Coding the Nineteenth Century Conference

Address: 202, 4 University Gardens.

In Middlemarch, George Eliot asked ‘Who shall tell what may be the effect of writing? If it happens to have been cut in stone, though it lie face down-most for ages on a forsaken beach […] it may end by letting us into the secret of usurpations and other scandals gossiped about long empires ago: - this world being apparently a huge whispering-gallery’. She attends, here, to the materiality of memory and to the capacity of the written word to etch indelible narratives. This one-day conference aims to scrutinise the diverse forms and effects of writing through a variety of papers that explore aspects and implications of the word ‘code’ in nineteenth century culture. The conference takes the definition of code as a collection of writings or symbols and will look to expand it through a range of inter-disciplinary and diverse papers.

To determine the effect of enigmatic or ciphered writing depends on the interpretative facility of the reader. To code and decode is to supply coherence through practising on otherwise unyielding or obscure forms. As such, it is a methodology that allies itself to the literary, historical, sociological, or philosophical study of past works. The papers that make up this conference all engage with the complexity of textual or visual forms that resist or require interpretation.

We are privileged to have, amongst our number, many established and emerging scholars who are working in diverse ways on the codifications of the nineteenth century. For more information, please find the conference programme below. Do let us know of any dietary requirements when booking a space.

Should you have any further questions, please email: [email protected] or [email protected]

Conference Programme

Coding the Nineteenth Century

24th May 2024

9:30am - Welcome

First Panel: Making an Impression: Visual and Written Signs

- Ann E. Gray, Independent Scholar.

- ‘A Stitch in Time: Medieval textile art and the work of Morris & Co’.

- Constance Halstead, University of York

‘“How I can write in crypt all as it really is”: textual form and formation in Anne Lister’s journal.

- Professor Amy L. Gates, Missouri Southern State University.

‘Encoding and Decoding the Dead: Wordsworth’s Epitaphs and The Excursion’.

- Shellie Audsley, University of Cambridge.

‘Textual Encryption and Generic Hybridity in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man’.

Tea

Second Panel: Codifying Acts of Interpretation

- Cleo O’Callaghan, The Universities of Universities of Stirling, Glasgow, and Edinburgh.

‘“’Twas strange – ‘twas passing strange!”: quotation as code for distanced reading in the novels of Susan Ferrier’.

- Professor Nathalie Cooke, McGill University.

‘Victorian Puzzles and Those Who Would Puzzlers Be’.

- Professor Carey Gibbons, University of North Texas.

‘Visualizing Language: Edward Burne-Jones’s Designs for The Fairy Family’.

- Sara Hamed – University of Edinburgh

‘Figurations of Divinity in Prometheus Unbound and The Island of Doctor Moreau’.

Lunch

Third Panel: The Body as Text: Science and Language

- Professor Mark Lussier, Arizona State University.

‘Rhythmic Operations Across Disciplines: Encoding the Spirit of the Age’.

- Martina Saric, University of Glasgow and University of Strathclyde.

‘Thomas Hardy’s Embodied Language: Sensuous Matter and the Language of Flames’.

- Dr Issy Brooks-Ward, University of Glasgow.

‘Codifying Casaubon’.

-Dr Jack Barron, University of Cambridge.

'Rossetti's Baby'.

Tea

4pm – Roundtable

5pm Close

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

University of Glasgow, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom