Fall 2018 Newsletter
President’s Message
Dear VSAO members and friends,
An update on our events and planning for this year.
27 April 2019 annual conference
Planning is underway for our 27 April annual conference. Please mark the date in your calendar and watch for our CFP! We’re pleased to announce our two distinguished keynote speakers. Dr. Deepali Dewan, Dan Mishra Curator of South Asian Arts & Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and Prof. of Art History at the University of Toronto is a specialist in History of Photography, 19th-century Decorative Arts, Colonialism & Modernity. She will present a paper on Indian cotton in the 19th century, offering a “sneak peek” at an upcoming ROM exhibition on Indian Chintz, provisionally called “The Cloth That Changed the World.” Dr. Stuart McCook is Professor of History at Guelph University and completed his PhD in History and the History of Science from Princeton University. His research interests focus on the environmental history of coffee production, and past work includes the environmental history of cacao cultivation and sugar cultivation. The author of States of Nature: Science, Agriculture, and Environment in the Spanish Caribbean, 1760-1940 (2002), Prof. McCook is currently working on a global environmental history of the coffee rust (Hemileia vastatrix).
Fall evening talk, 26 Nov. 2018, “Pot(tery) Tales in Victorian Painting and Literature”
A joint event with the Gardiner Museum of ceramic arts — a gem of a museum, for those of you who have not yet visited. The museum will open to attendees one half hour before the talk, as well as afterwards, so that you can visit. Dr. Rachel Gotlieb, Gardiner Adjunct Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, will given an illustrated talk on “the information to be gleaned by deciphering ceramics in Victorian art and literature.” The talk will take place at the Gardiner Museum, located at 111 Queen’s Park in Toronto, beginning at 6.30 p.m. on Monday 26 Nov. **VSAO members receive a discounted ticket price of $15, online or in person at the event (use the code “VSAO”).**
Please spread the word so that we have a good turnout in support of the museum and Victorian studies.
For more information about the lecture, please visit our Events page.
Winter evening talk, March 2019
Dr. David Bentley, Distinguished University Professor and Carl F. Klinck Professor in Canadian Literature at Western University, will lead an informal talk in March on the Pre-Raphaelites. We will extend an invitation for everyone to meet for dinner with David before the talk – a chance to get to know VSAO members and discuss all things Pre-Raphaelite!
Updates about date, time, and location will be posted to our site and to our listserv.
ACCUTE 2019, CFP closing 15 Nov.
Our CFP for two ACCUTE panels closes soon and we are looking forward to reviewing submissions soon. “Victorian Fun, Amusement and Delight” invites papers that examine, broadly speaking, the ways in which fun was imagined, represented and conceived in this era. Please see the cfp on our website for details.
We look forward to seeing you at these events! Thank you for supporting the important work of the VSAO in promoting Victorian studies and in bringing together scholars, students, and members of the public who are interested in this field.
With best wishes,
Suzanne
Suzanne Bailey
President, Victorian Studies Association of Ontario