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Following NAVSA’s statement against systemic racism and the discussion spearheaded in “Undisciplining Victorian Studies” (by Ronjaunee Chatterjee, Alicia Christoff, and Amy Wong), it is necessary that we take concrete actions to engage with our own implicit biases and uninterrogated assumptions about the shape of Victorian Studies as a whole. To do so, we formed a reading group focused on race and transimperialism that we hope has already encouraged and will continue to produce personal reflection and community discussion.

This and last year's “Race and Transimperialism” reading lists were compiled with two specific goals in mind: first, the lists would primarily feature scholars of color; and second, the lists would include established, canonical works alongside emerging scholarship.

The goal is to meet once per month via Zoom, September 2021 through May 2022; September, December, and January have shorter readings as they are often the busiest times for academics. We will be soliciting suggestions from the attending members for the final readings in order to leave room for specific interests or new developments. Reading group members may attend as many or as few sessions as they wish.

For more info about signing up for this group (for updates, shared files, etc.), contact list coordinator Lindsey O’Neil (she/her) at lindseyeroneil@gmail.com.

About

projects.

readings.

For access to files, contact list coordinator Lindsey O’Neil (she/her) at lindseyeroneil@gmail.com.

Past reading lists can be found here.

INTRODUCTION

Friday

September 4th

3pm EST

Sukanya Banerjee. “Transimperial.” Victorian Literature and Culture 46(3-4): 925-928.

Sharon Marcus. "Same Difference? Transnationalism, Comparative Literature, and Victorian Studies." Victorian Studies 45.4 (2003): 677-686.

COMPLICIT LIBERALISM

Saturday

October 3rd

11am EST

Selections from Lisa Lowe. The Intimacies of Four Continents. Duke, 2015.

Selections from Nasser Mufti. Civilizing War: Imperial Politics and the Poetics of National Rupture. Northwestern, 2017.

Forthcoming special issue of Victorian Studies.

REGRESSION AND PROGRESSION

Friday

November 6th

3pm EST

Selections from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Harvard, 1999.

Selections from Jodi A. Byrd. The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism. Minnesota, 2011.

Selections from Christina Sharpe. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Duke, 2016.

AMBIVALENCE

Saturday

December 5th

11am EST

Tanya Agathocleous."Criticism on Trial: Colonizing Affect in the Late-Victorian Empire." Victorian Studies 60.3 (2018): 434-460.

Homi Bhabha. “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse.” October 28 Discipleship: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis (Spring 1984): 125-133.

Alisha Walters. “A ‘white boy…who is not a white boy’: Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, Whiteness, and British Identity.” Victorian Literature and Culture 46.2 (2018): 331-346.

TEACHING AND PEDAGOGY

Friday

January 8th

3pm EST

Carolyn Betensky. “Casual Racism in Victorian Literature.” Victorian Literature and Culture 47.4: 723-51.

Selections from Antoinette Burton. Empire in Question: Reading, Writing, and Teaching British Imperialism. Duke, 2011.

IMPOSSIBILITIES

Saturday

February 6th

11am EST

Zarena Aslami. "Victorian Afghanistan, the Iron Amir, and the Poetics of Marginal Sovereignty." Victorian Studies 62.1 (2019): 35-60.

Selections from Jennifer DeVere Brody. Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity, and Victorian Culture. Duke, 1998.

Melissa Valiska Gregory. “Race and the Dramatic Monologue.” Victorian Studies 62.2 (Winter 2020): 213-218.

RESISTANCE

Friday

March 5th

3pm EST

Selections from Franz Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth. 1963.

Selections from Leela Ghandi. Affective Communities:Anticolonial Thought, Fin-de-Siècle Radicalism, and the Politics of Friendship. Duke, 2006.

Priti Joshi, “Mutiny Echoes: India, Britons, and Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 62.1 (June 2007): 48-87.

UNDISCIPLINING VICTORIAN STUDIES

Saturday

April 3rd

11am EST

Undisciplining Victorian Studies. Eds. Ronjaunee Chatterjee, Alicia Mireles Christoff, & Amy R. Wong. Special Issue of Victorian Studies 62.3 (Spring 2020).