Romantic and Victorian Entertainments

Graduate Student Literature Conference, University of South Carolina, Columbia

March 23-24, 2007

Keynote Speaker: Barry J. Faulk
Associate Professor of English at Florida State University and author of
Music Hall and Modernity: The Late-Victorian Discovery of Popular Culture

Plenary Speaker: David S. Shields
Professor of English and McClintock Professor of Southern Letters
at the University of South Carolina

Special Talks by:
Anthony Jarrells, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina
William B. Thesing , Professor of English at the University of South Carolina

From the Grand Tour to gambling, and grand balls to opium dens, nineteenth-century authors represented entertainment in various ways.  The virtues and vices of nineteenth-century amusements and leisure activities were themes in both British and American literature of the period, and these areas of life reflected and defined the historical, social, and literary climate of the century. 

Our fifth annual graduate conference hopes to examine issues related to entertainment and leisure in the nineteenth century, as well as their relationship to both contemporary and modern literary creation, criticism, and reception.  How was play and playfulness represented by different authors in different periods of the nineteenth century?  How did writers on opposite sides of the Atlantic or on opposite sides of the world react to the growing possibilities for “free time”?  How did the Industrial Revolution both help and hinder chances for leisure?  What effects did legislative action have on entertainment?  What were the differences between “high” and “low” entertainments?  How did print function as an amusement?  We will explore the theme of entertainments and amusements in nineteenth-century American, British, and World literature. 

Possible topics may include: