Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

At the most basic level, Victorian studies describes a field of study – that is, the literature and culture, both broadly defined, of the period of Queen Victoria's reign in England (1837–1901) – and a methodology grounded in interdisciplinarity and indebted to, if not rooted in, C ultural studies . The nearly simultaneous publication of the first issue of the journal Victorian Studies in 1957 and Raymond W illiams's Culture and Society 1780–1950 in 1958 mark the beginning of Victorian studies as an interdisciplinary field that reconceives culture along Marxist lines and with an emphasis on historicism and identity at once. Victorian studies is so frequently seen to overlap with cultural studies that the labels are often conflated into Victorian cultural studies: indeed, when scholars articulate the object of Victorian studies, they inevitably announce their intention to consider all aspects of culture, high and low, and the products of an array of disciplines. Marking the fiftieth anniversary of Victorian Studies , the journal's founders recalled their original aims: “what seemed to us most likely to be helpful was a journal that crossed disciplinary lines and integrated methodologies and subject matters in the hope of evoking a broad, human understanding of the era …” (Appleman et al., 1956, p. 10). Transcending disciplinary borders, traditional definitions of culture, and ... log in or subscribe to read full text