the canonical
\nand non-canonical before my talk has concluded. You might begin to see connections,
\npotential conversations, as it were, between some of the papers I am citing. For
\ninstance, attention to the female body clearly emerges in the title Unlaced lacing
\nthe body and mind, fashion and feminism in George Edgerton’s keynotes
\nand discards. You needn’t know that Edgerton is the fantasy up the
\npseudonym of Mary Dunn Bright or the Keynotes and Discards
\nare her first to new woman short story collections to recognize from a previously
\ncited title that these stories may also hold a key to understanding Victorian eco
\ncriticism. Disability studies have made considerable headway theorizing
\ncontemporary literature. But the conference paper title, Disability and Incarnation
\nin the Monthly Packet promises that such studies can be fruitfully extended
\nto a monthly Church of England periodical. In this case, one edited by a woman,
\nCharlotte Young for almost 50 years, an animal, humanities
\nor non-human and post-humans studies, which approved a singular speciality for a number
\nof literary scholars over the last quarter century, are productively employed by several
\nof our presenters. Witness the Victorian Non-human in George Eliot’s Middlemarch
\nand one of our keynote topics will connect them to post-colonial interpretations.
\nI have introduced this talk by referring to some of the history of the of the annual 18th and 19th
\ncentury British women conferences, as well as beginning to characterise its ongoing
\nthemes and evolving concerns as they become manifest in our New Directions
\nconference. I’ve done so partly by citing some of the paper and panel titles for the conference,
\nand I will continue to spread Sprinkel my talk with other titles to peak your curiosity
\nand to provide evidence of the kind of scholarship our call for papers elicited.
\nYou can expect to hear about new authors, often hidden behind pseudonyms or plucked
\nfrom anonymous attributions and old standbys, most notably Jane
\nAusten, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. And the works on display
\nwill be both canonical and non-canonical. I will also provide brief overviews
\nof the scholarly careers of our three keynote speakers and ask you to join me in speculating
\nabout their lectures based on the titles they have provided for us. To conclude my
\npresentation, I’d like to share with you some of my own contributions to previous British studies,
\nwomen conferences, and to demonstrate how conference themes can direct and even
\njumpstart a scholarly career and to provide my own spur to new directions.
\nSo what will follow will be three sections with an interlude between Section 1 and 2.
\nFirst, we think back through our mothers if we are women. That’s a quote from Virginia
\nWoolf. Virginia Woolf was quick to recognize what expectations she
\nraised when she responded to a request by a Cambridge Women’s College to speak
\non the subject of women in fiction. Actually, it was two such talks, one
\nat Newnham and one at Gertten that she combined when she revised
\nand published her remarks as a room of one’s own in 1929.
\nAt first, she thinks her audience might be interested in, quote, simply a few remarks about
\nFanny Burney. A few more about Jane Austen. A tribute to the Brontes and a
\nsketch of Howorth parsonage under snow somewhat as ISM’s if possible about
\nMiss Wit Midford, a respectful allusion to George Eliot, a reference to Mrs Gaskell,
\nand one would have done. But Wolfe and our conference presenters know
\nthat the subject is not so simple. Not only might it mean women and what they are like
\nare women in the fiction they write, or women in the fiction that is written about them,
\nor that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together, but that the list is woefully
\nincomplete. There has been much more detective work since Wolfe’s time
\nand new techniques and fields of study have been brought to bear to discover the work of so-called
\nlost women writers. But Wolfe also points us toward considering another
\nbody of lost women writers whom we cannot recover, the ones who might
\nhave been, but never were, the speculative tale she weaves about
\nan imaginary Shakespeare’s sister. Wolfe goes on to say Anon
\nor Anonymous. And Anonymous was often a woman, and we have needed to stop
\nseeing Austen as our singular progenitor as Janet Todd and. Dale
\nSpender corrected us in the late 1970s by Subtitling one of their anthologies.
\nOne hundred British writers before Austin sorry, one hundred
\nBritish women authors before Austin and even Austin can be looked at newly,
\nas evidenced by the multiple cinematic adaptations of her work and the correct critiques
\nthat surround them, one of which is featured as a New Directions conference paper entitled
\nBubble Hearts and Bare Chests in the Manga World of Pride and Prejudice.
