2009 Conference program

MWCBS 55th Annual Conference

University of Pittsburgh

October 9-11, 2009

Friday, October 9th

Registration and Coffee 9:30-10:30

Session 1

Panels 1-3

10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Panel 1

The Transatlantic Slave Trade:  Papers in Honor of Seymour Drescher

Chair:  Reid Andrews (University of Pittsburgh)

Commentator:  Seymour Drescher (University of Pittsburgh)

  1. “Reassessing Econocide:  British Slavery in the Era of Abolition,” David Brion Davis (Yale University)
  2. “Politics, Economics, and the Burdens of Abolition,” Stanley Engerman (University of Rochester)
  3. “Identities and Agency:  A Reassessment of Abolition in the Atlantic World,” David Eltis (Emory University) and Philip Misevich (Emory University)

Panel 2

The Sympathetic Body

Chair and Commentator:  Rick Incorvati (Wittenberg University)

  1. “The Picturesque Body:  Gendered Dissection in Jane Cave Winscom’s Headache Odes,” Kathleen Béres Rogers (College of Charleston)
  2. “‘We Murder to Dissect’: Sympathy and Medical Practice in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” Sarah Marsh (University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill)
  3. “Emergent Medical Understandings of the Guillotine in English Reporting of the French Revolution,” Kristen Lacefield (University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill)

Panel 3

Early Modern Identities and Religious Discourse

Chair and Commeentator:  Hilda L. Smith (University of Cincinnati)

  1. “The Early Modern Difficulty with Moses’ Wives,” Michele Osherow (University of Maryland, Baltimore County)
  2. “All You (English) Holy Men and Women Pray for Us: Expressions of National Identity in Fifteenth-Century English Prayer Books,” Kristin Canzao Pinyan (Rutgers University)
  3. “Crooked by Nature”: Ben Jonson, Amelia Lanyer and the “Woman Question,” Virginia Jarrell (Baylor University)

Lunch on your own

Session 2

Panels 4-6

1:30-3:00 p.m.

Panel 4

The Transatlantic Slave Trade:  Papers in Honor of Seymour Drescher

Chair:  Van Beck Hall (University of Pittsburgh)

Commentator:  Seymour Drescher (University of Pittsburgh)

  1. “Another Econocide? Britain and the Nineteenth-Century Colonial Labor Market after Emancipation,”  P. C. Emmer (Leiden University)
  2. “Seymour Drescher, Joseph Blanco White, and the Comparative History of Atlantic Antislavery,” Christopher Schmidt-Nowara (Fordham University)
  3. “Freedom Papers Hidden in his Shoe: Navigating Emancipation across Imperial Boundaries,” Susan Peabody (Washington State University)

Panel 5

Irish Lives Abroad and Rites at Home

Chair and Commentator:  Eric Tenbus (University of Central Missouri)

  1. “The Lost Children of Erin:  Irish Families and the Catholic Church,” Laura D. Kelley (Tulane University)
  2. “Untimely Deaths:  ‘Merry Wakes’ and Tragic Losses in Nineteenth-Century Ireland” Diego Albano (Trinity College)
  3. Irish Historical Studies: Academic History as Peace Building,” Grady Blaha (Northwestern University)

Panel 6

Death and Social Change in Early Modern England

Chair and Commentator:  John Twyning (University of Pittsburgh)

  1. ‘To report of her death…is the alteration of a State’: Deconstructing England’s Elizabeth,” John Twyning (University of Pittsburgh)
  2. “‘Vengeance, thou Murder’s quit-rent’: Revenge as Class-Consciousness in The Revenger’s Tragedy, “ Matthew Kendrick (University of Pittsburgh)
  3. “Sacrament and Power in Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative,” Katherine Kidd (University of Pittsburgh)
  4. “That Were to make Strange Contradiction”: Death and Un/certainty in Paradise Lost,” Rachel Trubowitz (University of New Hampshire)

Session 3

Panels 7-9

3:30-5:00 p.m.

