Highlights from NAVSA 2003

Over 300 Victorianists participated in NAVSA's inaugural conference at Indiana University on 17-19 October 2003. Participants came from a wide array of disciplines—English, History, Art History, and Philosophy—and traveled to Bloomington from Canada, the United States, the UK, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. Papers addressed topics of pressing interest to a great range of scholars: cognitive science, transatlantic studies, book history, medicine and literature, empire, political history, the history of celebrity, aesthetics, the ethics of objects, photography, the attractions of not paying attention, touching, and male bathing, to name but a few. Among the many highlights of the conference were the three superb plenary addresses. Judith Walkowitz's incisive address on "Feminism and the Moving Body" developed her ongoing work on the cultural geography of London and prompted an energetic conversation among the audience. Garrett Stewart's lecture on "Pictured Reading" was a tour de force, a series of readings of the image of the reader, taken from his forthcoming book on the subject. Nancy Armstrong's keynote on Dracula and utopian thought forcibly emphasized the consequences for contemporary cultural politics of the subjectivities constructed in that novel.

Perhaps the most distinctive and certainly one of the most successful features of the conference were the seminars, conducted by Amanda Anderson, James Epstein, Sharon Marcus, and Herbert Tucker. Professor Anderson's paper, "Beyond Authenticity: Trilling, Trollope, and the Fate of Sincerity," stimulated a productive conversation on the idea of character in the period, and its uses in recent criticism. James Epstein's paper, "Difference of Another Kind: 'America' in 19th Century British Imagination," was only one of several signs of the growing importance of transatlantic studies for the field. Like Professor Anderson, Sharon Marcus organized her seminar around Trollope: "The Genealogy of Marriage: Anthony Trollope's Can You Forgive Her?" was the title of her stellar paper. Finally, Herbert Tucker spoke about his forthcoming work on the period's epics, and in particular what he called "Epic Faith in Myth: 1860-1870." The Lilly Library exhibited a selection of its holdings from the period, and the Kinsey Institute offered tours of its Victorian collection in conjunction with the conference. Joss Marsh provided a wonderful lecture on and screening of Victorian film. The conference concluded with a business lunch to discuss the 2004 NAVSA conference at the University of Toronto.

Victorian Cinema

By Rachel Van Sickle, NAVSA Intern

Around 9:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 18, a group of tired NAVSA participants left the Grand Hall, food, and wine, demanding entertainment.   Joss Marsh of Indiana University provided it with her talk on "Cinema and Victorian Britain."   Marsh offered an impressive selection of Victorian-era films that gave us a history of Victorian British cinema and beyond.   The films included everything from temperance propaganda ( Buy Your Own Cherries [1904]) to early royal watching.   In 1896, for example, the Prince of Wales caused a scandal by scratching his head on film, which many saw as too intrusive to the royal family.   Not exactly a nasty divorce, but exciting nonetheless!   The Derby by Robert Paul, in a less scandalous move, films a horse race where the Prince of Wales' horse wins.   This win thrilled audiences to no end.  

Chases were another recurring theme throughout the evening.   The Haggar & Son production companies made films in the north of England and, thus, they represented a working-class consciousness: the crooks often outsmart the police in these film shorts.   Williamson developed the Bugs Bunny-esque chase sequences in such a way as to allow action to move out of a given frame of film and into a second scene (with the narrative connection implied by editing).   Rescued by Rover (1905) takes the chase movie and adds a rescue element.   The film shows a promiscuous nurse allowing a baby to be kidnapped by an old (and alcoholic) woman.   Luckily, an intrepid Collie—decades before Lassie—is able to rescue the baby (though neither the dog nor the father think to use the bridge and choose, instead, to swim and boat, respectively, over the small creek).

Marsh finished the evening by showing us some early adaptations of Dickens into film. Charlie Chaplin's tramp character can be read as Oliver Twist grown up, as we can see in his 1921 The Kid , which depicts an abandoned child in adulthood.   Marsh revealed that Chaplin had actually played the Artful Dodger early in his career.   She concluded her talk with Hitchcock, who revisits his Victorian upbringing in the attempted rape scene of Blackmail .