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  23 July 2010
On Monday I'm flying to Boston for the 36th International Byron Conference. The topic of the conference is Byron and the Book. I'll be giving a paper about nineteenth-century illustrated editions of Byron, and the ways in which they attempted both to memorialise his achievements and to renovate him for a new generation of readers. 20 July 2010
I heard this morning that I was awarded a Research Development Grant from SSHRC, along with my collaborators Mark Algee-Hewitt and Alan Liu. We plan to explore ways of using digital technologies to bring together the divergent branches of knowledge in the developing field of Book History. Specifically, we will create a dynamic, interactive online bibliography for Book History and Print Culture, which we hope will include new tools to help researchers in the field discover connections between existing scholarship in order to create new avenues for research. The grant is worth $38,000 over the next two years and will allow us to employ programmers and students to help with the project.
9 July 2010
Today's issue of the Times Literary Supplement ("the leading paper in the world for literary culture") includes a review of my essay collection Romanticism and Celebrity Culture. The reviewer is Michael Caines, one of the TLS's editors. He praises the "many extraordinary cases" discussed in the book, which "aims to demonstrate the existence not so much of individual celebrities as of a 'reognisably modern celebrity culture' before the twentieth century". He discusses the essays by Linda Zionkowski, Corin Throsby, Heather McPherson and Judith Pascoe, and concludes that "The essays in this book make a convincing case for the sorrows of celebrity, as well as its alleged charms, in the pre-photographic, pre-cinematic age."31 May 2010
Tomorrow I'm speaking at the Canadian Historical Association conference, as part of the 2010 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Concordia University in Montreal. I'll be on a panel about 'collective biographies' with my colleagues from the Interacting with Print Research Group, Susan Dalton and Eve-Marie Lampron. I'll be speaking about pantheons in nineteenth-century Britain as a form of collective biography.28 May 2010
The Interacting with Print Research Group had a very successful Away-Day today, at Le Germain hotel in Montreal. We discussed our priorities for the next four years, and the things we want to achieve with our new grant. The first public event we're organising is a lecture by Garrett Stewart, from the University of Iowa, who was recently elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The lecture will take place in Montreal in September.23 April 2010
Today is the fifth annual meeting of the Montreal-Ottawa Working Group on Romanticism, which takes place in Montreal this year. Frans de Bruyn, Jason Camlot, Joel Faflak, Ina Ferris, Andrew Piper, Jon Sachs, Michael Eberle-Sinatra, and I will be discussing the work we're doing at the moment.14 April 2010
The Interacting with Print Research Group, for which I am the Principal Investigator, has won a grant from the FQRSC Soutien aux Equipes programme, worth $350,000 over the next four years. We were one of 33 teams funded out of the 94 who applied to this programme. The full results of the competition were announced on the FQRSC's website this morning, and are available here (as a pdf, in French). The grant will allow us to expand the research group's activities significantly, training students, hosting events, and collaborating on research projects in the field of Book History and Print Culture. You can read more about the research group's work over the last five years here. Photo by Owen Egan
13 April 2010
Last week I had the pleasure of introducing Alan Liu from the University of California, Santa Barbara, when he gave the Maxwell Cummings Distinguished Lecture in the Faculty of Arts at McGill and the keynote address at the North Eastern Modern Languages Association (NEMLA). Alan Liu has been a leading figure in the field of Romanticism, an important critic of the New Historicism, and a pioneer of Digital Humanities. He gave two outstanding lectures, called 'Friending the Past: The Sense of History and Social Computing' (at McGill) and 'From Reading to Social Computing' (at NEMLA).23 March 2010
This Friday the Interacting with Print Research Group, for which I am the Principal Investigator, is hosting a one-day workshop on the topic of 'Print, Agency and Interaction'. We've got four great speakers: Clifford Siskin from NYU, Ben Kafka also from NYU, Betty Schellenberg from Simon Fraser and Mark Algee-Hewitt, our new Mellon Postdoc here at McGill. The workshop takes place in Arts 160 from 10am to 4.30pm. You can read more about it here.2 March 2010
Next weekend I'm going to a conference on Anthologies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, organised by Thora Brylowe, along with my students Tara Murphy and Amy Fox. The three of us are presenting a panel about the database of nineteenth-century literary anthologies we've been compiling over the last couple of years, and what it's enabled us to learn about how the anthologies shaped Byron's posthumous reputation.20 January 2010
My review of Ghislaine MacDayter's book Byromania and the Birth of Celebrity Culture has appeared in the latest issue of The Byron Journal. The book represents a valuable contribution to the emerging understanding of Byron's celebrity, and it convincingly argues that trying to separate his celebrity from political readings of his work is bound to fail, because Byromania was a political phenomenon from the outset.15 January 2010
Today I was interviewed by Will Robertson from the Department of English Students Association at McGill, as part of their "Get to Know your Professors" series. Will asked me about my education and experience, my favorite bits of my job, and what I'm working on at the moment.4 January 2010
The Winter Term at McGill starts today. I'm teaching two classes this term: 'Sociology and Materiality of Texts', which has 60 students enrolled, and 'Intersections of Literary and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century', which has 20 students enrolled. Short descriptions of both classes are here. Students who have registered for the classes can access more information via WebCT.16 November 2009
I'm giving a talk next week for the Montreal British History Seminar. This will be the first time I've given a full-length lecture about my new research on the various projects for commemorating Romantic authors in the nineteenth century. My paper is called 'Secular Pantheons in Nineteenth-Century Britain', and it takes place on Thursday 26 November at Concordia University in the Hall Building, Room 769.9 November 2009
Next week the Interacting with Print Research Group is hosting a graduate seminar with Dena Goodman, from the University of Michigan. The seminar is called 'Reading and Writing: How Young French Women Interacted with Print in the Eighteenth Century' and it takes place on Friday 20 November from 10am to noon in the Arts Council Room (Arts 160). You can see more information, including preparatory readings, here.2 November 2009
My book Byron's Romantic Celebrity has won the Elma Dangerfield Prize for 2009. I share the prize with Ghislaine McDayter for her book Byromania and the Birth of Celebrity Culture. The Elma Dangerfield Award is given annually by the International Byron Society to an outstanding book. It was set up in 1986 by anonymous donors to identify and reward new and original scholarship related to the life, works and times of Lord Byron.29 October 2009
I'm off to New York next week for the International Conference on Romanticism, which is being held this year at the City College and the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York. The conference theme is Romanticism and the City. I'll be presenting a paper about nineteenth-century schemes to erect memorials to writers in London, which effectively reimagine the metropolis as a necropolis, a space of memory haunted by reminders of the mighty dead. The paper is called 'Romanticism and the Memorial City'. 28 October 2009
Tomorrow I'm hosting a "Tea and Poetry" event for the Department of English Students' Association. The event will have a Halloween theme, so I'll be reading some spooky poetry by Shakespeare, Goethe, Christopher Logue, Thomas Lovell Beddoes and Charles Causley.16 October 2009
Today I chaired the Great Arts Debate as part of McGill's homecoming week. Professors Allana Thain, Richard Taws, Stuart Soroka and Sarah Stroud teamed up with four students to argue two motions in short and entertaining debates. The motions were "This house believes the preservation of historical sites is a waste of money" and "This house believes the demise of the printed press is no big deal."29 September 2009
I've been invited to give a seminar at the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism Conference in 2010 in Vancouver. Each year, around six scholars are invited to lead a seminar on their work at the conference. This year's conference is called 'Romantic Mediations' and is being co-hosted by Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia. My seminar will be called 'Romanticism, Remediation, and Reception History' and will explore some of the work I'm currently doing on the reception of Romantic authors in the later nineteenth century, and the theoretical apparatus I'm developing for that work.28 September 2009
News arrived last week that Mark Algee-Hewitt has won a Mellon postdoctoral fellowship to work at McGill with the Interacting with Print Group. Building on his Ph.D. at New York University, where he developed groundbreaking database-driven methodologies for studying literary history, Mark will bring his expertise in humanities computing to the research group. His fellowship begins in January and lasts for one year, renewable for a second year.13 August 2009
The Byron Journal has published a review of Byron's Romantic Celebrity by Jane Stabler. She praises the "beautifully articulated discussion of the etymology of 'celebrity'" with which the book begins. She doesn't like the phrase "somatic inscription" which I use in Chapter Four, but she thinks that "in other chapters the writing is crisper and more playful and the textual commentary much more nuanced." She finds the chapter on Childe Harold, Canto III, "brilliant and compelling" and says that it "illustrates all the strengths of the book in provocative contextual relocation, sharp attention to the material history of the poems and perceptive close reading." She concludes that "this is a stringent and searching book and a timely one, too". The review is in The Byron Journal 37.1 (2009), 64-66. 7 August 2009
My friend Andrew Piper has just started the Bad Ideas Blog. The blog is a home for all those ideas that don't quite make it into published books. It's also a place to reflect on what makes an idea "bad" - that is, what makes it unsuitable for a certain form, genre or medium. Can an idea that's bad for a book be good for a blog? To get the ball rolling, I've written a post about some of the ideas I cut out of the last chapter of my book Byron's Romantic Celebrity. 26 May 2009
The journal Romanticism has published a review of my book by Christine Kenyon Jones. She says "Tom Mole's study of Byron's celebrity has found a genuinely new way of approaching the poet and his work". She praises "several passages of fine close reading in the book" and concludes that "a serious, theorised approach to celebrity makes an excellent context in which to study Byron's work." She also gives a great summary of the book's chapters. The full review is in Romanticism 15.1 (2009), 89-91. 25 May 2009
I've just got back from the NASSR conference at Duke University, where I spoke yesterday about the statue of Byron erected in Hyde Park in 1880 and the debates that surrounded it. Highlights of the conference for me were Denise Gigante's seminar on the essay as a form, as well as an all-too-rare reunion of the contributors to the Blackwood's edition.20 May 2009
Official confirmation arrived today that McGill University has given me tenure and promoted me to the rank of Associate Professor, with effect from 1 June.12 May 2009
The British Association of Romantic Studies Bulletin and Review has published a review of my book by Caroline Franklin. She calls the book 'a well-written, lively study' and concludes: 'This monograph succeeds admirably in combining sensitive textual analysis, careful bibliographical research and awareness of the broader material aspects of the history of print culture.'14 April 2009
In a couple of weeks I'm going to the 2009 meeting of the Montreal/Ottawa Working Group in Romanticism, which will be held in Ottawa this year. The working group provides a very productive opportunity to share work in progress in an informal setting. I'm going to talk about my work on illustrated editions of Romantic authors in the nineteenth century, as well as trying to explain how my thinking about the shape of my larger project has developed over the last year.