\nMoreover, Austen can be compared to other writers to bring out startling new observations
\nabout pre 19th century novels and their readers. Today, as one paper
\nentitled New Directions for Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre suggests
\na juxtaposition made richer, however, by the fact that Charlotte Bronte disliked
\nAustins fiction, finding it too narrow and perhaps thereby protesting too
\nmuch. Bronte studies continue to cry out for more attention to the third
\nand youngest sister, and I’m sad to report that she doesn’t figure in any of our program’s
\nentries. Actually, it’s George Eliot, the male pseudonym of Mary Ann
\nEvans, who figures most prominently of any author. On our program.
\nBut the directive to consider her Newley keeps those papers from being traditional or mundane.
\nAn entire panel entitled Queer and Feminist Elliot proffers a fascinating
\narray of papers one Mary Garthe, female bilden or self
\ncultivation in Middlemarch to an incipient bog woman
\nMaggie Tolliver’s prognosis in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss and three
\nD Centering The Englishman and the English woman too. Reading George Eliot’s
\nAlcaraz C. This is Daniel Durand as operatic diva mother after Krenshaw
\nCrenshaw’s intersectionality. And Kimberly Krenshaw is an African-American
\nprofessor of law at Columbia who coined the term intersectionality
\nto define an analytic framework which attempts to identify how interlocking systems
\nof power impact those who are most marginalized by society.
\nEven just putting Margaret all of Phonce name alongside Elliots in a paper title,
\nas does Victorian exceptions, revision, perception and redemption and all
\nfont and Elliott promises a lively discussion since all of fun showed little
\nrestraint in her envy over Elliott’s success and the personal affront she took to
\nElliotts unfortunate choice of title for one of her Westminster Review essays,
\nsilly novels by lady novelists. I will admit to having drawn
\nattention to titles about novelists and Victorian ones at that. But if I branch
\nout to mention a couple of or actually three Victorian poets, I can at least widen
\nmy scope a bit. I’m thinking now about Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose works
\nprominently reside here at the HRC and in Bar. But Baylor’s Armstrong
\nLibrary collection and his poetry for the common reader most often comes down to her sonnets
\nfrom the Portuguese. And how do I love the. Let me count the ways
\nthat’s in reference, of course, to her larger than life romance with her husband and fellow poet Robert
\nBrowning. But there’s so many other sides to Barrett Browning and her poetry
\nfor our conference. I can highlight a panel entitled A Trio of New Approaches
\nto the Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point with the following papers through
\nthe bars, the poetics of Ratio Reproduction and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s The Runaway Slave
\nat Pilgrim’s Point. I see you staring at my face, looking at the Liberty
\nBell 1848 gift book and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Harriet Martineau
\npoetry versus essays. This litany leads me to the
\npaper by a pair of co-presenter is queering the Victorian Poetics
\nof love and marriage. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Michael Field and the Reformation
\nof Marriage Laws little known outside the field of Victorian poetry.
\nMichael Field is the pseudonym of an aunt and a niece, Katherine Bradley
\nand Edith Cooper, who were also lovers. Their accomplishments in the arena
\nof classic verse drama are only beginning to be properly acknowledged and super
\nand appreciated in a frank and a conference on Victorian literature. Be
\nmissing a crucial component if their name didn’t appear on the program. Their name
\non our program recurs in comparison with another relative unknown, Vernon Lee,
\nthe pseudonym of a new woman novelist and essayist Violet Pasion.
\nI’ll leave you simply. With that paper title, Venus Francis,
\nthat’s a literary description of a visual work of art and the triadic mode of creation
\nin Burnley and Michael Field. These references to understudied
\nBritish women authors and their work recommend a revisionist approach to compiling
\nand publishing anthologies and to continually opening up our own teaching syllabi.
\nAnd I’ve not yet touched on Irish or Scottish writers are those who are writing in the colonies,
\nmany of which would in the near future become members of the British Commonwealth. Some, even on the
\nroad to independence, race, class and gender. Were the watchwords
\ncoming to the fore in the late 20th century criticism. But some second wave Anglo American
\nfeminists were slow to include race and class in their agenda. That
\ntragic trajectory has been largely rectified, however, and intersectional feminism
\nadmits masculinity studies to its terrain and reconsideration of the 18th,
\ncentury suggests that even periodicity has been rebooted.
\nAnd now for the interlude the elephant in the room or the bull in a china shop?
