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)
- “Reassessing Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition,” David Brion Davis (Yale University)
- “Politics, Economics, and the Burdens of Abolition,” Stanley Engerman (University of Rochester)
- “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)
- “The Picturesque Body: Gendered Dissection in Jane Cave Winscom’s Headache Odes,” Kathleen Béres Rogers (College of Charleston)
- “‘We Murder to Dissect’: Sympathy and Medical Practice in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” Sarah Marsh (University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill)
- “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)
- “The Early Modern Difficulty with Moses’ Wives,” Michele Osherow (University of Maryland, Baltimore County)
- “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)
- “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)
- “Another Econocide? Britain and the Nineteenth-Century Colonial Labor Market after Emancipation,” P. C. Emmer (Leiden University)
- “Seymour Drescher, Joseph Blanco White, and the Comparative History of Atlantic Antislavery,” Christopher Schmidt-Nowara (Fordham University)
- “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)
- “The Lost Children of Erin: Irish Families and the Catholic Church,” Laura D. Kelley (Tulane University)
- “Untimely Deaths: ‘Merry Wakes’ and Tragic Losses in Nineteenth-Century Ireland” Diego Albano (Trinity College)
- “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)
- ‘To report of her death…is the alteration of a State’: Deconstructing England’s Elizabeth,” John Twyning (University of Pittsburgh)
- “‘Vengeance, thou Murder’s quit-rent’: Revenge as Class-Consciousness in The Revenger’s Tragedy, “ Matthew Kendrick (University of Pittsburgh)
- “Sacrament and Power in Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative,” Katherine Kidd (University of Pittsburgh)
- “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)
- “National Interest, Providence and British Abolitionist Mobilization,” Richard Huzzey (Yale University)
- “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)
- “Irish and British Responses to the Haitian Revolution,” Patrick F. McDevitt (SUNY-Buffalo)
- “Moral Philosophy and Immoral Bondage: Caribbean Slavery and The Wealth of Nations,” Charles Upchurch (Florida State University)
- “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)
- “Thomas Hope and the Georgian Culture of Dilettantism,” Jason Kelly (Indiana University-Purdue University at Indiana)
- “Oscar Wilde’s Romantic Intentions,” Chris Foss (University of Mary Washington)
- “Reevaluating the Production, Circulation, and Adaptation of Wilde’s Image,” Joanna Collins (University of Pittsburgh)
- “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
- “Finding Others before Framing Empire: Revisiting Andrew Battell’s Account of Captivity among the ‘Jaga’ in Angola,” Jared Staller (University of Virginia)
- “’To aid poor sailors’: Charity and Empire, 1640-1718” Heather Weidner (University of Virginia)
- “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)
- “Misrepresentations of Wartime Atrocities: Self-censorship and ‘New Journalism,’” Claudia Heske (University of Pittsburgh)
- “Did World War I Foster a ‘Spectatorial Attitude’ in British Writers?,” Michael West (University of Pittsburgh)
- “Constructing Identity in Wartime: The Writings of Beatrix Cresswell, Devonshire 1914-1918,” Bonnie White (St. Francis Xavier University)
- “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)
- “Teaching British Space: Geography in the Modernist Classroom.” Beth Wightman (California State University Northridge)
- “Teaching the Modernist City through Literature, Music, Visual Art, Film, Architecture, and Design.” Petra Dierkes-Thrun (Stanford University)
- “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)
- “Big Buttocks and Sultry Behavior: Perceptions of Post-Colonial African Women in British Women’s Travel Narratives,” Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué (Purdue University)
- “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)
- “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)
- “’Private, Unscrupulous, and Self-Interested Men’: Following the Money in the Western Design,” John Donoghue (Loyola University)
- “Merchants of Babylon: Anglo-American Protestant Millennialism and the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” Michael Goode (University of Illinois)
- “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)
- “Aesthetics not Athletics? Exhibiting ‘Painting and Fine Arts’ in British India,” Renate Dohmen (University of Louisiana at Lafayette)
- “The Queen’s Private Pictures and Their Public Face,” Cory Korkow (Cleveland Museum of Art)
- “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)
- “Masculine Sensibility and Utility in R.C. Dallas’s Aubrey,” Patricia Matthew (Montclair State University)
- “Freaks of Nature: The Victorian Fascination with Bearded Ladies,” Chris Oldstone-Moore (Wright State University)
- “Jesus and the Victorian Masculine Ideal,” Carol Engelhardt Herringer (Wright State University)
- “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)
- “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)
- “’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)
- “Quackery and the Treatment of Syphilis in Seventeenth-Century England,” Whitney Dirks-Schuster (Ohio State University)
- “The Business of Being Born: Print Culture and Childbirth in Seventeenth-century England,” Katie Phelps (University of Pittsburgh)
- “‘Women Petitioners? London Citizens?: Women and the Court of Aldermen, 1680-1710,” Hilda L. Smith (University of Cincinnati)
- “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)
- “’The United Lovers’ or ‘The Sailor Deceived’?: The Portrayal of Women in Nineteenth-Century British Sailor Songs,” Bethany R. Mowry (University of Pittsburgh)
- “’The Mourning After’: Imperial Conflict and Widowhood,” Judy Hinshaw (University of Calgary)
- “’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)
- “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)
- “Diversions of Empire: Geography and Identity in Early English New York,” Melissa Morris (Miami University)
- “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)
- “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)
- “An Anomaly of Law: The Transatlantic Family and American Divorce in the Early Twentieth Century,” Kathryn A. Pivak (Cottey College)
- “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)
- “’More than Mechanical Repetition’: Classification as Occasion for Rhetorical Invention,” Daniel Koupf (University of Pittsburgh)
- “’To Display My Opinions’: Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads as Epideictic Performance and ‘Rhetoric,’” Katie Homar (University of Pittsburgh)
- “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)
- “Bristol in the Years of the French Revolution and Napoleon,” James Tucker (Ohio State University)
- “‘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)
- “’ . . . Without Even Organizing His Forces for the Struggle’: The Decline of ‘Georgism’ in Interwar Britain,” Jules P. Gehrke (Saginaw Valley State University)
- “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
- “Catherine de’ Medici: The Legend of the ‘Black Queen’ in England,” Nathan Probasco (University of Nebraska)
- “A Stone for Health or Hex: Precious Gems in Renaissance England,” Casandra Jane Auble (University of Nebraska)
- “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)
- “Act Naturally: Approaches to Actress Training in Restoration England,” Deirdre O’Rourke (University of Pittsburgh)
- “’[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)
- “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
- “’My portion of these pages’: Dual—Not Dueling—Narration in Dickens’s Bleak House,” Alexandra Valint (University of Pittsburgh)
- “Why ‘it must be’: Dickens, the Illustrators, and the Death of Little Nell,” A. Robin Hoffman (University of Pittsburgh)
- 3. “George Eliot’s Conflicted Individual: Affective Dissonance in The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch,” JoAnn Kelly (University of Washington)
- “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)
- “Travelers and Questions of Identity: British Travel Narratives in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1650-1800,” Rebecca Willis (Indiana University)
- “’Ornamental Allusions’: Illustration, Remediation, and Rapin’s History of England,” Stephanie Koscak (Indiana University)
- “The Newsman and British Networks of Print: Circulation of Newspapers, Ideas, and Authority, 1800-1830,” Brendan Gillis (Indiana University)