12 April 2009
In association with the graduate seminar led by Michelle Levy, the Interacting with Print Group has mounted an exhibition called 'Interactions of Script and Print in the Nineteenth Century', curated by Ben Barootes and me. As Michelle argued in her seminar, manuscript was not simply superseded by print in the nineteenth century. Manuscript texts circulated alongside printed matter and intersected with it in a variety of ways. Poets circulated works in manuscript before having them printed and readers remixed print culture by creating scrapbooks that were part print and part script. Handwritten commonplace books imitated the layout of printed pages and printed texts included facsimiles of handwriting or typefaces that imitated manuscript. Readers marked the margins of their books, and gift books included presentation pages, which encouraged readers to write in the book. Displayed together, the manuscript and printed texts in the exhibition survey a nineteenth-century media ecology in which script and print fed off each other in unexpected ways, generating new cultural possibilities through their mutual interactions. The exhibition is in the Rare Books and Special Collections Division on the fourth floor of the McLennan Library until the end of the month. You can read more about it here.6 April 2009
The Interacting with Print Group held its second annual graduate seminar last week, with Michelle Levy from Simon Fraser University. She gave a really interesting, wide-ranging and theoretically sophisticated talk on 'British Romanticism and the Survival of Manuscript Culture'. It was followed by an excellent discussion with the graduate students, who bought a variety of disciplinary perspectives and research specialities to bear on the issues Michelle raised. When we talk about Romantic print culture, we often think of print as displacing manuscript or rendering it obsolete. But Michelle argues that manuscript circulation not only continued to operate alongside print in the period, but may even have experienced a resurgence of importance. You can read more about the seminar here.28 February 2009
The Globe and Mail, Canada's National Newspaper, has published an article I wrote about the history and future of book reviewing. The Washington Post's 'Book World' section is closing, but at the same time new blogs about books seem to be springing up all over the place. My piece will be on the Globe and Mail's website for the next week. You can read it here.10 February 2009
NEW BOOK Later this year, Cambridge University Press will publish a collection of essays I've edited called Romanticism and Celebrity Culture, 1750-1850. This is the first collection of essays devoted to the celebrity culture of the Romantic period in Britain. It brings together contributors from several disciplines (and three continents) to study that cultural apparatus from a number of different angles. Taken together, the essays add up to the fullest account of Romantic celebrity culture available, and a more detailed account of its different manifestations than any one scholar could produce. You can read more about the book by clicking on the cover, to the right of this page.6 February 2009
My review of Claire Brock's book The Feminization of Fame, 1750-1830 has been published in the latest issue of Romanticism. As a special promotion, Edinburgh University Press, who publish the journal, are offering free online access for a couple of months. So whether or not you subscribe to Romanticism, you can see the review here. The book usefully reveals how many women in the Romantic period actively sought and enjoyed personal fame. But I don't think it manages to distinguish between the varieties of fame available in the period, or to offer a fully worked-out theory of Romantic celebrity culture.19 December 2008
 It's nearly time for the MLA Convention in San Francisco. I have organised one of the two sessions sponsored by the Byron Society of America. It's called 'Byron and/as/in Popular Culture' and I'm really pleased with the line-up of speakers. It takes place on Saturday, 27 December at 3.30pm in 'Golden Gate 1' at the San Francisco Hilton: Byron and/as/in Popular Culture Presiding: Tom Mole, McGill Univ. 1. 'Picturing Celebrity: Byron, West, and LEL', Susan J. Wolfson, Princeton Univ. 2. 'The Culture of Comparison: Byron in The Satirist', Mark L. Schoenfield, Vanderbilt Univ. 3. 'The Sensation of Byron', Emily Allen, Purdue Univ.; Dino Franco Felluga, Purdue Univ. The other session is going to be a conversation with Benjamin Markovits, who is writing a trilogy of historical novels based on episodes in Byron's life. Jonathan Gross and Katherine Kernberger will be asking him about his work. |
   Romanticism and Celebrity Culture  Byron's Romantic Celebrity  Blackwood's Magazine, 1817-1825 |
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