65th Annual

2018 Midwest Conference on British Studies 

September 14-16

Lexington, Kentucky

Hosted by the University of Kentucky

 

UPDATED PROGRAM:

Thursday, September 13, 2018

​

             5:00-7:00 pm Early Registration at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Lexington Green

 

 

 

Friday, September 14, 2018

​

                   8:00-4:00 pm    Registration at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Lexington Green

 

Session 1

Panels 1-3

9:00-10:30 am

​

Panel 1 (Lexington Green 1)    Patients' Struggles for Agency in a Nineteenth-Century

Insane Asylum

 

Chair/Commentator: Kevin Binfield, Murray State University

 

Testimonial Injustice, Epistemic Violence, and the Case of an Insane Woman Poet Kaley Owens, University of Florida

 

“By Faith not by arms”: The Female Patient Experience at the York Retreat

Staci Stone, Jacksonville State University

 

Delusion, Agency, and Class Inflection in the Asylum Writings of William Lamb and Elizabeth Beakbane

Kevin Binfield and Liz Tretter, Murray State University

 

​

​

Panel 2 (Lexington Green 2)       The Unwritten Rules of Storytelling

​

Chair/Commentator: Shannon Branfield, The University of Kentucky          

The Crimes of Rowling: Rewriting the Queer Afterlife of Albus Dumbledore

Bonnie McLean, College of DuPage

 

Reader v. Author: Peter Carey on Trial

Justin J. J. Ness, Northern Illinois University

 

But What Exactly does Shakespeare Got to do With It?: Regina Mara Schwartz and the Problem of Western-Centered Scholarship in the 21st Century Matt Sautman, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville

​

 

​

Panel 3 (Lexington Green 3)           A People's Empire: Popular Consciousness, Memory, and Imperial Masculinity

 

Chair/Commentator: Philip Harling, The University of Kentucky

 

Scott the Effeminate: British Masculinity in Antarctica’s Heroic Age, 1895 – 1917

Andrew Avery, University of Kansas 

 

Webs of Identity and Memory: Iconoclasm on the Site of Auckland’s One Tree Hill Derek Boetcher, University of Florida

 

Global Community: Popular Understandings of British Imperialism in Letters to the Colonial Office, 1903

Kevin Luginbill, Northern Illinois University

 

                                     

Session 2

Panels 4-6

10:45-12:15 pm

​

​

Panel 4 (Lexington Green 1)   Who Runs the World: Networks of Women’s

Activism in Britain and the Empire  

​

Chair/Commentator: T.C. Whitlock, University of Kentucky

 

“Demure and Unobtrusive Figures”: Female MPs, Age Restriction, and the 1928 Reform Act

Jill Abney, University of Southern Mississippi

 

Fighting Decline: Elite Women and Rural Healthcare in the Interwar Period 

Martha Groppo, Princeton University

 

“Hunger and Work in a Savage Tribe”: Women and Interwar Nutrition Science Research Lacey Sparks, University of Southern Maine

 

​

 

Panel 5 (Lexington Green 2)    The Illustrated 19th Century: Caricatures, Illustrations, and British Culture

​

Chair/Commentator: Bonnie McLean, College of DuPage

           

Penny Dreadfuls, Pictures, and Household Suffrage in James Malcolm Rymer’s London Miscellany

Rebecca Nesvet, University of Wisconsin—Green Bay

           

“…the figure and the attitude…”: Disinterestedness, Aerialists, and a Caricature of Matthew

Arnold

Shannon Gilstrap, University of North Georgia

                                   

“[Drawing] those things which are not as though they were”: Visualizing the Female Victorian Detective

Dagni Bredesen, Eastern Illinois University

​

​

Panel 6 (Lexington Green 3)   The Importance of Cultural Symbols and Rituals in Seventeenth-Century English Politics

 

Chair/Commentator: Robert Bucholz, Loyola University Chicago

 

Taking it with a Grain of Salt: Salt, Politics, and the Company of Scotland
Patrick Klinger, University of Kansas

​

Reluctant to Ride: Ambivalence and Artistic Convention at the Court of Charles I

Amber Roberts Graham and Roberta Pokphanh, University of Kansas                

 

Suffolk’s Interregnum: A Tale of Unlawful Drunkards and Christmas Preservationism

Padraig Lawlor, Purdue University

 

 

  12:15-1:30                              Lunch         

 

 

                        

 

Session 3

Panels 7-9

1:45-3:15 p

​

​

              Panel 7 (Lexington Green 2)          A Scottish Atlantic World

             

Chair/Commentator: John Leazer, Carthage College

 

Imperial England, Imperial Scotland, and the Rise of Imperial America Jospeh Garske, Independent Scholar

 

From Crofters to Mountaineers: Commons Enclosure Refugees from Scotland 1750-1850 Rachel Herrington, University of Kentucky

 

“It is our anxiety, as well as our duty, to preserve the peace”: Policing Orange Riots in 1840s