Panel 7

The Transatlantic Slave Trade:  Papers in Honor of Seymour Drescher

Chair:  Bernie Haggerty (University of Pittsburgh)

Commentator:  Seymour Drescher (University of Pittsburgh)

  1. “National Interest, Providence and British Abolitionist Mobilization,” Richard Huzzey (Yale University)
  2. “Objects in Motion: The Anglo-African’s Migratory Patterns in Early Modern England,” Anita Nicholson (Cornell University)

Panel 8

Britain and Lessons from the Atlantic World

Chair:  Alison Fletcher (Juniata College)

Commentator:  Lia Paradis (Slippery Rock University)

  1. “Irish and British Responses to the Haitian Revolution,” Patrick F. McDevitt (SUNY-Buffalo)
  2. “Moral Philosophy and Immoral Bondage:  Caribbean Slavery and The Wealth of Nations,” Charles Upchurch (Florida State University)
  3. “The Problems of Sisterhood:  British Girl guiding and the Case of the Bahamas,” Tammy Proctor (Wittenberg University)

Panel 9

The Nineteenth-Century Dilettante and Wildean Identities

Chair and Commentator:  Paul Deslandes (University of Vermont)

  1. “Thomas Hope and the Georgian Culture of Dilettantism,” Jason Kelly (Indiana University-Purdue University at Indiana)
  2. “Oscar Wilde’s Romantic Intentions,” Chris Foss (University of Mary Washington)
  3. “Reevaluating the Production, Circulation, and Adaptation of Wilde’s Image,” Joanna Collins (University of Pittsburgh)
  4. “Constructing the Monstrous Freak:  A Look at Renfield’s ‘Extraordinary’ Mind in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” Haily Sheets (Ball State University)

Plenary Address and Reception

Walter Arnstein:  “Gladstone at 200:  Historical Reflections”

6:30-8:30 p.m.

Saturday, October 10th

Session 4

Panels 10-12

8:30-10:00 a.m.

Panel 10

Britons in the Wider World:  Sixteenth-Century Africa, Eighteenth-Century North America, Twentieth-Century France

Chair:  Phyllis Soybel (College of Lake County)

Commentator:  Audience

  1. “Finding Others before Framing Empire:  Revisiting Andrew Battell’s Account of Captivity among the ‘Jaga’ in Angola,” Jared Staller (University of Virginia)
  2. “’To aid poor sailors’:  Charity and Empire, 1640-1718” Heather Weidner (University of Virginia)
  3. “International Education and Philanthropy at the Cité Universitaire de Paris in the Interwar Era,” Jehnie Reis (Point Park University)

Panel 11

Shifting Perspectives in WWI and After

Chair and Commentator:  Tammy Proctor (Wittenberg University)

  1. “Misrepresentations of Wartime Atrocities: Self-censorship and ‘New Journalism,’” Claudia Heske (University of Pittsburgh)
  2. “Did World War I Foster a ‘Spectatorial Attitude’ in British Writers?,” Michael West (University of Pittsburgh)
  3. “Constructing Identity in Wartime: The Writings of Beatrix Cresswell, Devonshire 1914-1918,” Bonnie White (St. Francis Xavier University)
  4. “The Trade Factor: British Perceptions of the Chinese and Japanese during the Manchurian Crisis,” Brian deRuiter (Swansea University)

Panel 12

Interdisciplinary Teaching Approaches to British Modernism

Chair and Commentator:  Petra Dierkes-Thrun (Stanford University)

  1. “Teaching British Space: Geography in the Modernist Classroom.”  Beth Wightman (California State University Northridge)
  2. “Teaching the Modernist City through Literature, Music, Visual Art, Film, Architecture, and Design.”  Petra Dierkes-Thrun (Stanford University)
  3. “Colonel Blimp and World War II: Using Film in the British Literature Survey.” Judy Suh (Duquesne University)

Session 5

Panels 13-15

10:15-11:45

Panel 13

Women and Empire

Chair and Commentator:  Lydia Murdoch (Vassar College)

  1. “Big Buttocks and Sultry Behavior:  Perceptions of Post-Colonial African Women in British Women’s Travel Narratives,” Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué (Purdue University)
  2. “Lady Doctors Must Make a Stand Now:  British Female Physicians and the Politics of the Women’s Medical Service for India, 1910-1914,” Kaarin Michaelsen (UNC Greensboro)
  3. “Why Can’t Women Represent the British Empire?  The British Foreign Office Confronts the Interwar Women’s Movement,” Molly Wood (Wittenberg University)

Panel 14

Imperial Designs and Metropolitan Connections:  The Circulation of Money and Human Capital in the Atlantic World

Chair and Commentator:  Robert Bucholz (Loyola University)

