ResVic
The ResVic Working Group is coordinated and funded by the Department of English.
WELCOME!
The Restoration to Victorian ("ResVic") Studies Reading Group at the University of Pennsylvania brings together graduate students and faculty from various disciplines to discuss writing and cultural production in the period from the Restoration through the Victorian era. The group provides a space to explore different theoretical and methodological approaches to Anglophone literature produced in England, Scotland, Ireland, the Caribbean and North America. Group activities include invited scholarly lectures from scholars worldwide and discussions of literary and critical texts. The group also provides a forum for scholars within the Penn community and beyond to present new work ("works-in-progress"), as well as hosts workshops focused on the state of the field and professionalization.
For event times and locations, as well as pre-circulated papers, please contact Ailin Jain and Kayleigh Voss Ng to be added to the listserv.
Resources
Organizations
• ACLA: American Comparative Literature Association
• ASECS: American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
• MLA: Modern Language Association
• NASSR: North American Society for the Study of Romanticism
• NAVSA: North American Victorian Studies Association
• The Dickens Project
Links Pages
• Eighteenth-Century Resources, maintained by Jack Lynch: An extensive and various collection of links on all things 18th, including a comprehensive catalogue of Eighteenth-Century E-Texts--thank you Jack!
• Voice of the Shuttle Romantics Page, maintained by Alan Liu: An extensive collection of links to Romantic period e-text archives, author pages, organizations, and listsevs. Also helpful are the Restoration & 18th century and Victorian pages.
Upcoming Events
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Lauren Goodlad (Rutgers)
"We Have Always Been Action Theorists: Toward a Critical Theory of Language for the Age of Generative AI"February 19, 2026 - 5:00pm to 7:00pm -
Mursal Sidiqi WIP
Inventing and Inheriting Afghan Epistemologies (1722-1815)April 29, 2026 - 5:00pm to 7:00pm
Past Events
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Ina Ferris (University of Ottawa), "Melancholy and the'Narrative Situation' of History in Post-Enlightenment Scotland."
February 19, 2004 - 5:00pm to 6:00pm -
Scott Krawczyk (UPenn), WIP: "Siblings in Love: The Wordsworths' Collaborative Relationship."
February 3, 2004 - 5:00pm to 6:00pm -
Edmund Burke, Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757).
January 20, 2004 - 5:00pm to 6:00pm -
Discussion: William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty (1753).
December 2, 2003 - 5:00pm to 6:00pm -
Henry Abelove (Wesleyan University), "The Patriot's Song."
November 17, 2003 - 5:00pm to 6:00pm -
Scott Krawczyk (UPenn), WIP: "Collaboration in the Wordsworth and Aikin Households."
November 11, 2003 - 5:00pm to 6:00pm -
Discussion: David Hume, "Of the Standard of Taste," "Of Tragedy," "Of Simplicity and Refinement in Writing" from Essays Moral, Political and Literary (1742-54).
October 21, 2003 - 5:00pm to 6:00pm -
Marco Roth (Yale), WIP: "Renovating Virtue: The Problem of Happiness in Wordsworth's Poetry."
October 7, 2003 - 5:00pm to 6:00pm -
Discussion: Joseph Addison, "Pleasures of the Imagination" (1712) from Spectator No. 411-421; excepts from Shaftesbury's Characteristics (1711)
September 23, 2003 - 5:00pm to 6:00pm -
Discussion: Samuel Johnson, London (1739) and Vanity of Human Wishes (1749)
March 27, 2003 - 5:00pm to 6:00pm

Department of English
