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MVSA Graduate Representative, 2020-2022 | MVSA Executive Board, 2020-2022
Department of English, The Ohio State University–Columbus

Research Interests: Victorian popular fiction and culture; supernatural literature and the Gothic; representations of monstrosity and the “psychic” vampire

MVSA Web Coordinator, 2012-2022 | MVSA Graduate Representative, 2012-2020

MVSA Executive Board, 2012-2022
Department of English, The Ohio State University–Columbus

Research Interests: 19th-century British/Victorian literature; women’s and gender studies; transatlanticism; periodicals and print culture; medical humanities; animal studies; Elizabeth Gaskell

Selected Publications: “Grave Matters: Gothic Places and Kinetic Spaces in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton,” Place and Progress in the Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Ashgate/Routledge, 2015)

— Return to Past Officers and Board Members —

The registration fee for the full in-person conference is $185 for faculty, and $150 for graduate students, adjuncts, and independent scholars. To register, use the PayPal feature below to select the appropriate rate and complete the transaction online; please also submit this Google Doc survey form, which includes a place to enter information about dietary restrictions and other accommodations you might need during the conference. Attendees are kindly asked to become members when registering ($40 for faculty, $30 for graduate students, adjuncts, and independent scholars). The registration fee covers all conference events. 

The registration fee for virtual seminar participants is $35 plus the respective membership dues. Use the PayPal menu below to register as online attendee for this portion of the conference only. 

                                                                                   Tax-deductible donations help support the future of MVSA by ensuring that our annual conference remains affordable for scholars and students committed to the study of the Victorian period. Donations also contribute to the Jane Stedman Plenary Lecture and the annual Burgan Prize for Outstanding Presentation by a Graduate Student. If you would like to make a donation to MVSA, click the PayPal button below and follow the prompts. Nota Bene: All donations to MVSA are tax deductible.

       

We understand that unforeseen circumstances may sometimes prevent a registered delegate from attending the conference. If you submit a refund request on or before April 29, MVSA will refund 50 percent of your registration fee. We regret that we cannot issue refunds beyond this deadline. MVSA membership dues are non-refundable.

 2021 Conference — “Victorian Truth, Investigation, & Mystery”  |  May 21-22

The 2021 Midwest Victorian Studies Association conference will be held virtually and feature synchronous panels and seminars; the awarding of the association’s Arnstein and Burgan Prizes; and our annual Stedman Lecture, to be delivered by Jennifer Tucker, Associate Professor of History at Wesleyan University, on the topic “The Great Tichborne Trial in the Victorian Visual Imagination.” 

MVSA will also honor Patrick Leary with the association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, including a special roundtable, “Exploring Print and the Victorians: Views from 2021,” to be chaired by Linda K. Hughes, Addie Levy Professor of Literature at Texas Christian University. 

“In the Firelight” by Thomas Gray, Belgravia Magazine, 1868.

The conference will free to anyone who wishes to attend as an audience member. Participants will be required to register for the event in advance. 

Click the following links to register or download the program. 

MVSA Executive Board, 2017-2020

Associate Professor of History, Baylor University

Research Interests: 19th-century religion; Evangelicalism; print culture

This subcommittee is unanimous in supporting Linda Hughes’ nomination of Nicholas Temperley, Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign and one of our society’s founders, for the recently instituted MVSA Lifetime Achievement Award.

Nicholas Temperley accepts MVSA Lifetime Achievement Award from former President Christina Bashford at the 2019 Conference

In terms of both their academic distinction and impact, Nicholas’ contributions to scholarship on the Victorian era and to the Midwest Victorian Studies Association have been nothing short of outstanding. As Linda writes, “It is one thing to publish quantities of print; it is another thing entirely to shape a scholarly field,” referring to his immensely important research and writing on British music and musical life, especially in the nineteenth century. These contributions literally put Victorian music on the musicological map at a time when the study of British music was considered irrelevant by most music historians.

Among his several books, editions of music, and dozens of articles and essays are many publications that have been read, devoured, and much cited by more than one generation of scholars. These publications include his path-breaking two-volume study, The Music of the English Parish Church (Cambridge University Press, 1979; 3rd edition, 2006), his Hymn Tune Index (a seminal, now online, catalog of hymn tunes with English-language texts up to 1820, funded by a significant NEH grant), his Bound for America: Three British Composers (University of Illinois Press, 2003), and several edited essay collections, including the volume on the Romantic Age in the Athlone History of Music in Britain Series (Athlone, 1981), Music and the Wesleys (edited with Stephen Banfield; University of Illinois Press, 2010), and Musicians of Bath and Beyond: Edward Loder (1809-1865) and his Family (Boydell, 2016). He also co-edited, with Linda Hughes, The Lost Chord: Essays on Victorian Music (Indiana University Press, 1999), a collection of essays that arose from a session he organized for an MVSA conference.