  1. “’Private, Unscrupulous, and Self-Interested Men’:  Following the Money in the Western Design,” John Donoghue (Loyola University)
  2. “Merchants of Babylon: Anglo-American Protestant Millennialism and the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” Michael Goode (University of Illinois)
  3. “The Power of the Purse:  Goldsmiths during the Reigns of the Later Stuarts and George III,” John Krenzke (Loyola University)

Panel 15

Challenges and Changes in Victorian Era Art and Aesthetics

Chair and Commentator:  Jason Kelly (Indiana University-Purdue University at Indiana)

  1. “Aesthetics not Athletics? Exhibiting ‘Painting and Fine Arts’ in British India,” Renate Dohmen (University of Louisiana at Lafayette)
  2. “The Queen’s Private Pictures and Their Public Face,” Cory Korkow (Cleveland Museum of Art)
  3. “Modern Venetian Women at Work and Leisure: Interpreting John Singer Sargent’s Early

Genre Paintings of Venice” Lyrica Taylor (University of Maryland)

Plenary Address, Business Meeting, and Lunch

Troy Boone, “Operation Pied Piper; or The Great Evacuation”

12:00-1:30

Session 6

Panels 16-18

1:45-3:15

Panel 16

Bearded Women and Manly Grace: the Embodiment of the Masculine in 19th and early 20th-century Britain

Chair and Commentator:  Patrick McDevitt (University of Buffalo-SUNY)

  1. “Masculine Sensibility and Utility in R.C. Dallas’s Aubrey,” Patricia Matthew (Montclair State University)
  2. “Freaks of Nature: The Victorian Fascination with Bearded Ladies,” Chris Oldstone-Moore (Wright State University)
  3. “Jesus and the Victorian Masculine Ideal,” Carol Engelhardt Herringer (Wright State University)
  4. “Masculine Beauty, Physical Attraction, and Desire in the Letters of Phyllis Gardner and Rupert Brooke, 1911-1915,” Paul Deslandes (University of Vermont)

Panel 17

Victorian Photography and Photorealism

Chair and Commentator:  Thomas Prasch (Washburn University)

  1. “Critical Approaches to Photography: The Art-Journal’s Review of The Photographic Exhibition at the Society of Arts in 1852,” Derek Nicholas Boetcher (University of North Texas)
  2. “’Darkest England’:  Subjectivity, Landscape, and the Contestation of British Modernity in the Art Photography of Late Nineteenth-Century Britain,” Scott C. Lesko (Stony Brook University)

Panel 18

Sex, Sexual Politics, and the Trades

Chair and Commentator:  Michelle White (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga)

  1. “Quackery and the Treatment of Syphilis in Seventeenth-Century England,” Whitney Dirks-Schuster (Ohio State University)
    1. “The Business of Being Born: Print Culture and Childbirth in Seventeenth-century England,” Katie Phelps (University of Pittsburgh)
    2. “‘Women Petitioners?  London Citizens?:  Women and the Court of Aldermen, 1680-1710,” Hilda L. Smith (University of Cincinnati)
    3. “Covert Currency:  Women and the Market in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth,” Meagan Foster (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill)

Session 7

Panels 19-21

3:30-5:00

Panel 19

Positioning Women in the Discourses of War

Chair and Commentator:  Lydia Murdoch (Vassar College)

  1. “’The United Lovers’ or ‘The Sailor Deceived’?: The Portrayal of Women in Nineteenth-Century British Sailor Songs,” Bethany R. Mowry (University of Pittsburgh)
  2. “’The Mourning After’: Imperial Conflict and Widowhood,” Judy Hinshaw (University of Calgary)
  3. “’The Violation of Christian Female Chastity’: Positioning Women in the Debate over the ‘Eastern Question,’ 1875-81,” Thomas Prasch (Washburn University)

Panel 20

Disseminating English Identity in the Colonial World

Chair and Commentator:  Richard Floyd (University of Virginia)

  1. “Law and Politics in the Making of Subjects, Residents, and Citizens:  The Incorporation of Non-British Immigrants into Colonial Pennsylvania,1681-1776,” Christopher N. Fritsch (Oxford University)
  2. “Diversions of Empire:  Geography and Identity in Early English New York,” Melissa Morris (Miami University)
  3. “The Imperialism of Penal Reform: Diagnosing and Treating Crime in the British Empire, 1900-1950,” William Meier (University of Wisconsin-Madison.)

