text by Lucyna Krawczyk-Żywko
Our group was officially established on February 23rd 2022, and within these 12 months we have been far from idle;) Why not use this anniversary to take a brief look at what we’ve been doing?
QAQV blogs
After some technical glitches, our redesigned website went live in April and we started sharing our latest research in the form of a mini-blog. We posted i.a. on British Romanticism (Małgorzata Łuczyńska-Hołdys), works of Dickens (Magdalena Pypeć), Victorian monsters (Dorota Babilas), Maria Wirtemberska (Sylwia Grusza), Anna Jameson (Magdalena Pypeć), James McLevy (Lucyna Krawczyk-Żywko), and, of course, Queen Anne (Paweł Rutkowski) and Queen Victoria (Maria Szafrańska-Chmielarz).
talks
You had ample opportunities to meet us online and in person, e.g. during two Polish academic events: Festiwal Nauki (Dorota Babilas, Lucyna Krawczyk-Żywko, Julia Wilde) and Noc Anglistów (Dorota Babilas and Lucyna Krawczyk-Żywko). We were also present at the 1st international Humanities, Society, Identity Congress organised by our faculty with a session entitled “Rewriting the Past”. It was divided into two parts: perceptions of the past(s) in the nineteenth century (Dorota Osińska, Małgorzata Łuczyńska-Hołdys, Magdalena Pypeć) and contemporary perceptions of that era (Maria Błaszkiewicz, Lucyna Krawczyk-Żywko, Dorota Babilas).
guest lectures
Our guest speakers were Prof. Nathalie Vanfasse (Aix-Marseille Université, France), who talked about connections between literature and economics in Oliver Twist (May), and Prof. Laurie Shannon (The Anne Lister Society & Northwestern University, US), who discussed Anne Lister’s diaries (November). This week, we will host J.C. Briggs, the author of Charles Dickens detective mysteries!
WLM RS 2
“Binary Oppositions” was the theme of our second workshop for PGRs and ECRs. This time held online, it enabled the participation of scholars from across the globe (India, Poland, Romania, Spain, UK) and was a great platform for young academics to both share their research and receive peer feedback. The coordinators (Dorota Osińska, Maria Szafrańska-Chmielarz, Julia Wilde) received very encouraging feedback and we’re hopeful that a third such meeting is on the horizon. By the way, Maria is working on a special issue of Folio and we will share the papers presented during the workshop when they are published.
QAQV chats
Last month, we launched our new series of online conversations, beginning on a high note – my fist guest was Prof. Rosario Arias (Universidad de Málaga, Spain), an expert on (almost) all things neo-Victorian, who was paired with our own Dorota Babilas. The audience enjoyed it, and you can learn more about the format and watch the first chat here.
QAQV 8
The Call for Papers for our 8th conference was announced in November and we hope it will attract a variety of papers and perspectives on 18th- and 19th-century literature and culture as well as their afterlives.
the group
Just one titbit to add here: we started as a dozen and grew by 25%, which is not bad at all for a first year.
Let’s see what Year 2 brings!