Here’s the NAVSA 2008 panel cfp (call for papers) that prompted me to establish this blog:
Vox Populi: Reciters and Recitations in Victorian Britain
Panel Chair: Jason Boyd
Email: jasonaboyd@yahoo.ca
Now long vanished and largely forgotten, the recitation – which consisted of an individual declaiming a text (poetic, dramatic, oratorical or narrative) to an audience – was a highly accessible and pervasive cultural activity in nineteenth-century Britain and North America. This panel seeks papers that reexamine this popular art and its significance in Victorian society. Possible issues papers may address include (but are not limited to) the recitation and:
Public/Private performance spaces (street, school, hall, home);
Male/Female, Adult/Child reciters (professional and amateur);
Music, Gesture or Costumes/Props;
Serious/Comic modes;
Oral/Print cultures.
Other possible issues papers may address include the recitation as:
Art/Science (Acting/Elocution);
Entertainment/Education;
A component of High/Low Culture;
A Middle-/Working-class pastime.
Also welcome are papers dealing with the generic, ideological, pedagogical, and transatlantic aspects of recitation anthologies and related literature.
For those who are interested, the deadline for paper proposals for this panel is April 7, 2008. Proposals can be sent by email.
Posted by Jason 