Ireland and Canada

Ann Morrisette, University of Maine

 

 

​

Panel 8 (Lexington Green 3)   1818-2018: 200 Years of Frankenstein in the Popular Imagination Roundtable

​

Chair/Commentator: Shannon Gilstrap, University of North Georgia

 

Shannon Branfield, University of Kentucky

 

Keli Lynne Masten, Western Michigan University

 

Rebecca Sheppard, University of British Columbia

 

​

​

Session 4

Panels 9-11

3:30-5:00 pm

​

Panel 9 (Lexington Green 1)          Salt, Alcohol, and Money:

The Political Economy in the 17th and 18th Centuries=CANCELLED

 

​

 

Panel 10 (Lexington Green 2)   India and Britain: Entanglement, Hybridity, and  Couplings

             

Chair/Commentator: Lisa Sigel, DePaul University

 

"Men will be Immoral”: An Intellectual History of Sex-Buying in Colonial India, 1860-1911

Zoya Sameen, University of Chicago

 

The Passage East: Culture, Race and Globalization in the long Nineteenth Century

Aidan Forth, Loyola University Chicago

 

​

​

 

Panel 11 (Lexington Green 3)         Career Preparation Roundtable:

How to Thrive in Adjunct and Alt-Ac Positions

​

Chair/Commentator: Roberta J. Pokphanh, University of Kansas

 

Bonnie McLean, College of DuPage

 

Steven Catania, University of Wisconsin--Madison

 

Amber Roberts Graham, University of Kansas

 

 

​

                   5:30-7:30 pm      MWCBS Reception and Plenary Address                                     (Lexington Green Ballroom)

​

Plenary Address:      “A More Perfect Disunion: Governance, Regimen, and Bodily Constitution in the British Imaginary, from Chaucer to Orwell”

Matthew Giancarlo, University of Kentucky

 

 

​

​

Saturday, September 15, 2018

​

​

Session 5

Panels 12-14

8:30-10:00am

​

Panel 12 (Lexington Green 1)     Questions of Gender in British Fiction and

Music

​

Chair/Commentator: Christine Haskill, Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University

 

Stevenson’s The Suicide Club: No Girls Allowed! 

Keli Lynne Masten, Western Michigan University                

 

Austen’s Alternative Reality: Inverted Narrative in the Marriage Plot of Emma  Catherine Simmerer, Marquette University 

 

From “Devil in Her Heart” to “Wannabe,” An Exploration of Feminism in British Rock from the 1960s to 1990s 

Neal Palmer, Christian Brothers University                            

 

             

Panel 13 (Lexington Green 2)  Navigating Public Spaces in Early Modern and

Modern London

​

Chair/Commentator: Erika Gasser, University of Cincinnati

Public Place and Sacred Space: The Work of Isaac Pennington and London’s Revolutionary Landscape

Alana Cain Scott, Morehead State University

             

Public Spheres, Private Lives: The Many Identities of Thomas Violet

Amos Tubb, Centre College                 

 

From Commuters to Citizens: Enacting British Identity in the Spaces of the London Underground 

Danielle Dodson, Independent Scholar

 

             

Panel 14 (Lexington Green 3)   The Politics of the Land in the 18th Century

 

Chair/Commentator: Susannah Ottaway, Carleton College

 

A Politics of the Land in the British Topographical and Georgic Poetry Jeong-Oh Kim, Vanderbilt University

​

The Proclamation of 1763 and the Idea of a Beautiful America

Robert Paulett, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

 

 

​

Session 6

Panels 15-17

10:15-11:45 am

​

​

Panel 16 (Lexington Green 1)           Poverty, Public Health, and the Working Poor in the 19th and 20th Centuries

 

Chair: Eric Tenbus, Georgia College

Comment: The Audience

 

The Experiences of English Narrowboat Captains and their Families

Jules Gehrke, Saginaw Valley State University

 

The Politics of Public Health: From State Medicine to the Origins of the Welfare State?  James Harris, Ohio State University

 

Poverty Mobility in Victorian London 

Susannah Ottaway and Elizabeth Budd, Carleton College

 

 

​

 

Panel 16 (Lexington Green 2)     The Undiscovered Country 

​

Chair/Commentator: Jill Abney, University of Southern Mississippi

Chair/Commentator: Phyllis Soybel, College of Lake County

 

Joseph Kennedy’s Ambassadorship to Britain

Jane Vieth, Michigan State University

 

Sidney Dark (1872-1947): Editor, Author, Critic

Robert Butler, Elmhurst College

 

Ethnographic Report: Open Mic: Ian Prowse’s Monday Club at the Cavern Club Liverpool,

England

Allison Bumsted, Liverpool Hope University

​

Helping the War Victims: British Women and the Nigerian Civil War, 1967-1970

Oluchukwu Ignatus Onianawa, University of Ibadan

 

