Goals and Uses

 

Victorian Contexts aims to dust off texts that lie in archives and bring them out into the world of conversation once more.

The impetus for the site comes from a Literature professor with an interest in cultural studies.  The focus here is non-fictional texts: book reviews, commentaries on art exhibitions, newspaper articles and editorials, Parliamentary speeches, political cartoons, excerpts from guidebooks, floorplans, essays in the Lancet, and so on.  In addition, there are categories for the arts and music, and there may be projects that include some short poetry (particularly in the satiric, doggerel, or social-commentary modes).  Because these materials are vital to understanding the discourse in which more tradionally "literary" texts are participating, Victorian Contexts offers a space for students to compile these useful primary resources as well as comment upon them.

Students work in groups to select a non-fictional/artistic text (or small constellation of related texts if they are particularly brief ones) that provide a useful complement to the literature they are reading in a given semseter.  The groups place the full-text online, in the hopes of growing an archive of material that others may draw on as well.  They also annotate the texts--glossing names of key figures, important legislation, relevant locations, patent products, etc.--and provide commentary on the ideas contained within the texts, as well as a bibliography of useful additional reading. 

Victorian Contexts makes an effort to put online full-texts that are not already available elsewhere online, so that other students of the period will have a growing library of reference material in the voices of 19th-Century writers. 

This site is open for public viewing, so that the work may be of use to other classes.  Editing or adding content to this site is restricted by password.  However, we welcome new participants adding new content!  If you would like your class to participate in this project, please use the "Contact Wiki Owner" link at the very bottom of this page to express your interest, request for more information, and/or get the most recent passwords.

Text Categories

    Links below will send you to tables of contents, organized by subject area, of texts currently online here, along with links to other useful websites containing  information in this category.  Projects with obvious cross-listing appeal may appear in more than category (e.g. a project on the Royal Institute of British Architects might be listed under Architecture and under White-Collar Professions).  You can also view the complete Table of Contents for texts on this site, organized alphabetically.  Please be aware that this is an on-going project, so new texts will continue to be added, and the information on texts already here will continue to grow.  Check back for updates periodically!

    Architecture

    Art

    Colonialism

    Domesticity

    Gender and Sexuality

    Literature

    Marriage and Weddings

    Medicine

    The Monarchy

    Music and Theater

    Politics, Laws and Parliament

    Religion

    Science and Technology

    Society and Etiquette

    Working-Class Life

    White-Collar Professions

Participating Classes

    Links below will send you to syllabi and other information specific to the classes that currently are, or have in the past, participated in this project.

Literature 565 (Victorian Fiction) -- Eastern Michigan University, Winter 2008