2006 Victorians Institute Conference
Gender and Victorian Reform
October 20, 21 2006
Friday 12 - 6; Registration
Carmichael Lobby
Session I. 1:00 - 2:30
Panel 1: Spaces for Reform: Implications for Narrative
Chair: Anne Lockwood, Limestone College
- "Reforming Domestic and Psychic Spaces in Mary Barton and Middlemarch"
Kristina Deffenbacher, Hamline University
- "Ghost Walks: Subordination, arrangement and discipline in Bleak House."
William David Floyd
Panel 2:
Between Women: Rhetoric, Religion, and the Politics of Reform
Chair: Carla Coleman, USC Aiken
- "The Agon in the Poetry of May Kendall and Amy Levy."
Kasey Baker, University of Tennessee
- "The Garrett Sisters: Gender Class and the Politics of Reform."
Lise Sanders, Hampshire College
- "Michael Field's Domestic Piety."
Maria LaMonaca, Columbia College
- "Godiva's Daughter: Harriet Martineau, First Woman Social Reformer."
Deborah Logan, Western Kentucky University
Panel 3: India and Reform at Home and Abroad
Chair: Patrick Cooper, UNC Chapel Hill
- "The Nexus of Christianity and Hinduism in Toru Dutt."
Chris Foss, University of Mary Washington
- "Victorian Medical Reform and the Woman Question in India."
Narin Hassan, Georgia Institute of Technology (Read by Mary Ellis Gibson
Session II: 2:45-4:15
Panel 4: For God and Country: Women's Choices As Illusion or Reality
Chair:
- "Serving Two Masters: Signifying Choices in Jane Eyre."
Joseph Donica, Bob Jones University
- "Recreating the Female Role: Missions in the Empire."
Mona Dunckel, Bob Jones University
- "Mutiny on the Home Front: Victorian Artwork and Women's Reform."
Karen Rowe, Bob Jones University
Panel 5: Reform Begins at Home
Chair: John Hendrickson, Minnesota SU, Mankato
- "Margaret Hale as Mediator in Gaskell's North and South: A Reform of Self."
Emily Ford, Taylor University, Fort Wayne
- "The Gender of Revolt in Bleak House."
Michael Lewis, University of Virginia
- "A Worthless Domestic Drudge in A Tale of Two Cities: Lucie, Reform and the Critics."
John Hendrickson, MSU Mankato
Panel 6: Florence Nightingale and Co.
Chair: Carla Coleman, USC Aiken
- "Florence Nightingale's Training of Domestic Detectives."
Louise Penner, University of Massachusetts, Boston
- "Florence Nightingale, 'Pauper Nurses,' and the Case of the Liverpool
Work Infirmary."
Alison McMonagle, George Washington University
- "Exploitative Relationship: Arthur Clough and Florence Nightingale."
Patrick Scott, University of South Carolina
Panel 7: Gender, Genre, and Reform at the fin-de-siecle
Chair: James Diedrick, Agnes Scott College
- "Swinburne, Mathilde Blind, and the Afterlife of Aestheticism."
James Diedrick, Agnes Scott College
- "Erotics of Ethical Socialism: Edith Lees Ellis and Emma Brooke's
'New Life' Fictions."
Diana Maltz, Southern Oregon University
- "The Dangers of the 'Delusive Bower': Alice Meynell and
Sociability in Women's Writing."
Emily Harrington, University of Michigan
- "Dollie Radford and the Ethical Aesthetics of fin-de-siecle
Socialism."
Ruth Livesay, University of London
Session III: 4:30 - 5:45
Panel 8: Threats to Marriage: Dangerous Women and Colonized Bodies
Chair: Neil Hultgren, University of Virginia
- "Politics of Gender and Genre: Wilkie Collins."
Maria Bachman, Coastal Carolina University
- "George Meredith's Imperial Model of Patriarchal Reform."
