text by Lucyna Krawczyk-Żywko
Continuing the annual reports marking our anniversaries (year 1 and year 2), here’s what we’ve been doing over the last 12 months.
WLM 13
Science and Literary Imagination in 18th- and 19th-century Britain was the topic of the latest workshop in our online series.
WLM Rising Stars 3
This time, the workshop for young scholars was co-organised by Jacqueline Woroniec, our colleague from the University of Szczecin, and the theme was Spectres of Gothic Literature: Reflections, Reworkings, Reinventions.
QAQV blogs
Our mini-blog continues. We’ve posted on a variety of topics, including our publications, reviews, as well as work in progress: Monika Coghen commemorated the bicentenary of Byron’s death and Agnieszka Sienkiewich-Charlish the bicentenary of the publication of James Hogg’s seminal work, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner; Maria Szafrańska-Chmielarz compared the lives of Queen Victoria and Empress Cixi; Małgorzata Łuczyńska-Hołdys reflected on the John Keats Conference and Dorota Babilas on the Neo-Victorian Television lecture series. Grażyna Bystydzieńska wrote about Ewa Młynarczyk’s MA dissertation, which has been recently published by the Institute of English Studies. Dorota Osińska announced the aforementioned Spectres of Gothic Literature: Reflections, Reworkings, Reinventions; Magdalena Pypeć examined the rhetoric of imperial Gothic in Charles Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and Konrad Zaręba discussed the Victorian Gothic archetype of the mummy in Bram Stoker’s and Arthur Conan Doyle’s texts. I shared news of my monograph on the Holmes vs the Ripper narratives as well as reflections on the uses and abuses of studying ‘Jack the Ripper’ fictions.
guest lectures and talks
Among the scholars sharing their knowledge with us were Dr Dorothea Flothow (University of Salzburg), who analysed representations of Ada Lovelace in picture books and biographies for young girls, and Prof. Lisa Vargo (University of Saskatchewan), who offered a few glimpses into her life with Mary Shelley.
QAQV vol. 8
The limited number of print copies for the authors have already reached us, but this volume will be also available in Open Access for the first time! See the publisher’s website for details.
the group
Sylwia Grusza decided to focus on writing her PhD dissertation, but but our numbers have not dwindled – in fact, we are one member up, because Aleksandra Gałązka (MA student) and Konrad Zaręba (PhD student) joined us.
Year 4 brings QAQV 9, but hopefully a lot more besides!