Panel 21

Transatlantic Unions and Separations in Selected British Texts

Chair and Commentator:  Susan K Howard (Duquesne University)

  1. “Maria Edgeworth’s Blended Families in Fact and Fiction:  Castle Rackrent and Belinda as Bookends in the Debate on the Union between England and Ireland,” Susan K. Howard (Duquesne University)
  2. “An Anomaly of Law:  The Transatlantic Family and American Divorce in the Early Twentieth Century,” Kathryn A. Pivak (Cottey College)
  3. “Textual Journeys:  Prefatory Commentary in Eighteenth-Century Colonial Editions,” Jessica Jost-Costanzo (Duquesne University)

Sunday, October 11th

Session 8

Panels 22-24

8:45-10:15

Panel 22

Tradition, Invention, and Rhetoric(s) in the Age of Wordsworth

Chair:  Katie Homar (University of Pittsburgh)

Commentator:  Rick Incorvati (Wittenberg University)

  1. “’More than Mechanical Repetition’:  Classification as Occasion for Rhetorical Invention,”  Daniel Koupf (University of Pittsburgh)
  2. “’To Display My Opinions’:  Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads as Epideictic Performance and ‘Rhetoric,’” Katie Homar (University of Pittsburgh)
  3. “Adoxography and Some Thoughts Towards Wordsworth’s Philosophy of Objects,” Andrea Applebee (University of Pittsburgh)

Panel 23

Rethinking the Political Landscape

Chair and Commentator: Joseph Coohill (Duquesne University)

  1. “Bristol in the Years of the French Revolution and Napoleon,” James Tucker (Ohio State University)
  2. “‘Liberty According to English Ideas’: Qualified Right and the Role of History in the Literature of the Revolutionary Decade,” Mark Zunac (University of Wisconsin-Whitewater)
  3. “’ . . . Without Even Organizing His Forces for the Struggle’:  The Decline of ‘Georgism’ in Interwar Britain,” Jules P. Gehrke (Saginaw Valley State University)
  4. “Rock, Racism, and Transnationalism: Examining the National Front’s Outreach to European Youth,”  Ryan Shaffer (SUNY-Stony Brook)

Panel 24

High Society and Cultural Identities in the 16th Century

Chair: Jeffrey Stoyanoff (Duquesne University)

Commentator:  Audience

  1. “Catherine de’ Medici: The Legend of the ‘Black Queen’ in England,” Nathan Probasco (University of Nebraska)
  2. “A Stone for Health or Hex: Precious Gems in Renaissance England,” Casandra Jane Auble (University of Nebraska)
  3. “King James I and VI and The Witches,” Michael Hewitt (University of Nebraska)

Session 9

Panels 25-27

10:30-12:00

Panel 25

Women on the Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century Stage

Chair and Commentator: Jennifer Waldron (University of Pittsburgh)

  1. “Act Naturally:  Approaches to Actress Training in Restoration England,” Deirdre O’Rourke (University of Pittsburgh)
  2. “’[N]o matter for words or sense, so the body perform its part well’:  Aphra Behn’s Critique of Restoration Spectatorship,” Loring Pfeiffer (University of Pittsburgh)
  3. “Women and the Market on the Eighteenth-Century Stage,” Salita Siebert (Carnegie Mellon University)

Panel 26

Victorian Fiction, Narrative Method, and Cultural Debates

Chair:  Sareene Proodian (Duquesne University)

Commentator:  Audience

  1. “’My portion of these pages’: Dual—Not Dueling—Narration in Dickens’s Bleak House,” Alexandra Valint (University of Pittsburgh)
  2. “Why ‘it must be’:  Dickens, the Illustrators, and the Death of Little Nell,” A. Robin Hoffman (University of Pittsburgh)
  3. 3. “George Eliot’s Conflicted Individual:  Affective Dissonance in The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch,” JoAnn Kelly (University of Washington)
  4. “Intersections:  Henry James, William James, and the ‘will to believe,’” Nicole Burkholder-Mosco (Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania)

Panel 27

Printed Realities:  Writing British Identities and Politics in the Long Eighteenth Century

Chair and Commentator: Larry Skillin (Ohio State University)

  1. “Travelers and Questions of Identity:  British Travel Narratives in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1650-1800,” Rebecca Willis (Indiana University)
  2. “’Ornamental Allusions’:  Illustration, Remediation, and Rapin’s History of England,” Stephanie Koscak (Indiana University)
  3. “The Newsman and British Networks of Print:  Circulation of Newspapers, Ideas, and Authority, 1800-1830,” Brendan Gillis (Indiana University)

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