Calls for papers: a weekly round up

Indian Pluralism and Warren Hastings’s Orientalist Regime,  University of Wales Conference Centre, Gregynog, Powys, 18-20 July 2012

The aim of this conference is to provide a more complete and multidisciplinary picture of the amateur Orientalists of the Hastings circle and the politico-cultural significance of their work. 

Topics could include, but are not limited to:

Literary, linguistic, and scientific contributions of key members of the Hastings circle/Asiatick Society Publications and contributions to academic journals and newspapers of figures such as Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, Charles Wilkins, Richard Johnson, Charles Hamilton, David and James Anderson, Jonathan Scott, Reuben Burrow, Samuel Davis, Henry Vansittart, Antoine Polier, Claude Martin, Sir Robert Chambers, William Chambers, William Kirkpatrick, and John Gilchrist 

Amateur Orientalists’ marriages to, or cohabitation with, Indian women; their working relationships with Indian officials and businessmen; 

collaboration with each other, with ‘President’ Jones, and especially with Indian informants and scribal communities, Hindu pandits, and Muslim munshis and moulavis 

Poetical and political Islam

High-caste sipahis and ‘barracks Islam’ 

The politics of language and of ‘language-money’

Sufi mysticism and Sufi militarism 

Political, commercial and military significance of gosains and bairagis (Śaivite and Vaishnavite monks), Colonial mimicry of Mughal patronage

Proposals for 30-minute papers are invited and should be sent to Michael J. Franklin by  15 April 2012.   

Edited Collection: Victorian Medicine and Popular Culture

Essays are sought for an edited collection on Victorian medicine and popular culture. This essay collection explores the relationship between the increasingly specialized medical disciplines and a variety of texts and contexts, including popular (non-canonical) literature, journalism, advertisements, home medical and nursing manuals, and lectures and exhibitions at and mechanics institutes. The collection also offers perspectives on literature's reciprocal influence on diverse health care fields including nursing, pharmacy, medical philanthropy, health care missionary work, advertising, and quackery.

The proposed collection seeks to add to the growing body of scholarship on Victorian scientific and medical writing by considering representations of health care within specifically popular fields.  How can we understand the relationships that existed between consumerism, health care, and popular literature in the Victorian period? When and how was lay practice or its representation complimentary, and when was it a form of resistance to increasingly professionalized and scientific medicine? How do popular texts and artifacts of the period represent medical and popular health care trends of the era, such as the scientific revolution in Victorian healthcare? How did visual iconography including advertisements reflect changing views of health care practitioners and consumers? We invite interdisciplinary scholarship and work drawn from a range of disciplines: art history, literature, history, anthropology, public health, sociology, and communications to broaden our understanding of the non-elite bodies of professionals, texts, and cultures that influenced Victorian health care policy and practice.

Please send abstracts to Louise Penner or Tabitha Sparks by 15 May 2012, or complete essays (3,000-7,000 words) by 30 June 2012.

Essay Collection on News of the World: ‘Journalism for the Rich, Journalism for the Poor’ 1843-2011

Editors: Laurel Brake, Chandrika Kaul, Mark W. Turner

Publisher: ‘Studies in the History of the Media’, Palgrave Macmillan

Founded in 1843, the News of the World was one of the UK’s longest-running and most popular Sunday newspapers when it came to its inauspicious end in the summer of 2011. As the UK’s Leveson Inquiry, due to report in 2013, continues to unravel details about the recent ‘hacking’ scandal, the News of the World will continue to make the news for some time to come.

We are organizing a volume of essays and seek articles of 7000 words on any aspect of the newspaper’s history, from the 19th century through the present, which help to deepen our understanding of this

title and of media history more generally.

Key themes and topics might include:

The genre of Sunday papers, in/since the 19th century

Newspaper Form:  layout, multiple editions, departments, etc.

Illustration and Photography: the New Journalism, Photojournalism, etc.

Readerships and Circulations: ‘metropolitan’ and ‘country’; provincial editions/readers; international

contexts

Empire: decolonisation; popular cultures

Comparative Readings: America, Empire, etc.

Investigative journalism: 19th, 20th, 21st centuries

Politics and the Popular Press: 19th, 20th, 21st centuries

The Economics of the Popular Press

Crime and Court Reporting

War and the Popular Press: e.g. Crimea, Boer, WWI, WW2, Falklands

Celebrity

Sports News, since the 19th century

Sex and the Popular Press

Proprietors and Media Moguls

Practices of Newsgathering since the 19th century

Press Freedom  and Press Controls

The Closing of the NOTW: the rise of the Sunday Sun

Please send proposals of up to 250 words, for articles of between 6000-7000 words, to Laurel Brake, Chandrika Kaul and Mark Turner by 31 May 2012.

We aim to inform authors that they have been selected for the volume by the middle of June 2012. Completed articles will be due to the editors by the end of December 2012, and we expect publication in 2013. Please see the Palgrave Macmillan website for style guidelines.