The Nineteenth Century Forum (NCF), an interdisciplinary group comprised of faculty and graduate students at the University of Michigan, is hosting a graduate student conference on the convergences between aesthetics and politics in the nineteenth century on Friday, April 14th.

The spheres of art and politics clearly never remained wholly separate but were profoundly affected by each other and raise some important issues for us today. Why did certain artists in the nineteenth-century turn to politics?   How did their political interests impact their art? And how do we re-present nineteenth-century political art to our own modern communities?

As teachers and scholars of the twenty-first century, we face some of the same questions articulated in the nineteenth century, as modern university education was coming into its own. How do nineteenth-century practices and politics inform our academic work and how might that translate into our own engagement in or with politics--on and off the page, inside and outside the university--today?

General Schedule of Events
The conference will begin with the keynote lecture entitled "Early and Often: the Aesthetics of Victorian Politics" by Professor Elaine Hadley. A light breakfast will be served. Two panels featuring graduate student speakers from a variety of universities as well our own will precede the lunch break, and the last panel will follow in the late afternoon.  

The day will conclude with a roundtable on politics and pedagogy and an evening reception.  Featured panelists will include Professor Sandra Gunning, Professor Maria Sanchez, Visiting Professor Elizabeth Miller, and graduate students, Ji-Hyae Park and Lamont Egle.  

Program
Introductory Remarks from Conference Organizers

Keynote Lecture
"Early and Often: the Aesthetics of Victorian Politics" by Professor Elaine Hadley, University of Chicago
Introduction: Professor Kali Israel

Panel 1:   Female Negotiations of Ethics and Consumer Culture in the Nineteenth Century
Moderator: Professor Kerry Larson
Alison Hills, University of California, Los Angeles, "Everyday Matters: Aesthetic Perception in Antebellum U.S. Writing"
Jonathan Shaw, New York University, "'A Great Respect for Things': Henry James's Portrait of a Lady"
Sumiao Li, University of Michigan, "Graphic Fashion Satire and the Political Efficacy of British Art: The Case of Richard Doyle"
Mary-Catherine Harrison, University of Michigan, "Art for Ethics' Sake: Agnes Mary Frances Robinson's Political Arcadia"

Panel 2:   Nineteenth-Century Imperialism and Classicism
Moderator: Professor Yopie Prins
Joanna Patterson, University of Michigan, "Fred Holland Day's Photographic Classicism and the Task of Portraiture"
Adam Mazel, New York University, "'A Savage Race': Hellenism and Imperialism in Tennyson's 'Ulysses'"
Aishwarya Lakshmi, University of Chicago, "Land, Event, Empire: The Aestheticization of the Mutiny of 1857"
Parama Sarkar, Michigan State University, "Mapping the World: The 'Picturesque' in Nineteenth-century British Women's Travelogues to India"

Panel 3:   Early Nineteenth-Century Politics and the English Language
Moderator: Emily Harrington
Robert Rich, University of Michigan, "'The Strong Hand of Outward Violence': Wordsworthian Sublimity and the Return of the Repressed"
Casie LeGette, University of Michigan, "Feeding Wordsworth / Feeding the Hungry"
Rebekah Benson, University of Maryland, "The Language of the Chartist Movement: Violence and Political Anxiety in Chartist Poetry"
Taryn Hakala, University of Michigan, "Linguistic Negotiations of Authenticity in Mary Barton "

Roundtable on Politics and Pedagogy featuring Professor Sandra Gunning, Professor Maria Sanchez, Visiting Professor Elizabeth Miller, and graduate students Ji-Hyae Park and Lamont Egle.  

Many thanks to the Rackham Graduate School, the Institute for the Humanities, the Department of History, Rackham Student Government, and, of course, the Nineteenth-Century Forum for their financial support.