DFG Research Project

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Lecturing Women: Oral Performances, Gender and Sensationalism in Metropolitan Lecturing Institutions and Mass Print Culture, 1870-1910

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Prof. Dr. Zwierlein

Principal Investigator

The central outcome from this project is the PI's monograph, "Lecturing Women in British Fiction, Periodicals, and Public Orality, 1870-1910: The First Speech" (forthcoming in the Nineteenth Century Series, Routledge, in 2025). The DFG supported the research and writing process via a research sabbatical for the PI ('replacement module'). 

As additional project outcomes, the PI has produced a range of research articles and co-edited two large research and teaching tools which are offered to the cultural studies community - a database, and a two-volume anthology collecting primary materials (see below).

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Project-Related Publications

MONOGRAPH

Lecturing Women in British Fiction, Periodicals, and Public Orality, 1870-1910: The First Speech (forthcoming in the Nineteenth Century Series, Routledge, in 2025).

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COLLECTIONS

[with Katharina Herold-Zanker], eds. Transforming Victorian Orality: Articulating Social Change in Victorian Britain (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, under contract).

[with Sebastian Graef and Heidi Weig], eds. Cultures of Lecturing in the Long Nineteenth Century, vol. 2: Women and Public Speech in Manuals of Rhetoric, Journalism, Autobiography and Fiction (Heidelberg: Winter, 2022).

[with Heidi Weig and Sebastian Graef], eds. Cultures of Lecturing in the Long Nineteenth Century, vol. 1: Practices of Oral Performance in Manuals of Rhetoric, Journalism and Autobiography (Heidelberg: Winter, 2022).

Zwierlein, A.-J., ed., Victorian Oral Cultures, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, special issue, 63.1 (2015) [contributions by: John Plunkett, Janice Schroeder, Virginia Garnett, John Picker, Anna Farkas, Anne-Julia Zwierlein].

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DATABASE

Zwierlein, A.-J. [with Heide-Marie Weig and Sebastian Graef]. Lecturing Women in Victorian Periodicals Database (LWVP). Sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG). University Library at University of Regensburg, 2018. Weblink: victorianlecturing.uni-regensburg.de.

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ARTICLES

Zwierlein, A.-J., The Roar on the Other Side of Silence: Sound, Hearing, and Social Change in Victorian Literature, in: Literature and the Senses, ed. Annette Kern-Stähler and Elizabeth Robertson. (Oxford: Oxford University Press (2023) 162-183.

Zwierlein, A.-J., Viktorianische Zeitschriften als multimediale, polyvokale und außerparlamentarische Plattformen, in: Handbuch Zeitschriftenforschung, ed. Oliver Scheiding and Sabina Fazli. Edition Medienwissenschaft. Bielefeld: Transcript (2023) 273-288.

Zwierlein, A.-J., 'She lectured and attended lectures': Transmedia Practices and Female Participation in Late-Nineteenth-Century Cultures of Public Lecturing and Mass Print, in: Transmedia Practices in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Christina Meyer and Monika Pietrzak-Franger (London: Routledge, 2022) 113-130.

Zwierlein, A.-J., Metropolitan Communities: Periodicity and Participation in Late-Nineteenth-Century Popular Lecturing and Penny Fiction Weeklies, in: Periodical Studies Today: Multidisciplinary Analyses, ed. Jutta Ernst, Oliver Scheiding, and Dagmar von Hoff, Studies in Periodical Cultures, vol. 1 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2022) 373-396.

Zwierlein, A.-J., Sonic Monstrosity and Visionary Women: Female Speaking Automata and Mass Mediation in Late-Nineteenth-Century British Science and Fiction, Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies, special issue, ed. Gero Guttzeit and Natalya Bekhta, 30.3 (2019) 89-105.

Zwierlein, A.-J., Mona Caird, The Daughters of Danaus (1894) in: Handbook of the English Novel, 1830-1900, ed. Martin Middeke and Monika Pietrzak-Franger (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020) 511-527.

Zwierlein, A.-J., The Lecturer as Revenant(e): Sensation and Conversion in Late-Victorian Popular Lecturing and Mass Print, in: The Popular and the Past: Popular Cultures of the Nineteenth Century, ed. Doris Feldmann and Christian Krug, special issue, Journal for the Study of British Cultures 23.1 (2016) 41-56.

Zwierlein, A.-J., The Spectacle of Speech: Victorian Popular Lectures and Mass Print Culture, in: The Making of British Popular Culture, ed. John Storey (London: Routledge, 2016), 165-183.

Zwierlein, A.-J., ‘The Subject Escapes Me’: Spellbinding Lecturers and (In-)Attentive Audiences in Late-Victorian Serialized Sensation Fiction, Victorian Oral Cultures, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, special issue, guest ed. Anne-Julia Zwierlein, 63.1 (2015), 69-88.

