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Yasmin Akhter report on the Easter 2024 Colloquium

Yasmin Akhter report on the Easter 2024 Colloquium

‘Expanding Victorian Studies’ at the 2024 colloquium by Yasmin Akhter, PhD researcher and 2023-24 Co-Director of the Centre for Victorian Studies

Royal Holloway’s Centre for Victorian Studies hosts the biennial London Victorian Studies Colloquium. This is a residential event for postgraduate research students that gives them a space to present research, learn from one another, participate in skills-focused and creative workshop, build networks, and address a topic of concern. In April 2024, the colloquium theme encouraged participants to think about ways of ‘Expanding Victorian Studies’. 

Workshops this year included ways of disseminating research, such as Dr Helen Kingstone and Dr Briony Wickes (RHUL) on how to publish journal articles and Pascal Theatre Company on turning archival research into theatre and film productions. We also learned about alternative methods of research. Professor Adrian Wisnicki (University of Nebraska, Lincoln) showed us different generative AI models and their uses for academics, whilst Joanna Brown (RHUL), along with the Royal Holloway Archives, led us through responding to archival material with creative writing.  

Professor Adrian Wisnicki also delivered the annual Sally Ledger Memorial Lecture, on the subject of ‘Victorian Studies and the Other Space of Generative AI, April 2024’ – where the date in the title shows us that this discussion is so fast-moving as to make any conclusions immediately outdated! Prof. Wisnicki enlightened us with a discussion on where generative AI is, and is going, before prompting us all to think about the future of Victorian Studies in the wake of these digital innovations.  

The colloquium paired presentations by research students with presentations by more established scholars. The first panel on transnational literatures explored ways that Elizabeth Gaskell has been translated in China (Bonnie Lui, RHUL), how orientalist discourses were formed in Victorian periodicals (Dr Sercan Oztekin, Kocaeli/QMUL), and the significance of American archives and private collections to Victorian afterlives (Dr Lucy Whitehead, RHUL).  

Speakers researching migration and empire discussed the resurgent effects of ‘displacement’ and the imperial archive (Yasmin Akhter, RHUL), constructions of whiteness in R.L. Stevenson’s Pacific fiction (Masao Morishige, KCL), parodies of imperial narratives in nineteenth-century rowing fiction (Anna Price, RHUL), and the ‘staging’ of H.M. Stanley as travel explorer alongside his African servants (Dr Brian Murray, KCL). Dr Mary Shannon (Roehampton) joined us as a respondent to this panel and also spoke about her excellent new book Billy Waters is Dancing (Yale UP, 2024).  

Thinking about illness and care in Victorian Studies, presenters drew connections between Victorian women and ‘Cryptesthetic Horror’ (Grace Rhyne, Warwick), Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’s impact on modern psychiatry (Heathcliff Newman, RHUL), Victorian wives as caregivers (Heather Wardlaw, Warwick), and ‘the artificial mother’ / Victorian Cyborg (Dr Adelene Buckland, KCL).  

Our final panel discussed the place of Victorians in our current moment. Speakers considered how Victorian Studies might intersect with Game Studies (Paolo D’Indinosante, Sapienza University of Rome), why we need to revisit Swinburne’s ‘hydrologies’ (Joel Dungworth, RHUL), and the significance of Victorian inheritance and ‘wealthfare’ (Professor Alastair Owens, QMUL).  

These two days of intellectual exchange allowed us to explore together the possible futures of our field and marvelled at the excellent work being done in these different research areas. With funding from BAVS, we subsidised registration fees for all attendees and offered travel bursaries for PGRs. This was important for PGRs who cannot always financially access such events but are eager for in-person networking and research-sharing, especially in the wake of the pandemic. The organisers thanked BAVS for their generous funding, which made this event accessible to as many as possible.