RSVP award the following prizes and awards:
- The Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship in Nineteenth-Century Media
- The Curran Fellowship
- The Robert Colby Scholarly Book Prize
- The Barbara Quinn Schmidt and Josef Altholz Memorial Travel Awards
- The Rosemary VanArsdel Prize
The winners of the Curran Fellowship for research to be undertaken in 2010 are Clare Horrocks, Senior Lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University, and Michelle Tusan, Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Dr. Horrocks's project, a research companion to Punch, will entail transcribing, contextualizing, and publishing the manuscript ledger in the Punch Archive at the British Library. Dr. Tusan's project explores "How Victorians Invented the Middle East: The Periodical Press and the Eastern Question," through the examination of archives associated with the philanthropic journals of societies active in Middle Eastern affairs. RSVP congratulates Drs. Horrocks and Tusan, and thanks the many other scholars who applied for this second Curran Fellowship.
The Curran Fellowship is intended to aid scholars studying 19th-century British magazines and newspapers in making use of primary print and archival sources. The Curran Fellowship, made possible through the generosity of Eileen Curran, Professor Emerita of English at Colby College, and inspired by her pioneering research on Victorian periodicals, will be awarded annually in the form of two grants of $2,500 each.
The Curran Fellowship is open to researchers of any age from any of a wide range of disciplinary perspectives who are exploring the 19th-century British press as an object of study in its own right. This is an annual award and the deadline for applications for research in 2011 will be 1 October, 2010. For full guidelines of how to apply click here. Enquiries can be addressed to president @ rs4vp.org.
Fellows are asked to produce a report outlining their research. Click on the links below to read the reports from previous holders of the Curran Fellowship:
- 2009: Liz Miller (University of California at Davis, USA) and Sydney J. Shep (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand).
This Fellowship, made possible by the generosity of Gale, part of the Cengage group, is intended to support doctoral research that makes substantial use of full-text digitized collections of 19th-century British magazines and newspapers. The Fellowship will confer a prize of US$1500, together with one year's subscription to selected digital collections from Gale, including 19th Century UK Periodicals and 19th Century British Library Newspapers.
Applications for the Fellowship to be undertaken in 2009-10 must be submitted in electronic form and sent to galefellowship @ rs4vp.org by 1 September 2009. Click here for full details of how to apply (pdf).
This year's Colby Book Prize has been awarded to Catherine Waters for her book Commodity Culture in Dickens's Household Words: The Social Life of Goods (Ashgate 2008). Professor Waters is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of New England (New South Wales). She is also the author of Dickens and the Politics of the Family and various articles on Victorian fiction and journalism.
The Colby Book Prize has been endowed in honour of one of RSVP's most devoted members by Vineta Colby, another long-time member of RSVP. The annual prize is given to the book published during the preceding year which made a significant contribution to the study of Victorian periodicals. The winner receives a plaque and a monetary award of up to $3,000, and is invited to speak at the following year's RSVP conference. To nominate a book please contact president @ rs4vp.org before 1 December.
Previous winners of the Robert Colby Scholary Book Prize:
- 2008: Kathryn Ledbetter, Tennyson and Victorian Periodicals: Commodities in Context. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.
- 2007: David Finkelstein, Print Culture and the Blackwood Tradition, 1805-1930. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.
- 2006: Linda Hughes, Graham R.: Rosamund Mariott Watson, Woman of Letters. Athens: Ohio UP, 2005.
- 2006: Peter Morton, The Busiest Man in London: Grant Allen and the Writing Trade, 1875-1900. New York and Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
These awards are designed to help defray the cost of travel to the RSVP conference for graduate-student members of the Society (or prospective members). Please send inquiries to president @ rs4vp.org.
These awards are funded by donations from members; please consider donating toward these funds in honor of Barbara and Joe.
Previous winners of the Schmidt and Altholz Travel Awards:
- 2008: Shih-Wen Sue Chen and Mary Bell.
- 2007: Kristine Moruzi and Kim Duong.
- 2006: Amy Lloyd, Beth Palmer, and Lorna Shelley.
RSVP are pleased to announce Anne DeWitt is the winner of the 2009 VanArsdel prize. Her essay is entitled 'Moral Uses, Narrative Effects: Natural History in Victorian Periodicals and Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters.'
Entries for the VanArsdel Prize for the best student paper on, about, or extensively using Victorian periodicals must be received by April 1 of the year in which the prize is awarded.
Students are reminded that the papers should be 15-25 pages and should not have appeared in print. The winner receives a plaque, a check for $300.00 (USD), and publication of the prize essay in Victorian Periodicals Review. Please send entries to:
Kathryn Ledbetter, VPR Editor
Department of English
Texas State University
601 University Drive
San Marcos, TX 78666-4616
Submissions are not accepted by email, but inquiries are welcome to editor @ rs4vp.org
Previous winners of the VanArsdel Prize:
- 2008: Paul Fyfe
- 2007: Jennifer Regan
- 2006: Christopher Pittard
- 2005: Monica Flegel
- 2004: Lorna Huett
- 2003: Marty Gould
- 2002: Troy Gregory
- 2001: Rebecca Edwards
- 2000: Mary Elizabeth Leighton & Russell Wyland
- 1999: no award
- 1998: Jennifer Ruth
- 1997: Michelle Tusan
- 1996: Anya Clayworth
- 1995: Anne Baltz Rodrick
- 1994: no award
- 1993: Virginia McKendry
- 1992: Gary Weber
- 1991: Jerry Coates
- 1990: Andrea Broomfield
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Last updated 05 February 2010. Report broken links to webmaster @ rs4vp.org.