Zwierlein, A.-J., Victorian Oral Cultures: Introduction, Victorian Oral Cultures, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, special issue, guest ed. Anne-Julia Zwierlein, 63.1 (2015) 1-6.

Zwierlein, A.-J., ‘Memory, whose stores are the fruit of attention’: Narratives of Inattention in Victorian and Edwardian Concert Rooms, Classrooms and Lecture Halls, 1860-1910, The Arts of Attention, ed. Katalin Kállay et al., Collection Károli  (Budapest: L’Harmattan Publishing, 2016) 439-455.

Zwierlein, A.-J., ‘White Slavery’: Würde- und Sympathiediskurse in den Kampagnen der britischen Anti-Sklaverei-Bewegung (ab 1780) und der Frauenrechtsbewegung (ab 1880), Würdelos: Ehrkonflikte von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart, Regensburger Klassikstudien, Bd.1, ed. Achim Geisenhanslüke (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner Verlag, 2016) 165-83.

Zwierlein, A.-J., Autobiographie und Handlungsautonomie in der ersten britischen Frauenbewegung. Kommentar zu Angelika Schaser, ‚Autobiographie und Gender-forschung‘, Autobiographie zwischen Text und Quelle, ed. Volker Depkat und Wolfram Pyta (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2017) 151-65.

Zwierlein, A.-J., Poetic Genres in the Victorian Age I: Letitia Elizabeth Landon’s and Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Post-Romantic Verse Narratives, A History of British Poetry: Genres – Developments – Interpretations, ed. Sibylle Baumbach, Birgit Neumann, and Ansgar Nünning (Trier: WVT, 2015) 243-255.

Zwierlein, A.-J. [with Anna Farkas] Lärmende, starrende, vulgäre Mengen: Populäre Vortragskultur und weibliche Performanz im 19. Jahrhundert, Blick in die Wissenschaft: Forschungsmagazin der Universität Regensburg, 26 (2012) 9-14, 18 Spalten.

Zwierlein, A.-J., Travelling through (Post-)Imperial Panoramas: British Epic Writing and Popular Shows, 1740s to 1840s, Post-Empire Imaginaries? Anglophone Literature, History and the Demise of Empires. ASNEL Papers 19, ed. Barbara Buchenau and Virginia Richter (Leiden: Brill/Rodopi, 2015) 243-67.

Zwierlein, A.-J., 'Written entirely for your amusement': Deklamation und fingierter Dialog in Lewis Carrolls Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland und Through the Looking Glass, Klassiker der internationalen Jugendliteratur, Bd. 2: Kulturelle und epochenspezifische Diskurse aus Sicht der Fachdisziplinen, ed. Anita Schilcher und Claudia Maria Pecher (Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren, 2013) 217-240.

Zwierlein, A.-J., 'The texture of her nerves and the palpitation of her heart': Vocation, Hysteria, and the ‘Surplus Female’ in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Medical Discourse, Gender and Disease in Literary and Medical Cultures, Regensburger Beiträge zur Gender-Forschung, Band 7, ed. Anne-Julia Zwierlein and Iris M. Heid (Heidelberg: Winter, 2014) 109-123.

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Project-Related Conferences

As convenor:

2023: International Conference, "Transforming Victorian Orality", Universität Regensburg

2017: Teacher training conference / Lehrerfortbildungstagung "Populism and the Popular", Universität Regensburg

2014: Teacher training conference / Lehrerfortbildungstagung „Theatre, Spectacle, and Performance in British and American Cultures”, Universität Regensburg

2013: Special Session, MLA Convention 2013 in Boston: „Victorian Oral Culture, c.
1861-1901”

As presenter:

14.07.2023

International Conference, "Transforming Victorian Orality", University of Regensburg
Presentation: "Women's 'First Speech' and Rhetorical Training in Late-Nineteenth-Century 'Fact' and 'Fiction'"

03.12.2021

DACH Victorianists Workshop (online)
Presentation, "Lecturing Women in Nineteenth-Century Lecturing Institutions and Mass Print"

30.01.2020

Konferenz "Transnational Periodical Cultures: Interdisciplinary Perspectives", Universität Mainz
Presentation: "Staring guest and hostess in the face was a copy of Votes for Women": Late-Nineteenth Century Feminist Not-for-Profit Periodicals as Provoking Objects"

29.1.2019

University of Oxford, "Diseases of Modern Life in the Nineteenth Century", ERC Advanced Grant (PI Sally Shuttleworth): "Science, Medicine and Culture seminar series"
Presentation: "Monstrous Voices: (Female) Speaking Automata, Mind Science and Mass Mediation in Late-Nineteenth-Century British Fiction"

29.-31.8.2018

BAVS Conference, University of Exeter (British Association for Victorian Studies):
Presentation: "Patterns of Participation: Late-Nineteenth-Century Popular Weeklies and the Rhythms of Metropolitan Cultural Life"

