An archive of Twitter threads from this year’s #VPFAReligion Twitter Taster
We're excited to announce the #VPFAReligion twitter taster programme for Sat 30th May, 11:00-17:00 (BST). You're encouraged to get involved in Q&As and discussions with our fab presenters, which we hope will continue across the following week. https://t.co/ARFCsGoOXQ pic.twitter.com/ugWa6taCIz
— VPFA (@VPFA1) May 13, 2020
Anne-Marie Beller (@amb1860) and Kerry Featherstone (@KerryOrange): “No greater spiritual beauty than fanaticism”: Women Travellers’ Encounters with Islam in the Nineteenth Century
Lady Florentia Sale was with the British Army in Kabul in 1839. Captured during the fatal retreat to Jallalabad & wrote a diary of her experiences, published to great acclaim. Her encounters with Islam include sympathy for the Afghans & interest in Pashto language. 2/12
— Dr Anne-Marie Beller (@amb1860) May 30, 2020
Eden, wife the Viceroy of India, accompanied him on his circuit. Her diaries include comments on Muslim architecture & religion, including the history of Islamic culture. She also comments on events in Afghanistan, & reads of Sale’s situation in the newspapers. 4/12
— Dr Anne-Marie Beller (@amb1860) May 30, 2020
Both Sale and Eden are in positions of privilege due to marriage, but their responses to Islam are not dictated by colonial ideology or gender. They show interest in architecture & language, as well being willing and able to assess political & cultural issues. 6/12
— Dr Anne-Marie Beller (@amb1860) May 30, 2020
Edwards and Eberhardt have been celebrated as independent/rebellious C19th women who challenged dominant gender/colonial/racial orthodoxies. Yet such readings overlook the complexity of these women’s responses to Islam, to Muslims, & to European colonial ideology. 8/12
— Dr Anne-Marie Beller (@amb1860) May 30, 2020
Eberhardt dressed as a man & became embroiled in anarchist conspiracies. After visiting N. Africa, she fell in love with the desert & spent the rest of her life largely in Algeria. She converted to Islam, married an Arab man & was accepted into Muslim brotherhoods. 10/12 pic.twitter.com/KuEERFE6VH
— Dr Anne-Marie Beller (@amb1860) May 30, 2020
A reading that sees these texts in binary terms of coloniser & colonised is reductive. Texts are nuanced by individual lives, responses & insights into Islam & other cultures. They are travel accounts, but also different kinds of engagement with Islamic culture. 12/12
— Dr Anne-Marie Beller (@amb1860) May 30, 2020
Helena Goodwyn (@HelenaGoodwyn):’Sex Religion Sells! The Preacher, the Journalist and the Novel’
In 1893 the UK journalist/editor W. T. Stead visited the 🌎’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. As a result of this (his 1st trip to the US) Stead produced the nonfiction text: ’If Christ Came to Chicago: A Plea for the Union of all who Love in the Service of all Who Suffer’ 1/6
— Helena Goodwyn (@HelenaGoodwyn) May 30, 2020
‘If Christ Came’ caused a minor sensation, produced as it was: to ‘strengthen’ a ‘dawning consciousness of the reality of the citizen Christ’. This ‘dawning consciousness’ refers to a movement that was growing in popularity on both sides of the Atlantic: the Social Gospel 3/6
— Helena Goodwyn (@HelenaGoodwyn) May 30, 2020
‘In His Steps’ has since been posited by critics as ‘the best-selling novel of the C19th’; ‘2nd only to the Bible’; & ‘1 of the best-known stories of the late 19th & early C20th’. Stead, noticing a distinct no. of similarities between his book & Sheldon’s WWJD? reissued ICC 5/6
— Helena Goodwyn (@HelenaGoodwyn) May 30, 2020
emphasising the striking similarities between the two texts. My research considers the acceleration & distillation of the social gospel into Sheldon’s internationally bestselling novel, its legacy, & lineage as a descendent of the mid-nineteenth-century social-problem novel 6/6
— Helena Goodwyn (@HelenaGoodwyn) May 30, 2020
Mary Going (@MazGoing): “Tarry thou, till I come”: Salathiel, Supersessionism, and George Croly’s Wandering Jew