​

​

​

Panel 17 (Lexington Green 3)  Teaching Hacks—Tips, Tricks, and Tools of the Trade:

Break Out Session

​

​

 

12:00-12:45 pm                      

Luncheon, Business Meeting in Lexington Green Ballroom

​

​

​

​

 

12:45-2:00 pm                         

Graduate Student Award(s) and Keynote Address in Lexington Green Ballroom

 

Keynote Address: “We Do Not Want Ugly and Trivial Memorials:  The Arts and Crafts Movement and World War One Commemoration”

Carolyn Malone, Ball State University

 

 

 

Session 7

Panel 18-20

2:15-3:45 pm

 

Panel 18 (Lexington Green 1) 

Conflicting Visions of the Body Politic in Early

Modern England

​

Chair: Martin Greig, Ryerson University

Comment: The Audience

 

A Codicological Study of the 1523 English manuscript translation of Erasmus's Enchiridion militis Christiani

Seán Thomas Kane, University of Missouri—Kansas City 

 

Ambassadorial Duties: The Unofficial Roles of the English Embassy to the Ottoman Empire, 1671-1687

Zachary Schulz, Columbus State University

                         

Physicians of the Body Politic? Members of Parliament and Economic Crises in the Late

Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries

David Pennington, Webster University

 

 

​

 

Panel 19 (Lexington Green 2)   19th Century Writers

​

Chair/Commentator: Jeong-Oh Kim, Vanderbilt University

​

“As rank is rank”: The Evolution of Class and Social Order in Austen

Cassidy Wheeler, Syracuse University

             

Morally Insane Bodies: Perversions of Feeling in Eliot’s Adam Bede and “The Lifted Veil” Rebecca Sheppard, University of British Columbia

             

“Problematic, Restless Youth”: Sensation Fiction and the Bildungsroman Shannon Branfield, University of Kentucky

 

​

​

Panel 20 (Lexington Green 3)   Roundtable on Publishing: Tips, Tricks, and

Strategies to Get Published

 

Rebecca Nesvet, University of Wisconsin—Green Bay                                 

 

Dagni Bredesen, Eastern Illinois University                

 

John Leazer, Carthage College

 

 

 

Session 8

Panels 21-23

4:00-5:30 pm

​

​

Panel 21 (Lexington Green 1)    A Question of Influence     

                            

Chair/Commentator: Rebecca Nesvet, University of Wisconsin—Green Bay

 

Victorian Undercurrents: Robert Browning’s Ring Resurfaces in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves

Alexander Long, Purdue University

 

Vera Brittain’s Honourable Estate: Interrogating the Feminist Pacifist Legacies of Olive Schreiner

Christine Haskill, Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University

 

​

 

Panel 22 (Lexington Green 2)    The Anglo-American Atlantic World  

 

Chair/Commentator: Steven Catania, University of Wisconsin—Madison

 

“Carried Away”: Maryland Slaveholders and “Positive Good” after the War of 1812

Sydney Miller, Ohio State University             

 

Anglo-French Privateering and Smuggling in the Windward Islands during the War for

American Independence 

Heather Freund Carter, University of Illinois Urbana—Champaign

 

Boxing Venus 

Alexandra Ward, University of Delaware

 

 

​

Panel 23 (Lexington Green 3)  Career Preparation Roundtable:

How to Captain the Titanic

or

Preparing for Department and University Leadership

 

Chair/Commentator: John Krenzke, Tidewater Community College           

 

Robert Bucholz, Loyola University Chicago  

 

Robert Butler, Elmhurst College

 

Eric Tenbus, Georgia College

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

NOTES:

 

​

 

 

The Midwest Conference on British Studies would like to thank the following for their generous support of this year's conference: 

 

The North American Conference on British Studies 

The University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences

The University of Kentucky Department of History

 James Sack

 

The Midwest Conference on British Studies would like to thank the following donors to the MWCBS Travel Award:  (TBA)

​

Matthew Giancarlo

Martin Greig

Christine Haskill

John Krenzke

John Leazer

Jim Sack

Zoya Sameen

Lisa Sigel

Eric Tenbus

             

             

                         

             

The Conference was organized by the following:

Local Organizer: Tammy Whitlock, University of Kentucky

Co-Organizers:   Phil Harling

Program Committee Chair: John Krenzke, Tidewater Community College

Program Committee: Steven Catania, University of Wisconsin—Madison; Carrie Euler,

Central Michigan University; Patrick Kirkwood, Metropolitan Community College; Bonnie McLean, College of DuPage; Rebecca Nesvet, University of Wisconsin—Green Bay; Lacey Sparks, University of Southern Maine.

Executive Committee: 

                               President: Eric Tenbus, Georgia College

                               Vice President: Lisa Z. Sigel, DePaul University 

                              Treasurer: Martin Greig, Ryerson University 

                              Immediate Past President: Lia Paradis, Slippery Rock University

​

With a special thanks to the local planning committee