9.7.2018

Guest lecture, Universität Hamburg: "Metropolitan Communities: Sensation and Participation in Late-Nineteenth-Century Popular Lecturing and Weekly Periodicals"

13.-15.12.2017

"Periodicals in Focus: Methodological Approaches and Theoretical Frameworks", Universität Mainz
Presentation: "Periodicity and Participation: Late 19th-Century Popular Weeklies and/as Metropolitan Culture Institutions"

11.7.2017

Vorlesung Universität Gießen, "The Victorian Novel", Presentation: "Mona Caird's The Daughters of Danaus (1894): New Woman Writing and Alienated Time"

11.5.2017
"Reading Transnational Periodical Cultures", Universität Mainz-Germersheim
Presentation: "'Soul thrilling tones': (Women) Lecturing and Reciting in Late-Victorian Popular Periodicals"

14.1.2017
Symposium "Critical Materialities", Universität Mainz
Presentation: "'Spheres' and Access: Female Visibility/Vocality and the Materialities of Late-Victorian Lecturing Culture"

18.2.2016
Konferenz, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, München, “Present Pasts:
Historical Consciousness and the Experience of Modernity”
Presentation: “The Spectacle of Speech and the Presence of the Past:
Late-Victorian Popular Lecturing and Mass Print Culture”

10.2.2016
Recent Research Lecture Series, University of Huddersfield, UK
Presentation: “Surprise and Conversion in Late-Victorian Fictionalized Platform Performances”

20.11.15
BritCult Conference, Universität Erlangen, “The Popular and the Past”
Presentation: “The Lecturer as Revenant: Late-Victorian Sensationalism and Popular Oral Performances”

19.-21.1.15
Centre for Research into Gender and Culture in Society (GENCAS), University of Swansea
Presentation: “‘The subject escapes me’: (In-)Attentive Audiences in Late-Victorian Serialised Sensation Fiction”

27.6.14
Lehrerfortbildungstagung, „Theatre, Spectacle, and Performance in British and
American Cultures”, Universität Regensburg
Presentation: „Victorian Attention and the Lecturer as Spectacle”

8.3.14
Konferenz „The Female Textual Body, 19th century to now“, University of Durham
Presentation: “‘The picture and figure of the half-bedizened damsel’: (Dis-)Embodied Females and Late-Nineteenth-Century Platform Performances”

22.1.2014
Ringvorlesung “’Die Würde des Menschen ist antastbar’: Ehrkonflikte von der Antike
bis in die Gegenwart, Klassik-Zentrum, Universität Regensburg
Presentation: “‘Am I not a Man and a Brother?’ Würde, Sympathie, und weibliche Partizipation in der britischen Anti-Sklaverei-Bewegung, 1780-1830”

4.11.2013
Birkbeck College, London, Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies
Presentation: “’Everyone knows what attention is: Audiences in Late-Victorian Serialised Sensation Fiction”

11.-14.9.2013
Konferenz “The Arts of Attention”, Károli Gáspár University, Budapest
Presentation: “‘Electrifying the Nerves’: (In-)Attentive Audiences of Victorian Sensation Fiction and Public Platform Performances”

3.-6.1.2013
Special Session convened by A.-J. Zwierlein, MLA Convention 2013 in Boston: „Victorian Oral Culture, c. 1861-1901”
Presentation: “Victorian Oral Cultures”

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Research Assistants

Heide-Marie Weig, M.A.

Sebastian Graef, M.A.

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Project-Related Publications

Heide-Marie Weig: "Amateur Theatricals and the Dramatic Marketplace: Lacy's and French's Acting Editions of Plays." Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, 2017, doi: 10.1177/1748372717742305.

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Project-Related Conferences

03.12.2021

Sebastian Graef: "Catholic Motifs in Late-Victorian & Edwardian British Queer Fiction."
DACH Victorianists (Online Conference)

14.11.- 17.11.2019

Conference, Vancouver, Kanada, "North American Conference on British Studies"
Presentation Heide-Marie Weig: "Crafting the Drawing-Room Stage: Victorian Amateur Theatricals and Middle-Class Identity."

14.04. - 16.04.2016
Conference, New College Oxford, UK, "The London Stage in the 19th-century World"
Presentation Heide-Marie Weig: "The Amateur and the Theatrical Marketplace: Lacy's and French's Acting Editions of Plays"

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Project-Related Presentations / Workshops

Sebastian Graef 02/2019: "Telling Objects at the British Museum." Dinggeschichten der Neugierde: Objects of Empire (Symposium). Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, München

Heide-Marie Weig & Sebastian Graef: 07/2017: ‘Social Media Through the Ages’, as part of the teacher training conference ‘Populism and the Popular’, University of Regensburg

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