Victorian Diversities Research Network

'Victorian Diversities' will expand and enhance knowledge of Victorian literature by recuperating nineteenth-century writers of colour and by exploring new methodologies for reading the literature of race and empire. It will also consider ways in which we can bring this knowledge to the wider public to demonstrate Britain's long history of multiculturalism and to exemplify the global nature of Victorian literatures. To achieve this, the Network brings together experts from different disciplines, professions, and locations; this international interdisciplinary conversation works towards denaturalising whiteness and problematising the centrality of white experience and white cultural productions within historical literary fields.
The Network is vital because there is a lack of knowledge about historical writers of colour, and because current approaches to race and empire in Victorian studies are fragmented and marginalised. Victorian Diversities will provide a platform for participants to explore the issue of diversifying Victorian studies and will challenge dominant perceptions of the Victorian period. To achieve this, the Network includes members from a range of commonwealth countries and a variety of academic disciplines, such as Literary Studies, Historical Studies, Periodical Studies, Romanticism, Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Transnational and Transimperial Studies, Periodical Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Settler Colonial Studies. While the Principle-Investigator and Co-Investigator reside in the UK, Victorian Diversities demonstrates its commitment to global perspectives by partnering with the Hyderabad IIT in India. As such, the Network will have notable impact on the research and teaching of Victorian studies internationally while making significant contributions to the knowledge and understanding of British multicultural literary history.
The Network membership also includes secondary school teachers and key organisations outside academia similarly working to diversify the arts and education; these include The Black Curriculum, the Black Cultural Archives, and Speaking Volumes. All members of the network will have the opportunity to meet via a series of online reading groups, two hybrid workshops, and a final public-facing event to showcase the Network's findings.
The reading group will facilitate a regular and ongoing dialogue between network members. Each month, a member will introduce a text by a historical writer of colour which participants will meet online to discuss. The PI will produce an accessible infogram based on the discussion. These resources will be made available via our dedicated website. The Network members will also come together at 2 hybrid workshops: 'Re-Indigenizing Victorian Studies' (University of Kent); and 'Victorian Studies Beyond Britain' (IIT Hyderabad). The workshops will explore critical methodologies and share practices for diversifying Victorian studies in different countries, disciplines, and professions. Participants include invited local and international speakers and subsidised Phd/early career researchers. In addition, the hybrid format ensures that scholars at all levels and in all locations can participate. The Investigators will co-edit a Special Issue of the journal Transmotion, and they will present and publish an article in 'English'.
Our final event, 'Checking Out Me History: A Celebration of Diversity' (Kingston University), will include an afternoon workshop for local schools and a public-facing evening event of readings and performances. Organised in collaboration with Speaking Volumes, an organisation that specialises in promoting marginalised writers in innovative ways, this event will show the continued value of reading and hearing diverse literary voices as part of the development of inclusive contemporary society. This globalising of the long nineteenth century is long overdue and Victorian Diversities aims to be a driving force to achieve it.