The WJ is also a palimpsestic Derridean spectre. Every conjuration manifests, adds, & interpolates new parts & contexts – constructing an abject, alienated Jewish body tied to Christian anxieties surrounding End Times & messianic prophecies, & created to validate such claims. 2/6 pic.twitter.com/jn0Mb5ENo6
— Mary Going (@MazGoing) May 30, 2020
[cw: violence]
— Mary Going (@MazGoing) May 30, 2020
Unlike traditional WJ stories which focus on more recent history, Croly bookends his story between the crucifixion & the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem (70 CE), with his WJ detailing his guilt & culpability in both, & depicting scenes of Xtian martyrdom. 4/6 pic.twitter.com/5vyitEOk71
Croly’s WJ, Salathiel Prince of Naphtali, is explicitly Jewish (he is a priest, military leader & royalty) but this is a constructed identity employed to witness Xtian doctrine, present a history of early Xtian suffering, & look forward to End Times & (Xtian) Restoration. 6/6 pic.twitter.com/O6hhzWK8SA
— Mary Going (@MazGoing) May 30, 2020
John Morton (@Drjmorton): Encountering Catholicism and Catholic Europe in Popular Fiction and Periodicals of 1850
…that “the rights of such a church [RC] are incompatible with the equal rights of every other”; Fam Herald correspondence responses of 1850 = hostile to RC but say that mass RC conversion was as likely as mass conversion into ‘man-bats’. #VPFAreligion 2/6
— John Morton (@Drjmorton) May 30, 2020
… rival Medici-linked lovers both killed, & object of affection in convent; Dec 1850 F. Hrld has ‘Gertrude’, gothic story set amid C16th ‘bigotry’ of Queen Mary. Philip II often = villain. Stereotype of foreign = violent & immoral not uncommon in C19 pop fic… #VPFAReligion 4/6
— John Morton (@Drjmorton) May 30, 2020
… Joan->Pope @ end & immediately dies (peacefully, after she's literally exposed as female) in violent Rome riot. L.James says GWMR poss. wrote cos he's v. CofE, but I feel effect is still anti-RCath; v widespread in press at time, uniting pop fic & editorial. #VPFAReligion 6/6
— John Morton (@Drjmorton) May 30, 2020
Flore Janssen (@FemLitCake): ‘Life’s a Misery, and I’m Such a Big Sinner!’: Reforming People and Society through the Salvation Army Press
Jen Baker (@Jendeavour): Revisiting limbus infantium and inflicting Purgatorial Punishments: Navigating the Sacro-Secular Afterlife of the Victorian Child
Led by liberal Protestant Christians, C19th mainstream culture glorified child death & insisted all children go to heaven. But many authors expressed anxieties through purgatorial imagery & revived idea of divine punishment for those responsible for bad child deaths.
— 👻🧐Dr Jen Baker 🧐👻 (@Jendeavour) May 30, 2020
2/6 pic.twitter.com/BIW7niA0DJ
Elizabeth Gaskell's "Old Nurse's Story" (1852) uses folkloric motif of child wandering the Fells, begging to be let in to Home (Heaven). In final scene, the fatal events are replayed before the living, a heatless fire blazes in hearth & perpetrator is left "death stricken".
— 👻🧐Dr Jen Baker 🧐👻 (@Jendeavour) May 30, 2020
4/6 pic.twitter.com/V0dO3AIJX3
"Old Testament" style smiting occurs – perpetrators of child death die by suicide, execution, drowning, trip downstairs. Sometimes child is active punisher, at others they signify the coming of vengeance. Yet still the child is given no voice and is ultimately objectified 6/6 pic.twitter.com/6QJqGg7EkF
— 👻🧐Dr Jen Baker 🧐👻 (@Jendeavour) May 30, 2020
Betty Hagglund (@BettyHagglund): Innocent children as instruments of religious conversion in Silas Hocking’s waif novels
1/6 Innocent child as instrument of religious conversion in Hocking’s novels. Separated from bio-family, children become part of new ‘created’ family with new parental adults estranged from society & God. Child becomes teacher, leading adults into connection. #VPFAReligion
— Betty Hagglund (@BettyHagglund) May 30, 2020
2/6 Silas Hocking (1850-1935): little read now, published over 100 novels, sold over 1 million of Her Benny. Wrote in variety of popular genres; I’m concentrating today on his waif/street-Arab novels, based partly on personal observation in Liverpool slums.