Timothy Carens, College of Charleston
- "Sexual Inversion and Reform Work in Rhoda Broughton's Dear
Faustina."
Sexual Inversion and Reform Work in Rhoda Broughton's Dear
Faustina
Panel 9: Gendered Bodies in Public
- "Gender Conflict in Thackeray's Vanity Fair."
Peter Capuano, University of Virginia<
- "Darwin, Reform and Women's Sexual Practice."
Ann-Barbara Graff, Nipissing University
- "Domestic Violence, Coverture and Victorian Street Literature."
Suzanne Rintoul, McMaster University
Panel 10 - Reforming Narrative
Chair: Sally Hitchmough, Wofford College
- "Power of Story and Memory in Peter Pan."
Catherine England, University of South Carolina
- "Narrative Acts as the Site of Resistance in The Woman in
White."
Aria Chernik, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
- "Ethical Encounters with Alterity: Storytelling in Silas Marner."
Kristen Pond, University of North Carolina Greensboro
Panel 11: Charlotte Bronte and the Reforming Impulse
Chair: Beth Kramer, New York University
- "Vinegar Discourse": The Spinster as "Neutral Man-Woman" in
Bronte's Shirley and Gaskell's Cranford."
Kay Heath, Virginia State
University
- "Reforming National Identity: Shirley as a Palimpsest Novel."
Heather Miner, University of Virginia
- "Resisting Reform: Charlotte Bronte and the Grounds of Natural History."
Danielle Coriale, Brandeis University
6:00 - 7:00
Reception for participants, upper lobby of Phifer Science Building
Saturday; Registration 8:00 - 10:00,
Carmichael Lobby
Continental Breakfast, 8:00 - 8:30
Session IV: 8:30 - 10:00
Panel 12 - Domesticity and Reform
- "'Negotiating Power': Victorian Writers and the Married Women's Property Bill."
Beth Kramer, New York University
- "Necessary Selfishness: Personal Reform Before Helping Others in 'Janet's Repentance'."
Patrick Cooper, UNC Chapel Hill
- "Miss Marjoribanks: Margaret Oliphant's 'Distinguished
Revolutionary'."
Kirsten Escobar, Stephen F. Austin State University
Panel 13 - Embodied Protest
Chair: Cynthia Patton, Emporia State University
Carm 207
- "Refashioning Culture: Gender and Dress Reform in Late Victorian England."
Loretta Clayton, The New School
- "Trinkets and Transformations: Consolidation in Late
Nineteenth-Century Britain."
Maggie Atkinson, Queen's University,
Kingston
- "Bystander at the Banquet: Female Consumption and Political Protest in Shirley."
Meagan Timney, Dalhousie University
- "Reforming Beauty in Brontë’s Shirley."
Margaret E. Mitchell, University of West Georgia
Panel 14 - Literacy, Lying and Literary Art
Chair: Monika Brown, UNC Pembroke
- "Writers of Reform and Reforming Writers in Aurora Leigh and A Writer of Books."
Laura Rotunno, Penn State Altoona
- "The Danger of Dying in One's Own Language: Literacy, Learning, and
Lying in Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers and Cousin Phillis."
Dorothy
McGavran, Queens University of Charlotte
- "Revolutionary Reading: Gender and Reform in Charlotte Bronte."
Eric Lorentzen, University of Mary Washington
Panel 15 - Cash and Carry: Gender and Money
Chair: David Latané, Virginia Commonwealth University
- "Gendering Charity in Trollope's Barsetshire."
Anne Dayton, Rice University
- "She Should Be A Woman of Business": Dinah Mullock Craik's Thoughts About Victorian Women and Money.
Annette Van, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
- "Women, Economy and Reform in Frances Trollope's Michael Armstrong."
Elizabeth Starr, Westfield State College
Session V: 10:15 - 11:45
Panel 16 - Historiography, Saints and Marginal Figures
- "Gendered Spheres and the Ideal Reformer: Esther Summerson and Allan Woodcourt in Bleak House."
