Prizes & Awards

RSVP award the following prizes and awards:

  • The Curran Fellowship
  • The Robert and Vineta Colby Scholarly Book Prize
  • The Ashgate / RSVP Travel Awards
  • The Rosemary VanArsdel Prize
  • The Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship in Nineteenth-Century Media

The Curran Fellowship

This year's Curran Fellowships have been won by Michelle Elleray and Andrew Hobbs. Michelle Elleray is Associate Professor in the English and Theatre Studies Department of the University of Guelph and her project will explore the intersection of imperialism, missionary culture, and children's periodicals through the life and career of a Cook Islander whose writings were featured in the Juvenile Missionary Magazine. Andrew Hobbs is a post-doctoral research assistant at the School of Journalism, Media and Communication, University of Central Lancashire and his project relates to an annotated edition of the unpublished diaries of provincial newspaper journalist Anthony Hewitson (1836-1912).

The Curran Fellowship is a travel and research grant intended to aid scholars studying 19th-century British magazines and newspapers in making use of primary print and archival sources. Made possible through the generosity of Eileen Curran, Professor Emerita of English, Colby College, and inspired by her pioneering research on Victorian periodicals, the Fellowship is 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 - literary scholars, historians, biographers, economists, sociologists, art historians, and others - who are exploring the 19th-century British press as an object of study in its own right, and not only as a source of material for other historical topics. Applicants' projected research may involve study of any aspects of the periodical press in any of its manifold forms, and may range from within Britain itself to the many countries, within and outside of the Empire, where British magazines and newspapers were bought, sold, and read during "the long nineteenth century" (ca. 1780-1914).

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. We will announce the call for the 2013 Curran Fellowship here later this year. Enquiries can be addressed to president @ rs4vp.org. Previous winners:

  • 2011: Priti Joshi (university of Puget Sound, USA) and Jennifer Tucker (Wesleyan University, USA).
  • 2010: Clare Horrocks (Liverpool John Moores, UK) and Michelle Tusan (University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA).
  • 2009: Liz Miller (University of California at Davis, USA) and Sydney J. Shep (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand).
 

The Robert and Vineta Colby Scholarly Book Prize

This year's Colby Book Prize has been awarded to Patrick Leary for his book, The Punch Brotherhood: Table Talk and Print Culture in Mid-Victorian London (British Library, 2010).

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 the most significant contribution to the study of nineteenth-century periodicals. The winner receives a monetary award of up to $2,000, and is invited to speak at the following year's RSVP conference. A call for the 2013 Colby Prize will be made later this year.

Previous winners of the Robert Colby Scholarly Book Prize:

  • 2010: Mark Schoenfield, British Periodicals and Romantic Identity. Macmillan, 2008. Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor (eds) The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism. Academia and the British Library, 2009.
  • 2009: Catherine Waters, Commodity Culture in Dickens's Household Words: The Social Life of Goods. Ashgate 2008.
  • 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.


The Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship in Nineteenth-Century Media

The Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship in Nineteenth_Century Media is awarded to the best dissertation research that makes substantial use of full-text digitized collections of 19th-century British magazines and newspapers. The Fellowship is made possible made possible by the generosity of the publisher Gale, part of Cengage Learning.

Winners of the Fellowship receive a prize of $1500 (USD) and one year's passworded subscription to selected digital collections from Gale, including 19th Century UK Periodicals and 19th Century British Library Newspapers.

A call for the 2012 Gale Dissertation Research will be made later this year.

previous winners of the Gale Dissertation Fellowship are:

  • 2010: Adam Crymble (King's College London)
  • 2009: Bob Nicholson (Manchester University)
 

The Rosemary VanArsdel Prize

RSVP are pleased to announce Katie Lanning (University of Wisconsin-Madison) is the winner of the 2011 VanArsdel Prize. Her essay is entitled 'Victorian Product Placement: Robinson Crusoe in The Moonstone' and will be published in VPR shortly.

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:

Alexis Easley, VPR Editor
University of St. Thomas
JRC 333, 2115 Summit Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55105-1096
USA

Submissions are not accepted by email, but inquiries are welcome to editor @ rs4vp.org

Previous winners of the VanArsdel Prize:

  • 2010: Rebecca Soares
  • 2009: Anne DeWitt
  • 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


Ashgate / RSVP Travel Awards, in memory of Barbara Quinn Schmidt and Josef Altholz

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:

  • 2011: Shannon Smith, Megan Morris, and Katie Lanning.
  • 2010: Marie Léger-St-Jean, Andrea Korda, and Lise Butler.
  • 2009: Kellyanne Ure, Georgina O'Brien Hill, and Joanne Nystrom Janssen.
  • 2008: Shih-Wen Sue Chen, and Mary Bell.
  • 2007: Kristine Moruzi and Kim Duong.
  • 2006: Amy Lloyd, Beth Palmer, and Lorna Shelley.

 
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Last updated 12 January 2012. Report broken links to webmaster @ rs4vp.org.