BAVS

Calling all Victorianists! Do you have CFPs/events/news of Victorianist interest you want to share? Let us know at bavsnews@gmail.com and we'll circulate it to the BAVS membership in the spring newsletter. @bavs-uk.bsky.social @ruthannereads.bsky.social

The spring issue of the BAVS Newsletter will be published on 20th March. Please let us know if you have any work/projects/CfPs to include. You can email the newsletter editors at: bavsnews@gmail.com

Nineteenth-Century Afterlives: Creative and Critical Approaches An exploration of the many ways in which the 19th century is revisited, reimagined, and critically reinterpreted

Our fantastic doctoral student Sarah Dutson is organising the next of our North-West Long Nineteenth-Century Research Seminars, which is a hybrid event focusing on postgraduate and early career research on 19c afterlives. For more info, please click here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/nineteenth...

BAVS Rosemary Mitchell Prize now open for submissions!

📢 BOOK GIVEAWAY ends next week: Share this post to win 1 free copy of *Theatrical Afterlives: Nineteenth-Century Women’s Novels on the Stage* (OUP March 2026). global.oup.com/academic/pro...
#JaneAusten #WutheringHeights
@ncsascholars.bsky.social @19birkbeck.bsky.social @l19cmanmet.bsky.social

Would you like to come and study for a PhD at the University of Surrey? We invite PhD proposals in literature, music and media, and applied theatre. Interdisciplinary proposals welcome as are those from other fields, including film, digital media, cultural studies, and creative writing.

The BAVS/Rosemary Mitchell Prize for a Second Monograph 2026 is now open! If you published your second scholarly monograph in Victorian studies between 17 February 2025 and 17 February 2026, please do consider submitting! You can find more information here: bavs.ac.uk/book-prize-2/

WLM 14 In this meeting, we would like to explore the interactions and connections between the different ways contemporary culture engages with the traces of the Victorian past as well as how these different ...

📣CFP Only One Week Left!📣

WLM14: Modes of Engagement – Adapting (Neo-)Victorians
🗓️ 7 May 2026 | Zoom | Hosted by QAQV &
@bavs-uk.bsky.social

Exploring how today’s culture rewrites & remixes the Victorian past across media

🔍 Abstracts due 27 Feb 2026
Link: qaqv.ia.uw.edu.pl/wlm14/

So excited to be presenting @bavs-uk.bsky.social July 2026 @liverpooluni.bsky.social TITLE: Gulliver Travels to (Gul)liverpool: novel adaptations in Victorian pantomime. Thank you Uni of Kent Special Collections today: discovering Harry Paulton's 1885-1886 pantomime version of Swifts iconic novel.

a cup of tea is being poured from a teapot on a saucer ALT: a cup of tea is being poured from a teapot on a saucer

Calling BAVS ECRs! Join @laurenicullen.bsky.social and I on Zoom today anytime between 5pm - 6pm (GMT) for the @bavs-uk.bsky.social Tea Time! DM us for the link 🫖 ☕️

Had such a great time at the @bavs-uk.bsky.social ECR Tea-Time today. Such a lovely and supportive space, to chat all things Victorian. Thanks to @dremilyvincent.bsky.social and @laurenicullen.bsky.social for hosting. Looking forward to next time! 🫖

New Humour and Masculinity at the Fin de Siècle This book explores the popular writing of the New Humourists and their vital engagement with late Victorian conceptions of manliness

Now it's actually out, here's another plug for my new book about #Victorian New Humour, where I prove that Jerome is better than Joyce.
Just now realising I should have called it FUN de siecle.
@bavs-uk.bsky.social
@vpfa.bsky.social
link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

A huge thank you to everyone who cane to @rrrjournal.bsky.social ‘s annual conference! We heard fantastic papers that kickstarted conversations about archival method, material culture and sexuality and gender studies.

A huge thank you to @bavs-uk.bsky.social for providing generous event funding!

As @drhorrocks.bsky.social @vicmanch.bsky.social noted, Victorianists have the opportunity of back-to-back conferences with #RSVP2026 held in Dublin, 23-25 July & #BAVS2026 held in Liverpool, 27-29 July

Too late to apply to RSVP, but submissions still open for BAVS!

#BookHistory #PeriodicalStudies

What happens when @bavs-uk.bsky.social and @qaqv.bsky.social join forces?
This: qaqv.ia.uw.edu.pl/wlm14/
You've got almost 3 months to submit your idea and then 2 more to complete your paper! Details in the CFP ⤴️

WLM 14 In this meeting, we would like to explore the interactions and connections between the different ways contemporary culture engages with the traces of the Victorian past as well as how these different ...

📣 CFP: Modes of Engagement – Adapting (Neo-)Victorians
🗓️ 7 May 2026 | Zoom | Hosted by QAQV & @bavs-uk.bsky.social

Exploring how today’s culture rewrites & remixes the Victorian past across media — film, games, theatre, comics, VR & more.

