2010 MWCBS Conference Program
The 2010 MWCBS Program is available as a .pdf here
MWCBS 56th Annual Conference
Baldwin Wallace College
8-10 October 2010
Friday, 8 October 2010
9:30-10:30 Registration
Session One
Panels 1-3
10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
1. Between Hearth and Hedgerow: Nature, Landscape, and the Critique of
Cultural Boundaries in Victorian Literature The Hopkins Room
Chair: Daniel Shea (Austin Peay State University)
1. “’Here I Can Rove at Will’: Transgressing Boundaries in Harriet Martineau’s Lake District Writings,” Amanda Adams (Muskingum University)
2. “’Step in the puddle and save your life!’: Richard Jefferies against the Current,” Daniel Shea (Austin Peay State University)
3. “’If the hedges are too close round, they may kill the plants’: Evolving Domestic Landscapes in Olive Schreiner’s From Man to Man,” Hannah Tracy (Seattle University)
2. The Popular Press and Public Consciousness The Holden Room
Chair: James Sack (University of Illinois at Chicago)
1. “Jeers, Jingo, and Jesuits: Britishness, Edmund Burke, and Crises of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” Johnathan M. Pettinato (Fordham University)
2. “Libraries, Empire, and Literacy: How Subscription Libraries Shaped Acculturation in the Colonies of the British Empire,” Sterling Joseph Coleman, Jr. (Central State University)
3. “From Racial Types to Typography: Mapping Empire in the Wide World Magazine,” Sigrid Anderson Cordell (University of Michigan)
4. “’The nearest contacts with truth’: Authoring and Publishing the British First World War Memoir,” Ian A. Isherwood (University of Glasgow)
3. Conceiving Romantic-Era Bodies and Relations The Brush Room
Chair: Rick Incorvati (Wittenberg University)
1. “From Taxonomy to Family Tree: The Transformation of the Linnaean system in Earasmus Darwin’s The Loves of the Plants,” Bendta Shroeder (Brandeis University)
2. “Soulful Sensorium: The Body in Early (British) Romantic Brain Science,” Lisa Ann Robertson (University of Alberta)
3. “Sex, Poverty, and ‘Savagery’ in Malthus’ Population Principle and the Condition of England Question,” Jenise R. DePinto (The College of Saint Rose)
4. “What Disability Studies Can do for Romanticism: William Wordsworth’s Uncouth Shape,” Essaka Joshua (University of Notre Dame)
12:00-1:30 Lunch (on your own)
Session Two
Panels 4-6
1:30-3:00 p.m.
4. Experience, History, and Prophecy in Early Modern Warfare The Hopkins Room
Chair and Commentator: Hilda Smith (University of Cincinnati)
1. “Prisoners, Patients, Trauma, and Survival in the English Civil Wars and the Interregnum, 1640-1660,” Annie St. John-Stark (Thompson Rivers University, British Columbia)
2. “The Rise of the Phoenicians in British Imperial Historiography, 1676-1726,” Jacob Pollock (University of Pittsburgh)
3. “The Third Anglo-Dutch War and the War of the Grand Alliance in English Political Prophecy: A Comparison,” Jennifer Nalmpantis (Lakeland Community College)
5. Parakeets, Elephants, and Porcupines: Envisioning the Beast from
Dickens to Lawrence The Holden Room
Chair and Commentator: Laurel Flinn (Johns Hopkins University)
1. “Flight and Disease: Sanitation in the Victorian Aviary,” Erika Olbricht (Case Western Reserve University)
2. “Imperial Nostalgia and the Zoo-Ideal in Kipling and Wells,” Kurt Koenigsberger (Case Western Reserve University)
3. “Representing Animals: D. H. Lawrence’s Creative Evolution,” Raymond Watkins (Case Western Reserve University)
6. Detection and the Marginal Identity The Brush Room
Chair: Martha Vicinus (University of Michigan)
1. “In the ‘Great Cesspool’ of Empire: Examining Fin de Siècle Colonial Masculine Identity in Sherlock Holmes,” Catherine Hart (The Ohio State University)
2. “Tracking the Woman Detective through the ‘Lead Desert,’” Dagni Bredesen (Eastern Illinois University)
3. “A Question of Orientation: Gay Spies and National Security after World War II,” Chet DeFonso (Northern Michigan University)
Session 3
Panels 7-9
3:30-5:00 p.m.
