Theatre at the ADC and Playroom

Lots of upcoming productions at the ADC and Corpus Playroom which will be of interest to members of the Reading Group:

• 'At Home at the Zoo', Corpus Playroom, 18-22 September
• 'The Physicists', Corpus Playroom, 9-13 October
• 'RIBS', ADC, 24-27 October  
• 'Mosquitoes', ADC, 13-17 November
• 'Photograph 51', ADC, 9-13 April

Vacancy: Graduate Research Assistant, University of Oxford

Applications are invited for a full time Graduate Research Assistant to join the team working on the AHRC funded project ‘Constructing Scientific Communities’ and the ERC funded project, ‘Diseases of Modern Life: Nineteenth-Century Perspectives’, under the direction of Professor Sally Shuttleworth.

The projects are interdisciplinary, bringing together scholars from the fields of literature and science, and the history of medicine, science and technology. The post holder will provide research support for the projects in a range of areas, including preparation of materials for publication and database entry, and public engagement activities. There is also the possibility of pursuing individual research in the area.

The AHRC funded project ‘Constructing Scientific Communities’ will run to 30 November 2018, and this will be the primary focus of work when the post holder takes up the role. The ERC funded project, ‘Diseases of Modern Life: Nineteenth-Century Perspectives’ will run until 31 July 2019 and therefore the final part of the time in the role will be focused on this project.

Further particulars (which all applicants must consult) are available here.

Applications (which should include a CV and a supporting statement explaining your suitability for the post) must be made online via the link above by 12 noon on 13 September 2018. You will be asked to upload a CV, and supporting statement. Please ensure all documents are uploaded as PDF files.

Interviews will be held in the last week of September or first week in October 2018.

Dickens Day 2018: 'Dickens, Families and Communities'

Programme

9 – 10:00 am Registration, coffee and opening remarks

10 – 11:15 am Plenary panel
Lillian Nayder (Bates College), 'Better to be Cain than Abel'
Mary Shannon (University of Roehampton), 'Space, Place, and Dickens's Networks'
Cathy Waters (University of Kent), 'Celebrating the brotherhood of the pen: George Augustus Sala on "Dickens and Thackeray"'

11:15 – 11:30 am Readings organised by Tony Williams of the Dickens Fellowship

11:30 – 12 pm Coffee

12 – 1:15 pm Parallel panels

Care: Physical and Philanthropic 
Heather Tilley (Birkbeck, University of London), 'Engendering care or cruelty? The paralysed body in Dickens's Fiction'
Adelene Buckland (King's College London), 'Dickens and the Artificial Mother'
Joanna Hofer-Robinson (University College Cork), 'Putting Dickens to Work: "at least, that is her plan of Gampaign"'

Dickens and Mutual Friends
Katie Jackson (Royal Holloway, University of London), 'Controlling Cutlery: Objects of Anxiety, Humiliation and Identity'
Logan Browning (Rice University), 'The Bad Host in Dickens'
David Namie (University of California, Santa Cruz), '"Only to see that there's no look-out when he's up there": Authorizing Normativity and its Alternatives in Our Mutual Friend'

1:15 – 2:30 Lunch (own arrangements)

2:30 – 2.45 pm Readings organised by Tony Williams of the Dickens Fellowship

2:45 – 4 pm Parallel panels

Nation and Community
Lucy Whitehead (Cardiff University), '''Dickens ... hoisted the French colours: National Community in Dickens Biography'
Jungmin Yoo (Sogang University, South Korea), '"Yes, my poor sister; to the last": Sacrificing for Fraternity in A Tale of Two Cities'
Jacqueline Stamp (Canterbury Christ Church University), 'Dickens's Arctic Communities'

Gender and Familial (Dis)Regulation
Jennifer Miller (University of Leicester), 'Domesticity and the Fallen Woman Plot in Victorian theatrical adaptations of David Copperfield'
Justin Jones (University of North Texas), 'Brave Fools: The Community of Masculine Heroes in Dickens's Dombey and Son'
Cory Sampson (University of Ottawa), 'Nobody's Family: (Pseudo) Familial Relationships and Emotional Labour in Little Dorrit'

4 – 4:30 pm Coffee

4:30 – 5:15 pm  Plenary
Holly Furneaux (Cardiff University) 'Lighthouse Keeping'

We look forward to seeing you! Register here

CFP - Health Care in Children's Literature

Edited Collection Call for Papers
Health Care in Children's Literature
Edited by Naomi Lesley, Sarah Hardstaff, and Abbye E. Meyer

Recently, issues of health insurance access and cost have been a dominant political
issue in the United States. However, questions about health care (beyond insurance) have
surfaced in children’s literature from many nations, for many decades. This edited collection will
consider how children’s literature and media can enrich our understanding about health care
from many perspectives, through consideration of international comparisons; historical change;
disparities based on gender, race, disability, class, and age; and attention to informal as well as
formal systems of care.

Essays for this volume might address a variety of topics. The following is a partial list of
pertinent topics, but proposals are welcomed on other issues of health care not mentioned
below:

• How children’s literature addresses (or does not address) the cost of care
• Barriers to health care in children’s books, including barriers based on race, sexuality, class, gender, or disability
• Differences in care based on visible vs. invisible disabilities
• Questions of who gets sick and who stays healthy in literature
• Health care broadly defined as access to food, shelter, and security, as well as care for acute sickness, chronic illness, mental health, and disability
• How issues of health access are addressed in books pre-WWII (before health insurance in many nations), as well as in historical fiction written since
• How children’s literature portrays children growing into caring professions (aspiring to be nurses, doctors, etc)
• Child characters as caretakers and healers for family and community members

Scholars interested in contributing to this volume should submit a 300-500 word proposal
by January 30, 2019. Please email proposals, and any questions, to Naomi Lesley
( naomi.lesley@hcc.edu ), Sarah Hardstaff ( sflh2@cam.ac.uk ) , or Abbye Meyer
( abbyemeyer@gmail.com ).