\nWhat happened to the alluring terms I set forth in my title subversive, rebellious
\nand genre busting? I will confess to introducing them partly in response
\nto Roger’s desire that I jazz it up a little. But they are legitimate terms, both in
\ndescribing the women authors and their subject matter in question and explaining how they were
\nperceived by the status quo. That found them so threatening. Victorian publishers
\nin particular seemed to think they were being responsive to public opinion by refusing to depict
\nfallen women or women who were sexually active outside the bonds of marriage
\nor such women were to appear in print. They certainly couldn’t be allowed protagonist status or have a
\nhappy ending to their tale. But even a relatively conservative woman like Elizabeth
\nGaskell, she was the wife of Eugene. You too. You Unitarian
\nminister. And she refrained from any mention of Charlotte Bronte’s unrequited love for her married
\nBelgian professor and her Bronte biography. Even Gaskell wrote an entire
\nnovel about a prostitute. Her 1853 novel, Ruth,
\nis the kind of compassionate social critique that questions punishing the victim of seduction
\nand stigmatizing little legitimacy, as well as speculating about the possibilities for reintegration
\ninto society. If societal judgment can eventually be satisfied,
\ndespite apparently succumbing to the necessity of her titular heroine dying by
\nnovels, and Gaskell has nonetheless created a heroine with whom her readership
\nhas and empathetically identified surely itself a subversive act.
\nI look forward to attending a panel devoted to the subject of fallen women and hearing a paper
\nentitled These Feeble Florets Rereading the Fallen Woman and Gaskell,
\nRuth and Ruskin’s of Queen’s Gardens. Is it subversive
\nto broach the topic of sexuality directly or indirectly? That would seem
\nto be the case in the Victorian era. More so than in the ribald 18th century and
\nRegency periods. Who’s published book list boasted titles like that by a scandalous
\ncourtesan? The Memoirs of Harriet Wilson, written by herself.
\nBut if writing about female sexuality with respect to heterosexual relations was subversive,
\nhow much more controversial might we expect? Writing about lesbian relationships to be?
\nMy colleague Lisa Moore is one of many literary and historical scholars
\nwho has been writing about the role of same sex sex attraction in the life and work of 18th
\ncentury British women writers. Over the last quarter century and her 1997
\nstudy, Dangerous Intimacies toward a Sapphic History of the British Novel,
\nurges us to look not merely at Austen but beyond to the novels of Mariah Edgeworth
\nand Sarah Scott. Just as her 2011 book Sister Arts The Products
\nof Lesbian Landscapes encourages us to encompass the literary and visual art
\nof Mary Delaney and the poetry of Anna Seyward. I suspect it will not
\nsurprise you to know that Lisa was a keynote speaker at an earlier British women’s conference,
\nthis one held at the University of Colorado in 2012 on landmarks.
\nHer title, Queer Politics The Lesbian Landscapes of Sonnett History,
\nmarks another step beyond her just previous book. You can anticipate that
\nmore LGBTQ topics addressed will be addressed during our conference
\nannounced by such paper titles as Something Particular Formal Queerness
\nand Eliza Haywood’s, the British Recluse or Queering Erotic Triangles
\nin Sense and Sensibility. There’s something about Mary Queering Mary Bennett on
\nthe stage and Queer Temporality for envisioning post Victorian masculinity
\nin Virginia Woolf’s to the Lighthouse. The Victorian period was responsible
\nfor a decade. The 80s 60s synonymous with a literary subgenre,
\nthe sensation novel written primarily for and by women. Though many of
\nthem were published anonymously or soon anonymously, the popularity of the Sensation
\nnovel reflects both the previously unmet needs it served for both readers and writers,
\nand the general satisfaction found in breaking traditional boundaries variously
\ndefined in terms of its subject matter infidelity, bigamy, murder
\nsensation. Fiction was also derided because of its popularity with a population
\nof readers, a recently expanded by higher rates of literacy and the availability of cheaply
\nproduced print media. The fears expressed in the press came from critics
\nespousing middle class standards of proper literature and well-written could
\nnot include the prolific output of Mary Elizabeth Braddon, for instance. Never mind the fact
\nthat Dickens and Thackeray and Collins wrote it break next feed to meet the relentless
\ndemands of serial publication. The year nineteen ninety two that marked
\nthe inception of the British Women Writers Association, also self publication of two key
\ntexts about the sensation novel. My colleague and Svet Kasich’s mixed
\nfeelings feminism, mass culture and Victorian sensationalism. And Lynn
\nPickett’s The Improper Feminine, The Woman’s Sensation, Novel and New and
\nthe New Woman writing, both of which made Braddon Mrs Henry Wood and
\nwrote a Broten household names to the Communist Party. I look forward to
\nhearing the conference papers with titles like Catherine Crowe’s pioneering fiction,
\nSensational Scientific Instruction on Meat for Punishment,
\nIndulging Incompetence and Ellen Woods, The Channing’s and Roland York and
\nLady Yardley’s Punishment Policing Gender Performances and Lady Oddly Secret
\nSensation Novels, Gothic Fiction, Tales of the Supernatural, all part of popular culture,
\nall dealing with the emotions, all ripe for application of affect theory and all coming
\nfrom and or about uppity women, troublemakers, rebels, potentially
\nviolent ones and genre busters. Our attention was riveted in the late
\nSandra Gilbert and Susan Jabbar’s Madwoman in the Attic. Winifred Hughes, The Maniac
\nin the Cellar. Joanna Rushes How to Suppress Women’s Writing. Phyllis Rose’s
\nParallel Lives Five Victorian Marriages. Elaine Show Walters The Female Malady
\nWomen Madness An English Culture 18:30 Agent. 1880 and 2
\nby Nina Auerbach Women, the woman and the Demon. And Romantic
\nImprisonment, Women and other glorified outcasts.
\nA compendium by Suzanne Hamilton entitled Criminals, Idiots, Women and Miners
\nVictorian Women by Women on Women was published in the mid nineties and rushed to
\nreprint before the decade was out. And the most recent volume of this ilk across
\nmy desk is brazen. Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World.
\nA graphic novel or really selection of Short Stories by Penelope Pageau,
\nwho treats Iconoclasts as role models. And even if only one of them. By
\nBli and an American is a writer, they all reflect the indomitable spirit
\nof the women writers. We will be celebrating during the upcoming event. We called New Directions.
\nAnd so I have brought in some books which I’ll leave up here if anyone wants to see
\nthem. At the end of the session, this is the brazen title to the
\ngraphic novel. The next section second set
\ncenterpieces. I’d now like to turn my attention to the three keynote addresses
\nand one performance, which unfortunately has an attendance limit due to our choice
\nof venue, but more of its future before I am through. I talk to Casey
\nabout the performance. This is the performance of plunderers or
\nI guess so we have three king outperformer speeches and one performance.
\nOur first keynote speaker is Perama Roye, Professor of English at the University of
\nCalifornia at Davis. Her address is entitled of dieties Animals
\nand the Colonial State. Her research has focused on post-colonial theory and
\nliteratures, Victorian literature, taste and dietetics diet,
\nand its effects on health and the non-human tern. She is the author of
\nIndian Traffic Identities in Question in Colonial and Post-colonial India
\nand Alimentary Tracts, Appetites, Versions and the Post-colonial
\nand Coeditor of States of Trauma, Gender and Violence in South Asia.
\nHer current book project, tentatively titled Empires Non-Humans,
\nseeks to understand the degree to which the nonhuman whether animal, vegetable
\nto lyric or terrestrial, extraterrestrial, monstrous or spectral
\nis key to a comprehensive grasp of the imperial world, whether in terms of its
\nimaginative circuits, its political formations or its bodily registers.
\nShe will be delivering her lecture at 4:45 on Thursday, April 12th in
\nBelmont Hall. Stimulating an original are two adjectives that recur
\nin descriptions of her publications. I think we can expect a far ranging discussion
\nfocused on the colonial experience in South Asia during the Victorian period, when animal
\nimagery was variously employed by the mother country to describe its imperial population.
\nOur second keynote will be delivered by Jill Galvin, associate professor of English at Ohio
\nState University and a graduate of planned TEUs program
\nand the major in English. Jill is a student
\nin my first English honors class on the Brontes, and I supervised her honors thesis
\nentitled The Procrustean Bed Literature’s Chronicle of the Suppressed Individual
\nin Victorian Literature, earning her doctorate at the University of California, Los
\nAngeles. She began her climb up the tenure track ladder, publishing her first book
\nunder the title The Sympathetic Medium Feminine Channeling the Occult
\nand Communication Technologies, 1859 to 1919.