7. Religious Conflict in Early Modern Britain and Europe The Hopkins Room
Chair: Warren Johnston (Algoma University)
Commentator: Melinda Zook (Purdue University)
1. “Assessing the ‘Monster’: The Depth and Developments of Elizabethan Intelligence on the Holy roman Empire,” David Scott Gehring (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
2. “Dutch Arminianism through English Eyes, 1608-1630,” Eric Platt (St. Francis College)
3. “’A Perfect Sinke of All Errours’: Quakerism and the Debate on Toleration in Scotland and Europe, c. 1688 – c. 1700,” Paul Jenkins (University of Glasgow)
8. Birth, Death, and Morbidity: Women’s Experience in the 19th Century The Holden Room
Chair: Lia Paradis (Slippery Rock University)
1. “Elizabeth Thompson and the Infamy of the Maternal Pelvis,” Pam Lieske (Kent State University at Trumbull)
2. “’But the Undertakers Urge Her On’: The Cultural Construction of Mourning in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton,” Jennifer A. Swartz (Lake Erie College)
3. “’The Valley of the Shadow of Books’: George Gissing and Morbid Female Detachment,” Marisa Palacios Knox (University of California, Berkeley)
9. Romantic Theologies The Brush Room
Chair and Commentator: Carol Engelhardt Herringer (Wright State University)
1. “Consumerism, Mourning, and the Picturesque in Romantic Evangelicalism,” Joseph Stubenrauch (Indiana University)
2. “Original Sinners: Original Sin and Individuality in Coleridgean Theology,” Christopher Dinkel (Fort Hays State University)
3. “’Power Dwells Apart’: A Theology of the Godless Sublime in Shelley’s Alpine Hymns,” Thomas Prasch (Washburn University)
Plenary Address and Reception
Sponsored by the
North American Conference on British Studies
6:30-8:30 p.m.
Shucker’s
Plenary Speaker: Martha Vicinus, University of Michigan
“Late Nineteenth-Century Nonbelievers and the Search for Spiritual Meaning”
Saturday, 9 October 2010
Session 4
Panels 10-11
8:30-10:00 a.m.
10. The Long Eighteenth-Century Court, the Public Sphere, and the Financial
Revolution The Hopkins Room
Chair: Robert Bucholz (Loyola University Chicago)
Commentator: Marilyn Morris (University of North Texas)
1. “Affective Relationships and Political Authority in the Commemoration of William III’s Entry into the Hague,” Amy Oberlin (Loyola University Chicago)
2. “Royal Physicians as Gatekeepers of Information,” Steven Catania (Loyola University Chicago)
3. “Political Capital: The Investment Strategies of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough,” John Krenzke (Loyola University Chicago)
11. Ideology and Experiments in Nineteenth-Century Fiction The Holden Room
Chair: Barry Milligan (Wright State University)
1. “Transnational Americans: Representing Democracy and Republicanism in Nineteenth-Century British North America,” Oana Godeanu (Miami University)
2. “Dickens and Utilitarian Time,” John McBratney (John Carroll University)
3. “Jealousy and Lyrical Excursions in George Meredith’s The Ordeal of Richard Feverel,” Martin J. Fashbaugh (Morris College)
12. Colonial Identities: 19th and 20th Century Art and Fiction The Brush Room
Chair: Chet DeFonso (Northern Michigan University)
1. “Racial Theory and Neoclassicism in Enlightenment Thought,” Jason M. Kelly (Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis)
2. “Sovereign Anxieties: Kipling and the Afghans,” Zarena Aslami (Michigan State University)
3. “Colonial Identities: Defining Britishness in Catherine Helen Spence’s A Week in the Future,” Lindsy M. Lawrence (University of Arkansas, Fort Smith)
4. “From Picadilly to the Simla Ridge: Wooing the Coy Mistress of the Art in the Name of Taste and Country,” Renate Dohmen (University of Louisiana at Lafayette)
Session 5
Panels 12-14
10:15-11:45 a.m.
