Priti Joshi

Priti Joshi
Pierce Professor of English (affiliated with Asian Studies), University of Puget Sound

I am honored to be nominated for the VP position of RSVP; there is no dearer organization I have been part of than this. But more than my heart, RSVP has been central to my intellectual development and flourishing since I wandered into the first conference (at Roehampton). There I was struck that the “big names” turned up for all the talks and engaged us “nobodies” generously and respectfully. That collaborative spirit is central to the ethos of RSVP and I have every faith it will last as long as the organization does! As we look to the future, we, like other academic organizations, also have some creative thinking ahead as Covid has put in peril those gatherings we found so sustaining. To make lemonade, it also heightened questions about our carbon footprint and equitable access to conferences across ranks. As we move into our post-pandemic moment, we will rejigger what collective gatherings and collaboration looks like, building on the work with the Digital Salons and that so many on the Virtual Events committee have done to rethink the conference model in the last two years. Such reimagining, along with the exciting range of fellowships that we now support (thanks to the generosity of many benefactors and excellent management), makes RSVP an exciting place for an astonishingly wide range of works that push the V and P in our name, even as they honor those who insisted that Victorian newspapers and periodicals require serious attention and analysis. I’m delighted to be part of this group and proud that my recent book Empire News: The Anglo-Indian Press Writes India (2021; winner of the Colby prize) and publications in the last decade-and-a-half owe everything to this sustaining community.