🔍 Abstracts due 27 Feb 2026
Link: qaqv.ia.uw.edu.pl/wlm14/

British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) conference The Centre for Modern and Contemporary History, with the Centre for Port and Maritime History, are delighted to welcome BAVS delegates to Liverpool in 2026.

Check out the BAVS 2026 conference website: www.ljmu.ac.uk/bavs2026

CfP deadline extended until 12th December 2025!

Please reshare! I'd love to hear from potential candidates with research interests in disability studies and the arts...

@bavs-uk.bsky.social @bars.bsky.social @ukdishisthub.bsky.social

Thank you to NAVSA, to my colleaugues in BAVS and SFEVE, and also the many colleagues with whom I have worked to develop Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom, One More Voice, Livingstone Online, and COVE. I have learned so much from you and treasure the opportunities created by our shared work.

Throughout my career I have sought to promote international dialogue among Victorianists and I have used my DH projects to create a welcoming space for the academy’s most structually-vulnerable scholars. I am deeply honored to have received the President’s Award from @navsa.bsky.social for my work.

Check your inboxes for some weekend reading! The winter issue of the BAVS Newsletter is out now! Featuring Elizabeth Gaskell's House, Prof. Armstrong's reflections on an unduly neglected text, reviews, and reports. We hope you enjoy!

@bavs-uk.bsky.social @ruthannereads.bsky.social

I’m truly honoured to be on this list and looking forward to meeting the other authors on 2nd December.

Yale UP has a 50% off sale this November, so the pbk of my book’s a snip at just under £6. A good stocking filler, & I’m v happy to sign & send!

@bavs-uk.bsky.social @vpfa.bsky.social

📢Tell the BAVS Newsletter team about any Victorianist News, Events, CFPs, Exhibitions, Displays, Opportunities you would like us to shout about in the Winter issue!📢 Send notices to bavsnews@gmail.com

@bavs-uk.bsky.social @ruthannereads.bsky.social

Do come and join us in Liverpool next July, we look forward to welcoming you!

Anyone else planning to put a paper in? Love Liverpool so hard to resist!

This one-day symposium seeks to explore representations of the ‘critical age’ – the (peri-) menopause – in Victorian popular literature. The peri-menopausal and menopausal experiences of Victorian women have to date been overlooked or underrepresented in scholarly discussions of the period. Victorian popular literature, from novels to periodicals to advice books, provided an essential forum for discussing and shaping the public understanding of women’s bodies, even as much of it sought to obscure the female body. The (peri-) menopausal experience was often framed in terms of illness, excess, and degeneration, or, conversely, was relegated to silence. Women at the ‘critical age’ are frequently marginalised and associated with a range of negative stereotypes in literary and cultural narratives. This call for papers invites exploration of how this phase of women’s lives was constructed in the Victorian imagination, in medical discourses and advice literature, and in women’s lived experiences. We invite 20-minute papers exploring any aspect of the critical age in Victorian popular literature. Topics for exploration include but are not limited to: • Representations of the critical age in Victorian popular fiction • The medicalisation of (peri-) menopause • Cultural constructions of middle-aged women • Class and (peri-) menopause • (Peri-) Menopause in Victorian advice literature • Motherhood and (peri-) menopause • Experiences of the critical age in Victorian women’s life writing • Myths and popular misconceptions The event will also include a Digital Humanities Research Skills Workshop, with an emphasis on making digital methods more accessible. We invite short papers or workshop proposals that showcase how digital tools can be used to research women and their bodies in Victorian literature. Possible topics include data creation/cleaning/visualisations, textual, quantitative or statistical analysis, using AI or specific tools (such as Voyant or Power BI).

Another VPFA Study Day: 'The Critical Age in Victorian Popular Literature'
❓literary representations of the (peri-) menopause
🌏 online
📅 19th May 2026
💰 free for VPFA Members/ £5 for non-members
Send proposals (250) to
jessica.cox@brunel.ac.uk and siobhan.smith@tees.ac.uk by 19th February 2026

CFP: BAVS 2026 Conference Liverpool BAVS Liverpool 202627 – 29 July 2026 Keynote Speakers: Dr Alison Chapman (University of Victoria, BC), others to be confirmed. The Centre for Modern and Contemporary History (CMCH) at Liverpool Joh…

The BAVS 2026 Annual Conference CfP is now live: victorianist.wordpress.com/2025/10/20/c...

We hope you can join us in Liverpool next year!

The official CFP is a few days off, but I can't wait that long to announce that #BAVS2026 will be held in Liverpool, 27-29 July. We hope that some of the @rs4vp.org crowd will be able to make the trip over from #RSVP2026 and join @bavs-uk.bsky.social for more Victorian stuff. Details to follow.

Victorianists get ready for BAVS 2026 in Liverpool!

We're delighted to welcome Prof @vicmanch.bsky.social as the new BAVS President. Huge thanks to our wonderful past President, Prof @peptriss.bsky.social, for her excellent leadership of BAVS!