Who would not enjoy a week on a lovely Californian campus, drinking tea, meeting eminent academics and fellow-students while discussing a book? As the lucky Kent representative at this year’s Dickens Universe, my experience at Santa Cruz was a very rewarding, informative, and fun one, indeed.
This year’s Universe focused on Our Mutual Friend, Dickens’s last completed novel, which was published in instalments between 1864 and 1865: as I enjoyed it very much, I was excited and curious to see how a week dedicated to this one book would be. After the long flight, spent mainly reading the secondary material recommended to Universe participants, I found myself in the beautiful setting of the Northern Californian landscape, with its great views on the ocean, lively beaches and luscious vegetation. The Santa Cruz campus is quite big: it can take up to an hour to walk across it on foot, and the buildings are all scattered around in the redwoods.
The Dickens Universe started on Saturday the 2nd with a welcome dinner for faculty and grad students on the patio of Porter College, where we enjoyed a wonderful view on the Monterey Bay, and the first of many Dickens-themed post-dinner parties. With the arrival of the non-academic participants, on Sunday the 3rd the Universe was officially opened with the first evening lecture, delivered by George Levine (Rutgers University). The following five days were a wonderful, though dense combination of morning and evening lectures, seminars on the novel and graduate students’ “jobs”: I attended a series of seminars on publication, moderated by Carol MacKay (Rutgers University), where we got to discuss how to think of our writing as a work-in-progress for publication, how the selection and peer-review processes work and the important issue of “fitting” with one or another journal. Rae Greiner (University of Indiana), the editor of Victorian Studies, and Jonathan Grossman (UCLA), the editor of Nineteenth-Century Literature, also joined us for what was for me the most informative session of the series.
Finally, I also attended a professionalization session on the job market, led by Marlene Tromp (Arizona State University) and Ian Crawford (University of Delaware): the comparison we drew between American and British systems was productive, and the overall discussion made the whole topic of ‘life after the PhD’ sounds less daunting.
Other highlights were the less formal moments of the Universe: the Victorian teas, the cake party, the daily Post Prandial Potations and the numerous other social events were excellent opportunities to meet new people, make new friends, and create new, fruitful connections. I enjoyed the discussions on the novel and other 19th-century authors with colleagues from the UK, the US, Australasia and Israel, and it was wonderful to see again people I had met at previous conferences. Some of these contacts will hopefully lead to new projects for the future.
Also, with a group of other students we put in a bid for a series of 6 Dickens novels in a turn of the century edition. And what a pleasant surprise it was, on the night of the auction, to hear our group name, Jenny Wren’s Dolls, called out to pick up the books! I could not have hoped for a better souvenir of the Universe.
The overall impression I got from the Universe is that it is very different from anything I had experienced before: it is not a traditional conference, as it is residential, and it provided a good mix of academics, students and genuine Dickens fans. It has the flair of a special summer camp, with the bunk beds and the canteen food that the Santa Cruz colleges offered us, but it is also like a big book club, where Dickens’ characters were discussed all day and by everyone, as if they were alive and present in Santa Cruz with us.
The final night, Dickens Universe director John Jordan (UCSC) closed officially the 2014 edition and announced next year’s books: Martin Chuzzlewit and American Notes. I will not be able to go in 2015, so, as I found the experience thoroughly enriching and informative, I will definitely be a bit jealous of next year’s lucky student!
Barbara Franchi