text by Lucyna Krawczyk-Żywko
It’s been two years since our group was officially established. Since I marked the first anniversary summarising our activities, I’ll do it again. Here’s what we’ve been doing over the last 12 months.
QAQV 8
The main event of the year was the From Queen Anne to Queen Victoria conference which I described elsewhere as the eighth, but also, in some ways, the first. Papers and talks revolved around the theme of Body | Mind | Spirituality and the keynote lectures delivered by our Fabulous Four – i.e. Prof. Mary Jacobus, Prof. Patricia Pulham, Prof. Nathalie Vanfasse, and Dr Chris Louttit – were, just like the speakers, fabulous.
Some of us are already busy working on the post-conference publication, we will keep you posted.
WLM Rising Stars 2 publication
We published texts based on the papers delivered during the second meeting which was on Binary Oppositions in 18th- and 19th-century British Literature and Culture in a special issue of Folio edited by Maria Szafrańska-Chmielarz. The WLM RS 2 programme and the link to the journal are here.
QAQV blogs
Our mini-blog continues and this year it was dominated by women and villains: Dorota Osińska wrote about Victorian women writers in dialogue with Hellenism and reviewed a book on 19th-century women illustrators and cartoonists; Agnieszka Sienkiewich-Charlish reminded us about a forgotten woman writer with her post on Susan Ferrier, and Dorota Babilas about a forgotten fictional diva – Trilby. Rewritings of Victorian villains were the topic of texts by Agnieszka Sienkiewicz-Charlish, who reviewed Hyde, while adaptations of Jack the Ripper (along with Batman) were discussed by Maria Szafrańska-Chmielarz, and (along with transtemporal and transnational detectives) me. Coffee houses of the past were the topic of Paweł Rutkowski’s text, and Grażyna Bystydzieńska wrote about Ewa Młynarczyk’s dissertation, recently published by the Institute of English Studies (more here).
QAQV chats
The series of online conversations launched in January 2023 continues. I had the absolute pleasure of moderating Chat 3 on Victorian women writers with Dr Clare Walker Gore (University of Cambridge) and our own Dorota Osińska – they were so talkative it was not easy to butt in;) Chat 4 was on adapting 19th-century texts and characters with Izabela Rudnicka (University of Manchester) and our own Maria Szafrańska-Chmielarz – this time the audience wanted to continue the chat long past the standard 90 minutes, so we did (more on the format here).
guest lectures
Fantastic people keep sharing their knowledge with us. Writer J.C. Briggs, the author of Charles Dickens detective mysteries, talked about her research and sources behind the novels (February); Dr Anne Chapman (GCU London) discussed Arthur Conan Doyle’s contributions to The Idler – yes, The Idler, not The Strand (March); Dr Derek Johnston (Queen’s University Belfast) examined the Gothic mode of historical TV dramas (May); and Prof. Suzanne Schwarz (University of Worcester) presented 18th– and 19th-century royal attitudes to slave trade and abolition (December). If you missed them, the good news is that some were recorded and are available here.
guest appearences
In April I organised and moderated a guest event for the MMU PGR/ECR Long Nineteenth Century group on Transnationalisms – Sylwia Grusza gave a paper on the Poems of Ossian and Malvina, or the Heart’s Intuition and Maria Szafrańska-Chmielarz on Detective L (the poster is here).
the group
Just one titbit to add here: Monika Coghen joined us and rumour has it you will hear from her on the blog soon.
Year 3 brings WLM 13 – let’s see what else!
