This is the page of the online event. If you would like to attend in person, please register here.

This one-day workshop will explore how Victorian periodical and newspaper cultures operated in the different nations of the British Isles and Ireland, and in their diaspora cultures that emerged through emigration and imperialism. We will interrogate how periodicals constructed Irish, Scottish and Welsh identities, in relation to or in opposition to a range of ‘English’ identities, as well as examining how such English identities were unmade and remade in coeval relation with the neighbouring countries it governed. Some of the papers will also examine how these identities were constructed outside Britain and Ireland in relation to indigenous cultures and other immigrant cultures.

Registration is free.

This event is organised by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals and the Scottish Centre for Victorian and Neo-Victorian Studies.

Workshop Programme [All times GMT (London)]

9:00-9:30 Arrival and registration

9:30-10:30 Wales

• Karin Koehler (Bangor University), ‘Poetry, Language and National Identity in the North Wales Newspaper Press, c.1820-1855’
• Lisa Peters (independent scholar), ‘Gwalia: Creating a National Welsh Language Newspaper’

10:30-11:00 Break

11:00-12:30 Ireland and Scotland

• Niamh Coffey (University of Strathclyde/Dundee Central Library), ‘“A true sister of charity”: The Ladies’ Land League and Irish Newspapers in Scotland’
• Michael Shaw (University of Stirling), ‘Contested Cosmopolitanism: William and Elizabeth Sharp's reviews of the Paris Salons for the Glasgow Herald’
• Charlotte Lauder (University of Strathclyde/NLS), ‘From ‘Thistleites’ to ‘Thistleblaw’: 'The Scots Thistle' (1885-2013), a Scottish Circulatory Manuscript Magazine’

12:30-1:30 Lunch

1:30-3:00 Local, Colonial and Transatlantic

• David Finkelstein (University of Westminster), ‘The International Typographical Trade Press and Labour Identity in Colonial Spaces’
• Sarah Sharp (University of Aberdeen), ‘“No father here, beside the ancient church”: D.M. Moir, Scottish Romanticism and Imagining Colonial Britishness’
• Mila Daskalova (University of Strathclyde), ‘Literary Genius “in health or disease”: Constructing National Identities in the Nineteenth-Century Asylum Periodical’

3:00-3:30 Break

3:30-4:30 The Irish and Irish American press [remote panel]

• Erick Boustead (independent scholar), ‘Chicago Irish Male Assimilation and “Mr Dooley”’
• Emily Smith (Oklahoma Christian University), ‘Fenian Sisters, Suffragettes and Mothers: The Representation of Women in the Victorian Irish and Irish American Press’

4:30-4:40 Short break

4:40-5:40 Digital projects and ‘four nations’ periodicals [hybrid panel]

• Alison Chapman (University of Victoria), ‘Mediating the Four Nations: Poetry and Translation at Scale in the Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry Project.’
• Kirstie Blair (University of Strathclyde), ‘Representing the Northern and Scottish Press in the Piston, Pen & Press database.’

5:40-6:00pm Closing remarks and final questions: chaired by Fionnuala Dillane (UCD)