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
This year's winners of the Curran Fellowship are Martin Hewitt (University of Huddersfield) for a study of the campaign for the repeal of the taxes on knowledge (1849-69), and Professor Jennifer Phegley (University of Missouri-Kansas City) for a study of publishers John Maxwell and Samuel Beeton and their development of niche market periodicals from the 1850s to the 1870s.
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 the late 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).
Applications for the 2014 Fellowships will be due in October 2013. Watch out for the call in the summer.
Previous winners and reports:
- 2012: Michelle Elleray (University of Guelph) and Andrew Hobbs (University of Central Lancaster)
- 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 winners of this year's Colby Prize are Aileen Fyfe, for Steam-Powered Knowledge: William Chambers and the Business of Publishing, 1820-1860 (Chicago University Press, 2012) and Robert Patten for Charles Dickens and "Boz": The Birth of the Industrial Age Author (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Semi-finalists (in alphabetical order) were Katherine Haskins, The Art-Journal and Fine Art Publishing in Victorian England, 1850-1880 (Ashgate); Kristine Moruzi, Constructing Girlhood through the Periodical Press, 1850-1915 (Ashgate); and James Mussell, The Nineteenth Century Press in the Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan).
The Colby Book Prize was endowed in 2006 in memory of Robert Colby by his wife, Vineta Colby, also a distinguished scholar and long-time member of RSVP. In 2011, following Vineta's death, the Board of Directors of RSVP unanimously voted to re-name the prize to honor both Robert and Vineta Colby for their many fine contributions to the study of Victorian periodicals
The Colby Prize is intended to honor original book-length scholarship about Victorian periodicals and newspapers, of the kind that Robert and Vineta Colby themselves produced during their careers. The annual prize is awarded to the book published during the preceding year that most advances our understanding of the nineteenth-century British press. The winner receives a monetary award of up to $2,000, and is invited to speak at the following year's RSVP conference.
Previous winners of the prize:
- 2012: Joel Wiener, The Americanization of the British Press, 1830s-1914. Palgrave, 2011.
- 2011: Patrick Leary, The Punch Brotherhood: Table Talk and Print Culture in Mid-Victorian London. British Library, 2010.
- 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.
RSVP is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2012 Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship in Nineteenth-Century Media is Helena Goodwyn, for her dissertation titled “The Americanisation of W. T. Stead.” Goodwyn is a PhD candidate at Queen Mary, University of London and holds an MA in English from Kings College, London and a BA from the University of Leeds.
The Gale Dissertation Research Fellowship in Nineteenth_Century Media is awarded in support of dissertation research that will make the most substantial and innovative use of full-text digitized collections of 19th-century British magazines and newspapers. The Fellowship is 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.
The 2012 competition has closed. Look out for the 2013 Fellowship competition later this year.
Previous winners of the Gale Dissertation Fellowship are:
- 2011: Liam Young (University of Alberta)
- 2010: Adam Crymble (King's College London)
- 2009: Bob Nicholson (Manchester University)
Graduate students are invited to submit essays for the 2013 VanArsdel Prize for the best graduate student essay on, about, or extensively using Victorian periodicals. The winner will receive $300 and publication in Victorian Periodicals Review. Submissions should be 15-25 pages, excluding notes and bibliography. Manuscripts should not have appeared in print. Send e-mail submissions to VPR Editor Alexis Easley (maeasley @ stthomas.edu) by 1 May 2013. Submissions should be formatted as Word files in Chicago style with identifying information removed. In an accompanying e-mail, applicants should include a description of their current status in graduate school.
The VanArsdel Prize is awarded annually to the best graduate student essay investigating Victorian periodicals and newspapers. The prize was established in 1990 to honor Rosemary VanArsdel, a founding member of RSVP whose groundbreaking research continues to shape the field of nineteenth-century periodical studies.
Previous winners of the VanArsdel Prize:
- 2012: Jude Piesse
- 2011: Katie Lanning
- 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
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 11 April 2013. Report broken links to webmaster @ rs4vp.org.