— Betty Hagglund (@BettyHagglund) May 30, 2020
3/6 Usually feature a resourceful boy & a girl (or younger boy who is ‘girl-like’) in need of protection. Spectre of potential corruption in background. Families fragmented or dysfunctional; parents inadequate or absent, often drunk & violent, reliant on children’s earnings.
— Betty Hagglund (@BettyHagglund) May 30, 2020
4/6 Children taken in by outsider/marginal figure, creating new family characterised by nurture, kindness & mutual aid. New parental adult alienated from society because of past losses & griefs; & often (but not always) anti-God. Shown as virtuous but without formal religion.
— Betty Hagglund (@BettyHagglund) May 30, 2020
5/6 Child finds religion through city missions or ragged schools, although younger boy or girl initially more responsive than older one. Their innocent comments open the hearts of their carers who return to the faith of their own childhoods & gradually re-enter the wider society.
— Betty Hagglund (@BettyHagglund) May 30, 2020
6/6 At end, both adults and children have strong Christian faith & moral underpinnings. The abandoned child – originally depicted as victim – has become redeemer. Hocking waif novels: Her Benny; Dick’s Fairy; Chips; Our Joe; Chips; Poor Mike. Also: https://t.co/RATyzcHFZN
— Betty Hagglund (@BettyHagglund) May 30, 2020
Monika Mazurek (@MonikaMaz1): Roman Catholicism in the Tractarian and Anti-Tractarian Victorian Popular Novel
The novels by the siblings William and Elizabeth Sewell provide an interesting illustration (BTW, William is today mostly known by being the guy who burnt Froude's "Nemesis of Faith"). William was Tractarian, but also rabidly anti-Popish and anti-Evangelical 2/6
— Monika Mazurek (@MonikaMaz1) May 30, 2020
The town is saved by the local landlord Ernest Villiers, who creates a model hamlet (a kind of Robert Herrick fantasy land), rebuilds the ruined Priory, establishes a male religious community there and a kind of beguinage for single women, channelling their energy for charity 4/6 pic.twitter.com/87wUOOL0vJ
— Monika Mazurek (@MonikaMaz1) May 30, 2020
Margaret finally parts with her friend and finds peace in Tractarianism. It’s interesting that Roman Catholics in this novel are not wicked Jesuits who are only after Margaret’s money (she has none); they really care for her and that’s the reason why they want her to convert 6/6
— Monika Mazurek (@MonikaMaz1) May 30, 2020
Cath H. Kennedy (@carefulkaty): Where are the Bible Heroines?: Women and Narrative in an example of the Child Temperance Press
@speccollshef has a small collection of the "Band of Hope Review & Children's Friend" from the 1850's. The B of H was a youth temperance movement popular with churches & kids, but *controversial* because critical of male wage earners, if drinkers.
— Cath Kennedy (@carefulkaty) May 30, 2020
#VPFAReligion @VPFA1 1/6 pic.twitter.com/tiVj9lJSIs
Temperance's new femininity is less well known. In the Review romance/male approval is not sought. No wifely obedience. Working women & girls are respectable & intelligent. Women's arduous menial jobs are treated realistically & industrialists learned it all from mum … 3/6 pic.twitter.com/Rs2mSmMtCc
— Cath Kennedy (@carefulkaty) May 30, 2020
The Journal's v. Xian but only 3 Bible stories: no biblical ref. for female virtue. Women/girls appear in drawings, vignettes & stories. Appeals to general virtue are often religious, but not those directed to women/girls only, which rely on common sense 5/6 pic.twitter.com/ZqmDczcDv5
— Cath Kennedy (@carefulkaty) May 30, 2020
Why no Bible stories of girls? In the 1850's cultural ideas of the Bible are about patriarchal obedience, not kindness, the Journal's main (Xian) virtue. Culturally, biblical women obey & birth. Then as now anything is easier to change than folks' idea of the Bible. 6/6 pic.twitter.com/N1GxznPqSm
— Cath Kennedy (@carefulkaty) May 30, 2020
Jessica Albrecht (@flumminism): Eugenics and esotericism in Victorian feminist writing (Florence Farr and Frances Swiney)
I am happy to share some of my current research with you on Eugenics and Esotericism in Victorian feminist writings in this twitter taster by @VPFA1 so perfectly organised by @DrNHetherington and @ClareGS87, thank you! 0/6
— Jessica Albrecht (@flumminism) May 30, 2020
Trying to re-connect the split of science and religion, some esotericists used their religious ideas and so called “occult sciences” to argue for eugenics & the evolution of humankind: The creation of the “superman”.