Andre DeCuir, Muskingum College
- "A History of Reform: George Eliot's Romola."
Chad May, University of Central Arkansas
- "Rivers change like nation": Environmental Aestheticism in
Ouida's The Waters of Edera."
Alicia Carroll, Auburn University
Panel 17 - Anatomy, Physics, Biology: Reforming the Laws of Nature
Chair: Emily Harbin, Converse College
- "Mothers and Saints: Maternal Instinct, Religious Vocation, and
Victorian Ideologies of Women's Work."
Julie Melnyk, University of
Missouri
- "Victoria Vis Viva: Physics, Politics and Pomp in the Age of the
Second Reform Bill."
John Lamb, West Virginia University
- "The Reform of Women's Education in Tennyson's The Princess and
Gilbert and Sullivan's Princess Ida."
Laura Fasick, Minnesota State
University, Moorhead
Panel 18 - Haunted by Femininity
- "Mrs. Jellyby and Me: 21st Century Reverberations of Victorian Social Critique."
Leslie Haynsworth, Columbia College
- "The Feminine Character of the Early Church in Pater's Marius the Epicurean."
David Bradshaw, Warren Wilson College
- "Thomas Wade and the Death of the Romantic Woman."
Phillip Anderson, University of Central Arkansas
Luncheon and Business Meeting
12:15-1:45 Regimental Commanders' Riverview Room
Session III: 1:45-3:15
Panel A: Classical Interpretations/ Metaphors/ Influences
Chair: David Latané (Virginia Commonwealth University)
Patrick Scott (University of South Carolina). "The Victorian Translation of
Panel 19 - Poetic Margins
- "Dollie Radford, Progress, and the Aesthetics of Reform."
LeeAnne Richardson, Georgia State University
- "Ada Leverson: Writing from the Margins."
Heather Sprong, University of Pittsbugh
From a Woman's Lips: Michael Field's Reformation of Lyric
Subjectivity and the Expression of Female Desire."
Andrea Gazzaniga,
Davidson College
12:00 - 1:00; Lunch
Panel 20 - States of Grace: Science and Religion
- "A Statelier Eden: Gender and Genesis in Tennyson's The Princess."
Gania Barlow, Mills College
- "With all her strong religious faith": Unbelief as Reflected in
Ward's Robert Elsmere."
Sarah McNeeley, Texas State University
- "Religious Reform in Margaret Oliphant's Margaret Maitland."
Mary Husemann, Black Hills State University
Panel 21 - Religion and Reforming the Working Class
- "A Faithful Friend is the Medicine of Life": Redefining Social
Reform through the Feminine."
Karen Selesky, University College of the
Fraser Valley
- "Reforming Working Class Women through Confession: Ellice
Hopkins' Work Among the Lost and Felicia Skene's Hidden Depths."
Heather Milton, University of Florida
- "Charity through Disengagement: The Task of the Bible Woman."
Daniel Siegel, University of Alabama At Birmingham
Panel 22 - Genre, Performance and the Construction of Gender
- "Touchy Subjects: 'The Young Woman,' 'The Girl's Own
Paper,'; and Reform, 1892-96."
Cynthia Patton, Emporia State University
- "Subversion and Perversion: The Performance of Sexuality in
the Nineteenth Century."
Heather Momyer, University of Louisana,
Layfayette
- "Spurred on to Reform: Olive Schreiner and Melodrama."
Neil Hultgren, University of Virginia
Panel 23 - Educating Girls and Women
- "Female Education and its Discontents: George Eliot's Strategies
for Reform."
Chao-Fang Chen, National Cheng Kung University
- "Gender Norms and Social Reforms in The Clever Woman of the Family."
Audrey Fessler, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire
Keynote Address:
Alison Booth, University of Virginia
"The Likes of Sister Dora: Representing Eminent Victorian Women."