NUI Galway Study Day: “Medicine and Mystery -The Dark Side of Science in Victorian Fiction” – A Victorian Popular Fiction Association

Organisers: Dr.s Anna Gasperini and Paul Raphael Rooney

Keynote speakers: Ms Sarah Wise, Author – Mr Gilbert’s weird psychological novel’: Shirley Hall Asylum and Victorian states of mind; Mr Alexander Black, Department of Anatomy, NUI Galway – The Early Years of Anatomy in Galway (this keynote will be in NUI Galway’s Anatomy Lecture Theatre)

Background

The internationally recognised Victorian Popular Fiction Association (VPFA) and the National University of Ireland, Galway are the hosts of this interdisciplinary study day devoted to exploring representations of medicine and mystery in the Victorian era. The nineteenth century saw unprecedented developments in medical science, which caused simultaneously wonder and anxiety in the wider public. Victorian popular authors such as Wilkie Collins, Florence Marryat, Charles Dickens, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon enthusiastically explored the themes of medicine and surgical innovation in their work, exploiting their sensational potential. At the same time, the hopes and controversies generated by advancements in the medical field were often the subject of public debate via newspapers, magazines, and cartoons. Covering a wide range of topics going from class and gender, to ethics, to space, to mental health, and fin-de-siécle literature, this Study Day aims to involve academics to a variety of disciplines in the exploration and discussion of the fascinating intermingle between literature and science in the Victorian era.

During the Study Day, it will be possible to visit the exhibition Medicine and Mystery in C19th Galway”, Curated by Anna Gasperini and Paul Rooney.

Register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/vpfa-study-day-medicine-mystery-the-dark-side-of-science-in-victorian-fiction-tickets-34605683531

For those who may wish to attend the conference dinner at Mona Lisa Restaurant, Galway, please contact us at medicineandmystery19@gmail.com

08:45 – 9:15 Registration and Opening Remarks

09: 15 Keynote 1 – Ms Sarah Wise, Author – room G010

‘Mr Gilbert’s weird psychological novel’: Shirley Hall Asylum and Victorian states of mind

Chair: Anna Gasperini, NUI Galway

10:15 Tea break

10:40 PARALLEL SESSION 1

Gender and Class – room G010

Panel Chair: Eavan O’Dochartaigh, NUI Galway

Sara Zadrozny, University of Portsmouth – Medicine and Victorian notions of gender

Abby Boucher, Aston University, Birmingham – Fashionable Illness: Consumerism, Medicine, and Class in the Silver Fork Novels

Ruth Doherty, Trinity College Dublin – ‘But you and I may say the truth’: reproduction and infection in late nineteenth-century fiction

Spaces and Bodies – room G011

Panel Chair: Paul Rooney, NUI Galway

Louise Benson James, University of Bristol – Sick Rooms, Death-Beds, and Operating Theatres: Gothic Medical Spaces in the Fiction of Lucas Malet (1852-1931)

Neil MacFarlane, Independent Scholar – ‘Full of fire and animation’: sthenic corpulence in Dickens’s fiction

12:00 LUNCH

13:30 Keynote 2 – Mr Alexander Black, Department of Anatomy, NUI Galway

The Early Years of Anatomy in Galway

The keynote will be in NUI Galway’s Anatomy Lecture Theatre

Chair: Anna Gasperini, NUI Galway

14:50 PARALLEL SESSION 2

Medicine and Ethics – room G010

Panel chair: Ciaran McDonough, NUI Galway

Jennifer Jones, University of Portsmouth – ‘“[M]erely a question of being the first time”’: Scientific Overreach and Middle-Class Masculinity

Debbie Harrison, Independent Scholar – Body of evidence: Forensic science, psychology and the doctor-detective in “The Moonstone” and “Middlemarch”

Christopher Pittard, University of Portsmouth – Loveday Brooke, Experimental Physiology, and the Crimes of Animality

Fin-de-siècle – room G011

Panel Chair: Muireann O’Cinneide, NUI Galway

James Machin, Birkbeck University of London – “A slight lesion in the grey matter, that is all”: fin-de-siécle medical practice in Arthur Machen’s weird fiction

Caitlin R. Duffy, Stony Brook University – Cartography of the Imperial Mind: The Dangerous Forms and Reforms of Dracula

Mathilde Giret, Université Bordeaux Montaigne (Bordeaux 3) – Signs of the Plague in Dracula: a literary and medical investigation

16:20 Tea break

16:40 PARALLEL SESSION 3

Mental Health – room G010

Panel Chair: Ruth Doherty, Trinity College Dublin

Emily Turner, University of Sussex – New Moon journalism and patient powered publications

Marjolein Platjiee, University of Amsterdam – Was it really “in his nature to do it”? Re-examining the doctor’s Explanation of Little Father Time’s suicide in “Jude the Obscure”.

Charlotte Whittingham, Imperial College – The Angel in the Asylum

18:00 Closing remarks

19:00 Conference dinner at Mona Lisa Restaurant in Galway*