Poetry, Politics, and Pictures in the Nineteenth Century

An interdisciplinary conference hosted by the University of Sheffield in March, 2010.

From `The Charge of the Light Brigade´ to `The White Man´s Burden´, from Honoré Daumier´s lithographs to the Chartist poetry of the Northern Star, the politics of the nineteenth century both shaped and were shaped by poetry and images.

This interdisciplinary conference at the University of Sheffield will address such questions as: how do the images and poetry of the nineteenth century reflect or challenge British and European politics of their day? How do nineteenth-century politics intersect with aesthetics to create new theories and practices of art? What kind of correlation might there be between political representation and the representation of politics in word and image?

We welcome papers from across the humanities. Topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Worker poets and their political context
• Illustrated and illuminated poems
• Pre-Raphaelite or Nazarene painters and poets
• The poetics and aesthetics of socialism
• Political cartoons, their production and their uses
• Poetic and visual representations of war
• Theories of art and their intersection with poetic practice
• Advertisements and the politics of empire

Keynote speakers: Malcolm Chase (University of Leeds), Lindsay Smith (University of Sussex), Cornelia Pearsall (Smith College, Massachusetts)

Roundtable Discussion: Mike Sanders (University of Manchester), Bertrand Taithe (University of Manchester), Martina Lauster (University of Exeter)

The conference will also feature an exhibition of related nineteenth-century manuscripts, letters, and cartoons.

Conference dates: 26 and 27 March 2010
Venue: University of Sheffield
Contact email: poetrypoliticspictures@sheffield.ac.uk
Website: http://sites.google.com/site/poetrypoliticspictures/

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words, along with details of your institutional affiliation, to the contact email, by 15 December 2009.

Organising committee: Ingrid Hanson, Erin Snyder, Jack Rhoden, Marjorie Cheung, Kirsten Harris and Barry Orr

With support from the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies