text by Lucyna Krawczyk-Żywko
Since it is February, here’s another annual report marking the anniversary of us getting together as a research group
QAQV 9
The main event of the year was the From Queen Anne to Queen Victoria conference with more excellent talks, insightful questions and comments from friends old and new. Papers and talks looked at the past which “is never dead” and is “not even past”, as William Faulkner noted (see the programme here). Just like the keynote lectures – delivered by Prof. Jerome De Groot, Prof. Valerie Purton, and Prof. Mina Gorji – they will keep echoing in our research and teaching. A few pictures from (not only) sessions can be found here.
WLM Rising Stars 3 publication
Another special issue of Folio has just been published and is based on the papers delivered during the third WLM RS 3. It was co-hosted with Jacquline Woroniec, a PhD candidate from the University of Szczecin, who also co-edited the issue together with our own Maria Szafrańska-Chmielarz and Dorota Osińska. If you are into reworkings, reinventions and remediations of the Gothic, follow the link to learn more.
QAQV blogs
We keep sharing our research, reviews, and reflections, starting with an announcement of the publication of the 8th volume in the From Queen Anne to Queen Victoria series dedicated to Body & Mind. Individual member’s topics included a vindication of King George IV by Aleksandra Gałązka; Charles Dickens’s demands for universal education and comprehensive sanitary reform by Magdalena Pypeć; Oscar Wilde’s Salomé and her dance of the seven veils by Konrad Zaręba; works of Mary Linwood, the most famous English embroideress at the turn of the 19th century, by Paweł Rutkowski; or the recently reimagined story of Janet Horne, historically dubbed the Last Witch of Scotland, by Agnieszka Sienkiewich-Charlish.
Interestingly, instead of books, it was conferences that were reviewed and remembered: from Domestic Cats in Literature Conference and Cats the musical – Dorota Babilas – to (another) John Keats Conference and the poet’s concept of indolence and idleness – Małgorzata Łuczyńska-Hołdys – to the British Association of Chinese Studies (BACS) conference and Chinoiserie – Maria Szafrańska-Chmielarz – and our own QAQV 9 – Lucyna Krawczyk-Żywko. Dorota Osińska’s post offered her reflections on something other than QAQV themes: AI in research, writing, and teaching. All available if you want to catch up.
guest lectures and talks
Our online guest was Dr Adrienne Wojcik (Northern Virginia Community College) who unpacked the legal symbolism of Dickensian mud and stars in her lecture titled ‘Mud and Stars: Dickens’s Legal Symbolism in Hard Times, and the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act (see the abstract here).
the group
Julia Wilde decided to focus on writing her PhD dissertation, but a long-term participant and friend of our conferences and other events has joined us – Dr Barbara Braid from the University of Szczecin. You will hear from her very soon in another QAQV chat and on the blog!
As per the plan, year 5 brings WLM 14, another QAQV chat, another guest talk, as well as working on QAQV vol. 9 – we’ll see what else!