\nHer previous research has focused on long 19th century British media
\ntechnologies, spiritualism, mesmerism, psychical research
\nand both Victorian and contemporary ideas as a post-human. She is currently researching
\nrepresentations of marriage. Her latest book length project argues that late
\nVictorian and early 20th century stories of marriage co-evolved with literary
\nrealism. She is also coeditor with Elsie Mitchy of a forthcoming
\nessay collection, Repotting Marriage in Nineteenth Century British Literature
\nthat reexamines the cultural and formal elements of marriage stories. She
\nwill be delivering her lecture entitled Garden Space Interiority
\nMarriage and Modern Character at 10:45 on. Friday, April 13th
\nand the University Teaching Center. I am grateful to Jill for introducing
\nme to Elizabeth Flint von Arnim, although without knowing about its authorship,
\nI had seen the film adaptation of her 1922 novel, The Enchanted
\nApril. Some of you may be familiar with the 1992 Academy Award nominated
\nfilm starring Josie Lawrence, Miranda Richardson, Joan Plowright,
\nJim Broadbent and Alfred Molina. And it was also adapted as a Broadway play in 1925,
\nan American feature film at nineteen thirty five, a Tony Award nominated stage play in
\nRadio in 2015. How many of you have heard of Elizabeth Dole in Ireland before?
\nOh, good. All right. The author was born Marionette Beauchamp
\nin Sydney, Australia in 1866, raised in London
\nand Luzon, Switzerland by her first marriage. She became countess on Arnim
\nSchlager Ensign. And after her second marriage, she was referred to as a Elizabeth Russell.
\nCountess Russell. Sister in law to Bernard Russell, although known in
\nher early life as Mary. After the 1898 anonymous publication of her first
\nbook, Elizabeth and her German Garden, she was known to her readers, eventually
\nto her friends, and finally even to her family, simply as Elizabeth.
\nThat novel, the focal point of Jill’s keynote address, became extremely popular,
\nreprinted 11 times during its first year of publication with 21 editions
\nin print. Halfway through the second, her books with only one exception, and that’s
\nthe 1936 autobiographical. All the dogs of my life
\nwere always published anonymously with the merest scriptura by the author of Elizabeth and her German
\nGarden. One critic describes that first book as, quote, a euphoric him
\nto nature. In the romantic tradition, its originality and peculiar talent
\nrest on a character called The Man of Wrath. A benevolent caricature of Elizabeth’s
\nfirst husband is a novel of passionate rebellion against established demands,
\nformal and private, made on married women even by a devoted husband.
\nA not so banal depiction of a demanding husband is featured in von Arnold’s
\nlater. The publisher, John Middleton Murray, writing to his wife and Von
\nVan Von Arnold’s cousin, Katherine Mansfield, about the negative reviews of Vera Observed.
\nOf course, my dear one, critics are faced with a Wuthering Heights written by Jane Austen. They don’t know
\nwhat to say. I am sure that you join me in being curious about what Jill
\nGalvin will have to say about Elizabeth. One on our final keynote speaker
\nis Susan Lancer, professor emerita of Comparative Literature, English and
\nWomen’s and Gender Studies at Brandeis University. Her most recent books are The Sexuality
\nof History, Modernity and the Sapphic Fifteen Sixty 65
\nto 1830, which won the American Historical Society’s Joan Kelly Prize.
\nAn honorable mention for the American Society for 18th Century Studies.
\nGotch Chok Prize Narrative Theory Unbound Queer
\nand Feminist Intervention’s co-edited with Robin Warhol, which received honorable mention
\nfor the Narrative Society’s Perkins Prize and Fictions of Authority Woman
\nWriters and Narrative Voice first published in 1992 and soon to be reissued
\nby Cornell University Press. President of the American Society for
\nthe 18th Century Studies, Sue will deliver her keynote lecture Narrative
\nJustice, Gender, Race and the Rescue and Rescue in the age of Austin
\nat the closing session of New Directions starting at 4:45 on Saturday, April
\nhas been focused within three primary arenas narrative theory and the novel
\nwith a particular interest in women writers, eighteenth century European studies
\nand gender and sexuality studies, we can expect her to connect the history
\nof sexuality and race relations, not only in the novels of Jane Austen,
\nbut in representations of the French Revolution as seen from Britain and on the continent.
