The North American British Music Studies Association

The North American British Music Studies Association

Update to the Curran Index

This post came from Patrick Leary to the Victoria Listserv, and may be of interest to those working with 19th-century periodicals.

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I am very pleased to announce a major new edition of the Curran Index.  Editor Gary Simons has made enormous progress in uncovering and publishing the identities of contributors to major Victorian magazines, now including a number of titles that were never part of the original Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals.  Gary details his latest findings here:
http://www.victorianresearch.org/2015_Dec_Curran_Index_rev.pdf

Those not familiar with the Curran Index will want to read the introductory material on the website, and have a browse through the listings: http://victorianresearch.org/curranindex.html  Under Gary’s editorship, the Index has expanded hugely since Eileen Curran and I first put it online over a dozen years ago, and now provides listings for about 7,500 contributions by some 1,000 authors.  I would encourage anyone who works with 19th-century British periodicals to make use of — and where possible to contribute to — the work of the Index, which is in essence a continuation of the mission of the Wellesley.  The foundational argument of this ongoing project is simply stated: knowing who wrote what matters.  I would argue further that finding out who wrote the articles, poems, and stories in the Victorian press, which was so largely governed by the custom of anonymity, matters now more than ever, as the enormously varied output of that press has now become so much more accessible and explorable than it has ever been.

If you are working on a particular author and believe that you have identified one or more previously unattributed works that were published in 19th-c. magazines or newspapers, please consider making those findings available to other scholars through the Curran Index.  Gary Simons would love to hear from you; he can be reached at gsimons1946@yahoo.com  By the same token, please drop him a note if you have any comments or suggestions about the Index.  As with so many scholarly research projects, feedback of any kind is hard to come by, and always very welcome.

Conference title: “Arts + The Inklings” Verge Conference
CFP deadline: May 15, 2016
Conference dates September 28 – 30, 2016
web site: http://www.twu.ca/vergeconference
venue: Trinity Western University, Langley, BC, Canada

This interdisciplinary arts conference invites presentations on topics relating to and stimulated by the work of the group of Oxford authors known as The Inklings—including C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, and J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as friends such as Dorothy L. Sayers, and their literary mentors, earlier writers such as George MacDonald and G.K. Chesterton. We invite presentations on such topics as…The Inklings authors’ contributions to the arts; translating their work into other media–film, theatre, music, visual art; the relationship between faith and story; the Inklings’ legacy as culture critics; and other topics related to the theme. Keynote speaker is Dr. Michael Ward, Senior Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford, and author of Planet Narnia (Oxford University Press, 2008). This conference welcomes submissions from any discipline that explore the topic under consideration. Proposal deadline is May 15, 2016. For more conference information visit www.twu.ca/vergeconference.

Here are the NABMSA election results (via Jennifer Oates):

President – Eric Saylor

Secretary – Danielle Ward-Griffin

Board – Jenny Doctor and Christopher Scheer

Thank you to all who ran. A special thanks to our out-going officers and the tremendous work they have done: Candace Bailey (President), Nathaniel Geoffrey Lew (Secretary), Dorothy de Val and Justin Vickers (board).

In addition to announcing Ruth Solie as our second lifetime member, the winner of the Diana McVeagh Book Prize was announced:

Rebecca Herissone, Musical Creativity in Restoration England (Cambridge, 2013)

Stephen Lloyd’s Constant Lambert: Beyond the Rio Grande (Boydell, 2014) received honorable mention.

The new issue of NABMSA Reviews is now posted, with reviews of:

  1. Ross W. Duffin, The Music Treatises of Thomas Ravenscroft: ‘Treatise of Practicall Musicke’ and A Briefe Discourse
  2. Jeremy Dibble, Hamilton Harty: Musical Polymath
  3. Suzanne Robinson and Kay Dreyfus, eds., Grainger the Modernist
  4. Nigel Simeone and John Tyrrell, eds., Charles Mackerras
  5. Jon Stratton and Nabeel Zuberi, eds., Black Popular Music in Britain since 1945
  6. Simon Frith, Matt Brennan, Martin Cloonan, and Emma Webster, The History of Live Music in Britain, volume I: 1950-1967: From Dance Hall to the 100 Club

 

Check it out here, along with all the past issues: http://nabmsa.org/nabmsa-reviews/

Conference

July 29-31, 2016

Downing College, University of Cambridge

www.regencytheatre2016.com

Scholars will present papers exploring the period’s dance, music and drama from a wide range of historical and methodological perspectives.  The keynote address, ‘London as Theatre: Entertainment for Free in the Regency City’, will be given by Celina Fox (The Arts of Industry in the Age of Enlightenment), and historical gesture specialist Jed Wentz (Conservatorium van Amsterdam) will present a lecture-performance on ‘Reconstructing Late Eighteenth-Century Acting’.  In addition, the conference will open with an introduction by Iain Mackintosh (Architecture, Actor and Audience) at the remarkable Cambridge Festival Theatre (built in 1814), providing a rare opportunity for conference attendees to see an original surviving Regency three-level horseshoe auditorium.

For further details and to book your place, please see:  www.regencytheatre2016.com

Hurry! Early Bird rates expire on 31 December!

Convenors: Michael Burden, Michael Gaunt, Sarah Meer, Marcus Risdell, Vanessa L. Rogers, Barry Sheppard