— Jessica Albrecht (@flumminism) May 30, 2020
(Florence Farr, 1907, The New Age “Innocent Enchantresses”) 2/6 pic.twitter.com/vBLWMUnbCk
As a high magician of the Order of the Golden Dawn (1890-1902) and since 1902 member of the Theosophical Society, Florence highly engaged with occult feminist icons, such as the goddesses Isis and Kali and the Amazons
— Jessica Albrecht (@flumminism) May 30, 2020
(Florence Farr, 1907 The New Age “Superman Consciousness”) 4/6 pic.twitter.com/kRdcaFXwQE
She founded the League of Isis, a society aiming on educating the youth as well as parents in good parenting and sexual conduct. Only women, as the ones from whom life originates, should be allowed to choose their partner and be the ones to stop the degeneration of the race 6/6 pic.twitter.com/uffVv1bxnD
— Jessica Albrecht (@flumminism) May 30, 2020
Naomi Hetherington (@DrNHetherington): Biblical interpretation and the popular women’s movement: the Bible Readings column of the Women’s Penny Paper
As Ben Griffin argues a popular women’s movement could not have developed in Britain without new historical approaches to scripture & interest in incarnational theology. The Revised Standard Version (1881-5) challenged the idea of a definitive text & translation of the Bible. 2/6 pic.twitter.com/RQlwLqyx5f
— Dr Naomi Hetherington 💙 (@DrNHetherington) May 30, 2020
All women readers were invited to contribute to the column. Readings invoked expert authorities on scripture & commented on the historicity of Paul’s teaching & translation of key passages. The column also shows the importance of esoteric forms of interpretation for women. 4/6
— Dr Naomi Hetherington 💙 (@DrNHetherington) May 30, 2020
Letters to the paper confirm the importance of the Bible Readings in mobilising its readership. One reader told the editor that with the knowledge she had gained from the column she had been able to silence an Anglican clergyman who had argued for the inferiority of women! 6/6
— Dr Naomi Hetherington 💙 (@DrNHetherington) May 30, 2020
Clare Stainthorp (@ClareGS87): Chatterton’s Commune; the Atheistic Communistic Scorcher and the expression of radical freethought
Chatterton’s Commune; the Atheistic Communistic Scorcher was created & distributed by ‘Old Chat’, a radical who unapologetically championed atheism & republicanism outside of the main channels of freethought publication. Chatterton's bio here: https://t.co/kj7W3JlD3G 2/6 pic.twitter.com/kacrFGgBwS
— Dr Clare Stainthorp (@ClareGS87) May 30, 2020
Characterised by vernacular vocabulary & urgent idiosyncratic writing, they prioritise the message at the expense of grammar. A visceral sense of embodiment conveys materialist convictions & the act of creation: ‘every letter is built of Brain, Blood, & Sinew’ (40, 1894). 4/6 pic.twitter.com/wgqRsAP0rG
— Dr Clare Stainthorp (@ClareGS87) May 30, 2020
While it had a small circulation, the ‘Commune’ is primarily an imagined community. Chatterton’s periodical title speaks to an aspiration towards fellowship facilitated by the sharing of atheist & republican ideas through his independent press. 6/6
— Dr Clare Stainthorp (@ClareGS87) May 30, 2020
Scott Thompson (@scottcthompson_): Braddon’s critique of religion, psychology, and determinism and freewill in Joshua Haggard’s Daughter
2/6 & applies them to anxieties around reading sensation fiction.
— Scott C. Thompson (@scottcthompson_) May 30, 2020
Religious & psych discourses were intertwined in C19 (& earlier). Joshua Haggard is a follower of John Wesley, whose writings on D&FW directly respond to David Hartley’s determinist associationist psychology.
4/6 Physio & associationist psych believe experience = psych development. But what is experience? Is novel reading experience? Can novels = psych development?
— Scott C. Thompson (@scottcthompson_) May 30, 2020
Conservative critique of sensation fiction = it provides bad examples of ways-to-be in the world (bad experiences).
6/6 Did reading affect their psych development? Can sensation fiction affect readers’ potential psych development? Novel’s ending is inconclusive, inviting dialogue.
— Scott C. Thompson (@scottcthompson_) May 30, 2020
Framed through pop religious & psych discourses, Braddon invites readers to consider repercussions of reading.
Matthew Crofts (@MattRCrofts): ‘God will aid us up to the end’: Religious Protection in Victorian Vampire Fiction
On the surface #religion has a small role in both texts – physical weapons are emphasised & folklore is what ends the #vampires. As the #Dracula slayers hold the Crucifix + Wafer though each ‘felt a mighty power fly along’ their arms 2/6 pic.twitter.com/ohdiRczgDJ
— Dr Matt Crofts 🦇 (@MattRCrofts) May 30, 2020
#Religion also offers a more passive shield in #Dracula, coming in 2 forms. The first is #faith, particularly in each other. Van Helsing pointedly asks Seward, with ‘strange and terrible days’ to come, ‘Will you not have faith in me?’ 4/6 pic.twitter.com/mWNiykqGJh
— Dr Matt Crofts 🦇 (@MattRCrofts) May 30, 2020
This same passive approach to #religious protection is found in #Carmilla, but only for those who believe: ‘We are in God's hands: nothing can happen without his permission, and all will end well for those who love him’ 6/6 pic.twitter.com/ZfpLcNAvRz
— Dr Matt Crofts 🦇 (@MattRCrofts) May 30, 2020
Alicia Barnes (@aliciarbarnes): God of Steam: The Railway as a Religious Icon
2/6 C Kingsley (1848) CofE priest, wondered whether in the future "men will fall down and worship steam-engines". Their influence over everyday life was recognised to be so great that there was potential for the railway to be mythologised and a religion forming around it.
— Alicia Barnes (@aliciarbarnes) May 30, 2020
4/6 Railways even featured in hymns. Walter White's 'A Month in Yorkshire' (1858) prints a religious ballad titled 'The Railway to Heaven' that likens the journey of life to a railway, featuring people from all walks of life in the carriage "There's room for all the world inside"
— Alicia Barnes (@aliciarbarnes) May 30, 2020
6/6 Even though travelling on Sundays was at first scheduled to avoid disrupting services, the network was soon used by religious organisations for missionary work throughout the UK. The railway entered religious spaces & forced them to adapt to its new technological existence
— Alicia Barnes (@aliciarbarnes) May 30, 2020
Aren Roukema (@aren_b_r): Early Science Fiction and the Occult Future
SF extrapolates the future, particularly of humans and our environments. Carl Freedman: SF is “on the ontological level of Not-Yet-Being”. This prophetic imagination often bases itself on projections of scientific knowledge. Science fictional divination=radical hypothesis (2/6) pic.twitter.com/1wTxmgx1nY
— Aren Roukema (@aren_b_r) May 30, 2020
E.g: Occultist and SF author Edward Bulwer-Lytton observed that spectral and psychical phenomena in his The Haunted and the Haunters (1859) “enlarg[e] our conjectural knowledge of the complex laws of being” (intro). Occult forces were both future scientific discoveries… (4/6) pic.twitter.com/rjfG2OUdxi
— Aren Roukema (@aren_b_r) May 30, 2020
The radical hypotheses of occult science drew many SF authors to imagine scientised spirits, astral travel, telepathy, clairvoyance, even divination itself. More importantly, they helped define the very way that SF reveals itself as modern divination (6/6)
— Aren Roukema (@aren_b_r) May 30, 2020
If you’d like to explore the discussions that ensued from these wonderful tasters, you can do so at this Twitter archive.