\nSeveral years ago, James Lowland and I had the pleasure of recommending a submission
\nto Texas studies in language and literature for publication in the journal, then being edited by
\nKurt Hind Silman. Entitled Loose Characters and Marry Cowden Clerks
\nThe Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines. The article introduced me to a female
\nShakespearean scholar who, with her husband Charles, produced a concordance
\nto Shakespeare in 1846 before going on to write a series of novellas under
\nthe general title of the girlhood of Shakespeare’s heroine’s first collected
\nin a single volume in 1850, and then variously edited and republished
\nthroughout the 19th century. When I was selected to write the essay on life
\nwriting for the Cambridge Companion of Victorian Women’s Writing, I was intrigued by the idea of
\nconsidering Catherine Clarke’s novellas as an exercise in speculative life, writing
\nboth in the sense of working with fictional characters and in the sense of trying to recreate
\na psychological backstory for an adult, whether real or fictional.
\nThen, as James and I considered the possibilities for staging the work of an 18th or 19th
\ncentury British woman writer for this conference, he hit upon the plan to call upon some of
\nhis students from the U.T. English Departments Shakespeare at Windale program to
\nperform a staged reading of expert excerpts from Cowden Clarke’s Rosalind and
\nCecilia the Friends. The performance will also incorporate material
\nfrom Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Clarke’s source for the tale. And we’ll conclude
\nwith some discussion about the importance of nineteenth century British women writing about Shakespeare
\nbecause the performance will be conducted in the protocell Theater here at the HRC
\non the evening of Friday the 14th. Seating is limited and we have to give priority
\nto the conference participants who are signing up for the event. However, we will circulate.
\nCasey has it a waiting list in case some
\nseating becomes available. And if you have an interest as this goes around
\nand I do have an early not the first edition, but an early edition
\nof the girlhood of Shakespeare’s heroines. I can show you.
\nThe 4:30 panel that afternoon on Cotton, Clarke and Shakespeare will include
\npapers by Lauren Byler, author of the TSL article already mentioned
\nby Kassidy Schultz, a plan to add Windale student Kassidy here. There’s Kassidy in
\nthe back row. And I’d also do we have Austin? Yes. OK.
\nAustin Hannah, who is going to be one of the performance as well.
\nAnd the last paper will be called The Harpy and the Shrew. Shakespeare’s Catarina
\nand Beatrice in 19th century Britain. And I hope that to when James
\nreturns to us from Los Angeles, where he’s at the Shakespeare Association meeting, we can talk to him about
\nmaybe having another performance of this particular scene and the discussion that
\nwe’re we’re hoping to to advance. And now from my last section
\ndown memory lane, before I conclude with an overview of some of my contributions
\nto previous, previous 18th and 19th century British women writers conferences,
\nI’d like to look back a shorter distance to last semester where I taught a graduate seminar
\nentitled Nineteenth Century British Women Writers and the Dual Protagonist.
\nWhen I was designing the course the previous year, I thought it might lead to some paper proposals
\nfor the New Directions conference, and I was deeply gratified that six such proposals
\nwere accepted. Let me now indulge in a listing of them. Diana
\nLight Diana’s is there reparative
\ntetrahedron dynamic power relations and Charlotte Bronte is surely
\na brilliant extension of her Nasir art and even Cedric’s theory of triangular desire.
\nRaelynn goes Israeland here. If anybody else from the class is here.
\nWhen I start to read your name and titles, this raise your hand. Raelynn
\nPerilous Prize Mythological Expression of Desire and Power in Mary Barton
\nand Shirley. And this is a remarkable analysis of mermaid imagery.
\nSarah Schuster Narrative Instability as political mediation
\nin Shirley and Mary Barton, which is a bid for the readers controlled emotional response.
\nBree when Maiga empathy and infantilization of the working class
\nin Mary Barton and this is showing how the status quo is made to prevail at the expense
\nof equality. Jonathan Silliness? Jonathan Ive nowhere. So back there at one point,
\nBritannia rule the waves. Britons can be slaves. The Revenge of the
\nMistress in Elizabeth Gasol’s Mary Barton A Tale of Manchester Life.
\nThe Failure of an Imperial Nation to Heed Warnings and Danielle Die.
