Armstrong Browning Library & Museum 75th Anniversary Symposium

"Legacies and Futures in Browning and Nineteenth-Century Scholarship at the Armstrong Browning Library"
A Symposium in Honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Armstrong Browning Library & Museum
Thursday, September 17 & Friday, September 18, 2026

Panel: “Belief & the Body in the ABL Archives and the Brownings’ Work” 

This panel presents work at the intersection of religion, theology, medicine, and the body in the Victorian period. These projects reconsider the relationship between belief, the body, and poetry in the Brownings' work and their moment — exploring how scientific concepts like deep time, religious concepts like enthusiasm, and shifts in medical practice shaped Victorian culture in unexpected ways. Archival discoveries ground these investigations: a religious tract on fasting, an unpublished essay by a young Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and other overlooked documents are brought into conversation with more canonical works and authors. Together, the papers reflect on how archival work conducted at the ABL can broaden the scope and reshape the stories we tell about a period's beliefs.

• "The Arrested Human Kingdom: Dunbar Heath, Robert Browning, and Staged Salvation"
  Aubrey Plourde, University of Lynchburg
• "EBB’s Enthusiasm"
  Rachael Isom, Arkansas State University
• "Beyond the Brownings: Exploring 19th-century Anglicanism in the ABL archives"
  Lesa Scholl
• "Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Medical Act of 1858"
  Crystal Veronie, University of Alabama

Panel: “Field Work": Curating and Cultivating Scholarship through the Archives
This panel considers how archival work shapes both our research and our teaching — and how it defines the field of Nineteenth-Century studies itself. These papers take a broad view of projects developed over time, tracing how encounters with materials and people at the ABL have pushed scholarship in unexpected directions: minor writings that prove to be major, drawings that disrupt received narratives, and exhibits that cross continents. Archival discoveries also reshape how we work, inspiring collaborations with students and opening pathways into public-facing humanities. The panel closes with an invitation to reflect on what the ABL's collections can continue to mean for the field today.

• "From Minor to Major: Rethinking Victorian Poetry Through the ‘Minor Poets’ Collection"
  Kirstie Blair, University of Stirling
• "Ghosts as Friends’: Remembering the Dead in the Long Nineteenth Century and Transatlantic Romantic Hauntings"
  Mark Sandy, Durham University
• "Work in Progress: Volume 7 of the Longman Poems of Robert Browning"
  Joe Phelan, DeMontfort University
• "Knowledge Ecologies: Cultivating Scholarly and Student Intellectual Community with the Armstrong Browning Library"
  Josh King, Baylor University

Panel: "Occasional Forms, Lasting Impressions: Gift Books, Italian Networks, and the Browning Archive"

These papers recover forms and networks that might seem ephemeral or occasional — political circles in expatriate Italy, birthday poems, almanacs, gift books — and show how archival work at the ABL reveals their lasting importance to understanding the Brownings' lives and literary work. By thinking through issues of time, memory, and collaboration, these projects demonstrate how unlikely source materials and overlooked alliances can reshape the stories we tell about authors and their worlds. Together, this panel asks us to take seriously the ephemeral aspects of a culture and the archival traces they leave behind — and what those traces can tell us about the literature and lives preserved through time.

• "Temporal Forms and Transnational Archive Networks"
  Lindsey Chappell, Georgia Southern University
• "EBB and Balaustion, Expatriate Political Poetesses"
  Allison Reising, Independent Scholar
• "EBB’s Selected Early Works: On Collaboration, Memory, and Permanence Inside and Outside the Armstrong Browning Library"
  Katherine Stein, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  with Beverly Taylor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
• "Books for Special Occasions"
  Clare Simmons, The Ohio State University

Registration information and a complete symposium schedule will be posted soon.
The symposium is free and open to the public.