Meanwhile, Nicholas has been a regular presence and speaker at MVSA meetings for more than forty years, serving as President from 1984 to 1986. He has also been an active contributor to activities, hosting conferences and organizing many memorable musical performances. As Linda points out, his reputation as a scholar and centrality in the organization has meant that other musicologists have been drawn to our ranks. She writes: “If Nicholas opened up the scholarly field of British music, he also deepened the interdisciplinarity of MVSA from its beginnings, which has now grown into the very fabric of MVSA and what sets it apart.” Moreover, he introduced to MVSA his former student, Alisa Clapp-Itnyre, scholar of Victorian hymnody and of music in Victorian literature — a happy development that led to her serving for several years as our Executive Secretary. In addition, Nicholas has encouraged many other students and scholars, including several of us within MVSA, with unending intellectual generosity and acts of kindness. In so doing he has always furthered the association’s mission of fostering understandings of the Victorians and promoting interdisciplinary exchange, collaboration, and publication. A more fitting nominee for this award is hard to imagine.

MVSA Executive Board, 2015-2019
Professor, Art History, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Research Interests: 19th-century French and British art, visual culture, and science; the representation of London; Pre-Raphaelitism

Selected Publications: City of Gold and Mud: Painting Victorian London (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art for Yale University Press, 2012); Co-author with Malcolm Warner of the exhibition catalogue James Tissot: Victorian Life/Modern Love (Yale Center for British Art, 1999)

2019 Conference — “Victorian Power”  |  Texas Christian University, April 26-27

Robert Carr Chapel – Texas Christian University Campus

British world power peaked in the Victorian era, when industrial might, rule of the waves, and cultural “soft power” paved the way for Britain’s “imperial century” or, as its most recent chronicler has called it, Britain’s “victorious century.” And yet nowhere was dominion complete or unchallenged, from frontiers of colonial conflict to internal contestations over religious, political, and civil rights, as well as access to arts, education, and culture. Click the following links to register or download the program.

The conference will take place on the campus of Texas Christian University.

A block of rooms is reserved for MVSA at the Courtyard Marriott Fort Worth University Drive at the price of $139 per night. In order to receive this rate, you must reserve your room by March 21, 2019. You can book rooms by calling 1-800-228-9290 or book online here.

Other nearby hotels in the TCU area include the SpringHill Suites by Marriott Fort Worth, the Fairfield Inn & Suites Fort Worth University Drive, the TownePlace Suites Fort Worth University Area/Medical Center, and the Hawthorn Suites by Wyndam Fort Worth/Medical Center. An additional list can be found here.

Transportation and Parking

The Courtyard Marriott Fort Worth University Drive is one mile from the TCU campus. Some staying at the hotel will have cars; others may prefer the walk past Log Cabin Village and ample green space between the Marriott and campus. We also recommend using Uber and Lyft.

Guests flying to the conference can arrive through Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport or Dallas Love Field.  The approximate cost of taking Uber or Lyft from DFW to the TCU area is $40, and from Dallas Love to campus is $45. Public transportation is available from the Trinity Railway Express, which takes passengers from the CentrePort/DFW Airport Station to the T & P Station in downtown Fort Worth; from there, passengers can take Uber or Lyft to the hotel for approximately $10. A new commuter rail line is also available from TexRail, which connects DFW Terminal B to downtown Fort Worth.

If you arrive at Dallas Love, passengers can take the DART green/orange line to Victory Station, and then catch the TRE to Fort Worth. For those traveling by car and driving to campus, parking is available at the Greene Avenue Visitor Parking Lot and at the Frog Alley Parking Garage. See map here.

MVSA Treasurer, 2017-2019 | MVSA Executive Board, 2017-2019
Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, University of Tennessee Martin

Research Interests: Victorian literature; the novel (British and American); women’s studies

Selected Publications: Women, Work and Representation: Needlewomen in Victorian Art and Literature (Ohio, 2003); Editor, John Halifax, Gentleman by Dinah Mulock Craik (Broadview, 2005); Co-editor with Sharon A. Winn, The Slaughter-House of Mammon: An Anthology of British Social Protest Literature (Locust Hill, 1992)