\nAll the wondrous combinations of the Universe, the cosmic and the personal and Daniele
\nde Rhondda, in which Elliot’s message that everything within her text relates to
\neverything else is expounded. Although none of these papers deals with
\nthe first and last novels in the course Austen Sense and Sensibility and Mary Chumley
\nis read pottage, I can say with confidence that their writers not only met the goals I had set
\nfor the course, but they went well beyond them. As I review the papers
\nI delivered to 13 previous conferences conducted by the British Women Writers Association,
\nI am first struck by the rich array of themes and topics they invoked in their calls for papers
\nmoving back in time. They include generations making a scene,
\nlandmarks, curiosity, journeys, fresh threads of connection,
\nfemale marginalia, annotating empire, speaking with authority
\nand HRI, or recollecting British women writers. These calls
\nfor papers prompted me to reexamine and intensify my research and understanding
\nof women writers whose work I had only begun to study and write about. After all, I
\nhad written a dissertation on the soliloquies in the novels of William Make Peace. Thackeray
\nand its outgrowth in my first book Soliloquy on 19th century fiction, still fell
\nwithin traditional lines of narrative and genre criticism. Although even then
\nI had the foresight to write an epilog featuring the free indirect speech of Austin, Eliot
\nand Wolf beginning in 1996, my first three papers
\nwere British women writers. Conferences were entitled. She Lies Not Unremembered
\nand Thackeray Ritchey writes back through her mother’s herself. Her story,
\nJulia Margaret Cameron’s autobiographical fragment and the multiple D conversions
\nof any would sort. Those of you familiar with my second book, Creative Negativity.
\nFor Victorian exemplars of the female quest can recognize the seeds of my subject matter
\nin those papers. Although I did add a fourth figure with Elizabeth Robbins, the
\nAmerican born actress who relocated to London, where she performed an Ibsen dramas
\nand went on to write novels. At first, Soudan ominously and plays for the suffrage stage,
\ncalls for conference papers, encouraged scholars to think freshly about their research interests.
\nTo take different perspectives on where we are headed and participating in conferences gives
\nus an opportunity to share ideas, receive constructive criticism,
\nand open ourselves to cutting edge work of our colleagues. Conferences generate
\nnew directions and alliances, often leading to future panel groupings, essay
\ncollections and even connections with book publishers. Besides my own papers
\nat previous British women writers conferences, I have volunteered or been asked to moderate
\nyet another array of topics, and they prefigures some of my current and future pedagogical
\nand scholarly agenda. Having edited a critical edition of both Science 1885
\nautobiographical sketches set me on a course to teach classes on life writing
\nand to continue exploring the controlof controversial life of the Sont, including her connections
\nto the even more controversial Madame Blavatsky, founder and first president
\nof the Theosophical Society. I promised Roger I would meet her, at least at some point.
\nAnd am I am only mentioning, I’m afraid that as a result I was alert to a
\nof them entitled in search of Madame Blavatsky reading esoteric
\nretrieving the esoteric, which I suspect will aid me in my analysis
\nof how Blavatsky and Besant, the Sont served as culture critics and theorists
\nof religion, paving the way for recovery of so-called lost practices that can
\naid us in interpreting such ephemeral concepts as memory and the imagination.
\nAnother trajectory signaled by my research for British women writers conferences is my book
\nin Progress. And oh, and I do have the latest biography of
\nAndy Besought, written by someone at the Sorbonne who has done the first,
\nI think, of critical biography that at the same time doesn’t
\nhave an agenda. It is itself writing. Many of the previous biographies
\nhave been either pro socialist and anti thought theosophist or vise versa.
\nSo might my book in Progress, Anonymity, Student Enmity and Femininity about the
\nadvantages and disadvantages personal and for the public. Good for 19th
\ncentury women writers who variously concealed and revealed
\ntheir identities. Besides including authors, I’ve already written about the Brontes,
\nElliot Ritchie and Robin’s. This project will mark my first foray into the poetry
\nand drama of that two woman team who constitute the pseudonym Michael Field.
\nI hope this presentation about our upcoming conference and some of the paper and keynote
\ntitles I have cited whet your appetite for attending some of the events sponsored by New Directions
\nand also for reading more works by the subversive, rebellious and genre busting 18th
\nand 19th century British women writers. We will be showcasing.<\/p>\n"},"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/09\/british-studies.png","download_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/podcast-download\/40\/subversive-rebellious-genre-busting-18th-and-19th-century-women-writers-move-to-center-stage-carol-mackay.mp3","player_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/podcast-player\/40\/subversive-rebellious-genre-busting-18th-and-19th-century-women-writers-move-to-center-stage-carol-mackay.mp3","audio_player":"