13. Honoring David Cressy The Hopkins Room
Chair: Michael Graham (University of Akron)
Commentator: David Cressy (Ohio State University)
1. “Beyond Description: How Thomas Hobbes Re-Conceptualized the Social Order,” Lee Beier (Illinois State University, Emeritus)
2. “Seditious Talk or Sedition?: Restoring Social History to the Study of Revolutionary Situations in Restoration England,” Newton Key (Eastern Illinois University)
14. Romantic Expression in its Generic and Rhetorical Contexts The Holden Room
Chair: Jason Kelly (Indiana University-Perdue University, Indianapolis)
1. “Anglo-French Romantic Anti-Structure: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Symphonie Fantastique, Barry Milligan (Wright State University) and Dennis Loranger (Wright State University)
2. “’Wanting both unity and precision?’: Thomas De Quincey’s Dialogue with New Rhetorical Textbook Traditions in His Essays on Rhetoric and Style,” Katie Homar (University of Pittsburgh)
3. ”Sir George Hayter’s Portrait of Lady Caroline Montague,” James E. Bryan (University of Wisconsin-Stout)
15. Bread and Water: The Politics of Food and Water Supply in Modern
Britain, 1800-1960 The Brush Room
Chair and Commentator: Eugene Beiriger (DePaul University)
1. “’Where’ Were Victorian Water Supply Problems and Solutions?: Employing Actor-Network Theory to Locate the Origins of Municipal Water Systems,” John Broich (Case Western University)
2. “Constipation, Food Security, and U-Boats: The Bio-Geopolitics of White Wheat Bread, 1800-1920,” Christopher Otter (The Ohio State University)
3. “St. Georginas versus the ‘Chemical Dragon’: The British Housewives League’s Battle for Wholesome Food and Water,” Amy Whipple (Xavier University)
Plenary Address, Business Meeting, and Lunch
12:00-2:00 p.m.
Shucker’s
Plenary Speaker: Retha Warnicke, Arizona State University
“Anne Boleyn, Anne Stanhope, and Poetic Animal Imagery:
A Hind, a Lion, and a Wolf”
Session 6
Panels 15-17
2:15-3:45 p.m.
16. Honoring David Cressy The Hopkins Room
Chair: Retha Warnicke (Arizona State University)
Commentator: David Cressy (Ohio State University)
1. “Invoking the King’s Ire: The Dangerous Talk of Sir Francis Bacon and the 1621 Parliament,” Chris R. Kyle (Syracuse University)
2. “The Dangerous Talk of Clement Coke in the Parliament of 1626,” Michael Young (Illinois Wesleyan University)
3. “The ‘Strange Speeches’ of Mr. Melvin: Dangerous Talk and the Crisis of 1628,” Allastair Bellany (Rutgers University)
17. Platform, Pulpit, and Pedagogy: Shaping Identity in Victorian England The Holden Room
Chair and Commentator: Jules Gerhke (Saginaw Valley State University)
1. “Church Plate and Church Identity: Spiritualizing Material Goods in Victorian England,” Carol Engelhardt Herringer (Wright State University)
2. “’Preventing everything from being centred in London’: The Victorian Lecture Circuit and Provincial Identity,” Anne Rodrick (Wofford College)
3. “Equal in the Eyes of the Law: Educational Demands and the Changing Face of Late Victorian Catholic Identity,” Eric G. Tenbus (University of Central Missouri)
18. Configurations of the Boer War The Brush Room
Chair: Lori Campbell (University of Pittsburgh)
Commentator: Lia Paradis (Slippery Rock University)
1. “Constructing Visual Memory: Photography and the South African War,” David Downs (Northern Illinois University)
2. “’My African friend or foe?’ Perceptions of the Native Races by Supporters and Critics of the South African War, 1899-1902,” Jodie N. Mader (Thomas More College)
3. “The ‘Weenen’ and the Reconfiguration of the Anglo-Boer Conflict,” Nicole M. Mares (King’s College, Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania)
Session 7
Panels 18-20
4:00-5:30 p.m.
