Poetry, Politics and Pictures in the Nineteenth Century

From ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ to ‘The White Man’s Burden’, from Honoré Daumier’s lithographs to the Chartist poetry of the Northern Star, the politics of the nineteenth century both shaped and were shaped by poetry and images.

This interdisciplinary conference at the University of Sheffield will address such questions as: how do the images and poetry of the nineteenth century reflect or challenge British and European politics of their day? How do nineteenth-century politics intersect with aesthetics to create new theories and practices of art? What kind of correlation might there be between political representation and the representation of politics in word and image?

We welcome papers from across the humanities. Topics might include, but are not limited to:

Worker poets and their political context
Illustrated and illuminated poems
Pre-Raphaelite or Nazarene painters and poets
The poetics and aesthetics of socialism
Political cartoons, their production and their uses
Poetic and visual representations of war
Theories of art and their intersection with poetic practice
Advertisements and the politics of empire

Conference dates: 26 and 27 March 2010
Venue: University of Sheffield
Contact email: poetrypoliticspictures@sheffield.ac.uk
Conference website:

Speakers include: Cornelia Pearsall, Malcolm Chase, Danny Karlin, Michael Perraudin

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words, along with details of your institutional affiliation, to the contact email, by 15 December 2009.

Organizing committee: Erin Snyder, Ingrid Hanson, Jack Rhoden, Marjorie Cheung, Kirsten Harris and Barry Orr. With the kind support of the Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies, University of Sheffield.