Recorded Wednesday, January 22, 2025, 4:30 - 6:00 p.m. in the Paul Cadario Conference Centre at Croft Chapter House
University College, University of Toronto
15 King's College Circle
Toronto, ON M5S 3H7
Presented by Clare Pettitt
Grace 2 Chair, Faculty of English
Cambridge University
2024-25 S. J. Stubbs Lecture in English "White Gold: Extractive Logic and Seriality in the Nineteenth Century"
White Gold: Extractive Logic and Seriality in the Nineteenth Century uses the pre-Raphaelite sculptor Thomas Woolner’s career as a case study to ask conceptual questions about the role of ‘global’ serial publications, long-distance communications, and compressive forms in the establishment and maintenance of white colonial authority in the mid-nineteenth century. Woolner travelled to Australia to dig for gold in 1852 and then stayed on to start a successful sculpting business before returning to England in 1854 to continue his artistic career. With Francis Palgrave and Alfred Tennyson, Woolner curated a poetry anthology, The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language (1861), which became widely known as Palgrave’s Golden Treasury. Using sculpture and poetry, White Gold will consider the emergence of an extractive imagination in both material and literary terms, continuing the investigation into nineteenth-century seriality in Pettitt’s recent monographs.
*Please note that this lecture will contain references to racism and colonial violence in the nineteenth century and viewer discretion is advised.
About University College's Endowed Public Lectures
University College alumni and friends have established several endowments that allow the College to invite some of the world’s greatest researchers to our campus each year. Each lectureship involves at least one public lecture that is open to the public. Several of the lectureships also allow for visiting faculty to participate in an undergraduate class and to meet faculty and graduate students for more concentrated research workshops and discussions.
The W. J. Alexander Lecture was founded in 1928 in memory of Professor W.J. Alexander, Head of the Department of English at University College from 1889 to 1926.