19. Honoring David Cressy The Hopkins Room
Chair: Connie S. Evans (Baldwin Wallace College)
Commentator: David Cressy (Ohio State University)
1. “Burning Books and Burning Bones in Tudor Cambridge,” Susan Wabuda (Fordham University)
2. “The Spectre of Clerical Celibacy in Late Stuart England,” Michelle Wolf (Ohio State University)
3. Summary Reflections, Connie S. Evans (Baldwin Wallace College)
20. Reviewing “Edwardianism” in the Visual Arts The Holden Room
Chair: Anne Helmreich (Case Western Reserve University)
1. “Promoting a ‘new internationalism’: The Significance of the Artist-Designer beyond the London-Paris Axis from c. 1900-15,” Andrew Stephenson (University of East London)
2. “Human Character at the Edwardian Royal Academy, c. 1910,” Pamela Fletcher (Bowdoin College)
3. “Reviewing ‘Edwardianism’ in the Visual Arts: The Case of the Camden Town Group,” Ysanne Holt (Northumbria University)
21. Victorian Subversion and Reform: Readers and Society The Brush Room
Chair: Thomas Prasch (Washburn University)
1. “To Paris, with Sympathy: Undoing the Myth of Victorian Moral Superiority in Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now,” Kristi N. Embry (Pfeiffer University)
2. “The Fabians and the Fairy Tale: Socialist and Feminist Subtexts in E(dith) Nesbit Fantasy Books for Children,” Lori Campbell (University of Pittsburgh)
3. “The Critic as Master: Ruskin’s ‘liberal education of the artisan,’” David Thiele (University of Mount Union)
4. “Fighting Doubt and Uncertainty: Enlightenment Ideology in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” Sein Oh (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Sunday, 10 October 2010
Session 8
Panels 21-23
8:45-10:15
22. Missionaries, Merchants, and Naturalists: British Travelers as Global
Agents The Hopkins Room
Chair: Ben Scharf (West Virginia University)
1. “British Missionaries as Naturalists: The Dual Role of British Missionaries on 19th Century Madagascar,” Thomas Anderson (University of Pittsburgh)
2. “Thomas B. Glover: A British Merchant and the Rise of Modern Japan,” James Hommes (University of Pittsburgh)
3. “Stranger Communities: Protestant England’s Reactions to French Protestants,” Thomas Rushford (U.S. House of Representatives)
23. Voices beyond the Pale: Women’s Discursive Tactics in Nineteenth-Century
Novels The Holden Room
Chair and Commentator: Michael Blackie (Hiram College)
1. “The Mistress of Bleak House: Esther Summerson and the Discourse of the Law,” Kirsten Parkinson (Hiram College)
2. “Maria Edgeworth, Mary Russell Mitford, and Elizabeth Gaskell: Authorizing Provincial Women Writers through the Discourse of Natural History,” Martha Bohrer (North Central College)
3. “’O Thou, the great Unknown, Unseen’: Anonymity and Invisibility in Hymnbooks Edited by Women,” Alisa Clapp-Itnyre (Indiana University East)
24. Thinking with Feet: the Meaning of the Foot in British Literature The Brush Room
Chair: Pam Lieske (Kent State University at Trumbull)
1. “Fancy’s Boot: Making Shoes Last,” John Twyning (University of Pittsburgh)
2. “A shoemaker sell flesh and blood—O indignity!’: Staging Labor and Artisanal Consciousness in The Shoemaker’s Holiday,” Matthew Kendrick (University of Pittsburgh)
3. “’This Petty Sort of Theft’: The Lady Footpad in Defoe’s Moll Flanders,” Julie Beaulieu (University of Pittsburgh)
Session 9
Panels 24-26
10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
25. Troubled Gender Relations in Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric The Hopkins Room
Chair and Commentator: John McBratney (John Carroll University)
1. “His and Hers: Ownership and Victorian Marriage in Dombey and Son and Lady Audley’s Secret,” Katherine Osborne (University of Kentucky)
2. “Catherine Earnshaw’s Ghost Form: Displacement and Reclamation on the Heights,” Hannah Freeman (Pikeville College)
3. “The Troubled Case of Mr. Hyde and the Hermaphroditic Body,” Mary Clai Jones (University of Kentucky)
26. Transatlantic Literature and the Production of National Identities,
1870-1910 The Holden Room
Chair: Keridiana Chez (CUNY Graduate Center)
1. “Henry James and the Poetics of Authentic Display,” George Phillips (University of Kentucky)
2. “The Stars and Stripes and the British Empire: Anglo-Saxonism and the Problem of the Frontier in Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet and Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” Joanna Collins (University of Pittsburgh)
3. “Sharing the White Man’s Burden: Kipling’s Kim in the American McClure’s,” Leigha McReynolds (George Washington University)
4. “The Production of Humaneness through the Pet Dog in English and American Literature,” Keridiana Chez (CUNY Graduate Center)
27. New Approaches to Nineteenth-Century British Women Poets The Brush Room
Chair and Commentator: Noelle Chao (Ohio State University)
1. “’Things by their Right Names’: Sarah Hale, Anna Barbauld, and ‘American’ Literature,” Derek Pacheco (Purdue University)
2. “’Old Idolatry’: Letitia Landon’s Ephemeral Hellenism,” Noah Comet (Ohio State University, Mansfield)
3. “’A vein of melancholy love’: Felicia Hemans and an Epistemology of Love,” Seth Reno (Ohio State University)
Future MWCBS Meetings
2011: Champaign, Illinois, hosted by the University of Illinois-Champaign
2012: Toronto, Canada, hosted by the University of Toronto