Northeastern American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies history

BSECS 36th Annual Conference, 3-5 January 2007 - St. Hugh's College, Oxford, U.K.

The annual meeting of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies is Europe's largest and most prestigious conference dealing with all aspects of the history, literature, and culture of the long eighteenth century.

We invite proposals for individual papers, for full panels of three papers, and for roundtable sessions of five speakers, on any aspect of the long eighteenth century, not only in Britain, but also throughout Europe and the wider world.

Although proposals on all and any eighteenth-century topics are welcome, this year the conference theme will be 'Slavery and Abolition', to mark the 200^th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade. We would thus particularly welcome proposals for papers that address any aspect of slavery and abolition throughout the long eighteenth century.

The 2007 conference will feature plenary addresses by Jonathan C.D. Clark (University of Kansas), Madge Dresser (University of the West of England), and Brean Hammond (University of Nottingham).

Please submit a 2-300-word abstract of the proposed paper, panel, or roundtable (including names of speakers and summaries of papers in the case of comprised panels and roundtables), via the BSECS website at http://www.bsecs.org.uk. Papers should be 20 minutes long, while roundtable talks are normally around 10 minutes in length.

The official languages of the conference are English and French.

Presentations in other languages are acceptable if transcripts in English or French are available for the audience.

The deadline for submission of papers and panel proposals is 30 September 2006.

All enquiries regarding the academic programme of the conference should be addressed to the Programme Coordinator, Dr. Brycchan Carey (academicorganiser@bsecs.org.uk).

You will be notified whether your proposal has been accepted by 23 October 2006. In the case of scholars traveling from outside the U.K., we shall endeavour to reach decisions earlier in order to facilitate travel arrangements. The deadline for conference registration will be 20 November 2006. To attend the conference without giving a paper, request an application form direct from the Venue Organizer, Dr. Chris Mounsey (cmouns@aol.com). You can also download the registration form and find out more about BSECS from our website (http://www.bsecs.org.uk).

BSECS is proud to be able to support scholars to attend this conference. Five bursaries of Z100 each will be available for graduate students whose papers have been accepted and who are registered for a higher degree at a U.K institution of higher education. In addition, accommodation costs and the conference fee will be waived for up to five scholars whose papers have been accepted and who are based in nations whose scholars cannot normally afford to attend conferences in Western Europe. Applications for bursaries, including a curriculum vitae and an indication of other sources of financial support, should reach Dr. Brycchan Carey by 27 October 2006 (academicorganiser@bsecs.org.uk).

Contact Addresses: In the first instance, please contact Dr. Brycchan Carey via BSECS: (academicorganiser@bsecs.org.uk)

Academic Organizer: Dr Brycchan Carey, School of Humanities, Kingston University, Penrhyn Road, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey KT1 2EE: b.carey@kingston.ac.uk

Venue Organizer: Dr. Chris Mounsey, Faculty of Arts, University of Winchester, West Hill, Winchester S022 4NR: Cmouns@aol.com

Carpet Industry Archives, Kidderminster

At the Carpet Archives Centre in Kidderminster we are nearing the end of a two-year project - funded by the HLF - to arrange and catalogue the collections assembled by the Carpet Museum Trust. The Trust was established in 1981 to set up a museum to preserve the memory of the Town's once dominant industry, the manufacture of carpets having been the mainstay of Kidderminster's economy since the 1730s. Although carpets are still made here, the industry has declined in recent years owing to foreign competition and other factors. The Museum - which is likely to open in 2007/8 - will enable local people and visitors to explore and experience the fascinating world of carpet manufacture, its influence on design and technology and its impact on the town.

Further information on the Trust is available on the website at www.carpetmuseum.co.uk <http://www.carpetmuseum.co.uk/> which now offers online access to the catalogue and database from the "Archives Centre" page.

The CALM /DServe catalogue includes comprehensive listings of the printed holdings and museum collections, and a substantial part (say 80%) of the archival material. In addition, we have developed a detailed database of information on people, firms and places associated with the industry across the whole of the UK. This uses the authority files within CALM and it is, of course, fully word searchable by subject as well as by names and places.

Having reached this stage, we are keen to make the existence of this new resource known to all who might have a potential interest in using our collections - especially people who are interested in related aspects such as design, technology, business history and textiles. The database and catalogue should also be of use to people interested in the history of the localities within the UK where carpets were manufactured. Kidderminster has long been regarded as the "hub" of the carpet industry, and its connections with the industry worldwide are reflected in the collections.

Our Access policy and Collecting Policy - developed in consultation with other local repositories - may also be seen on the "visiting" page of the website.

This work has been largely undertaken by the volunteers through whose efforts the project got going in the first place. I intend to write up an account of the Archives Centre project - and on the volunteering aspects in particular - for the Society of Archivists Newsletter shortly. The development of the catalogue and website represents a major step forward for the Centre, and in the next phase the Trust will be looking to develop audiences and encourage use of the resources. The Centre is open to visitors now (by appointment only) and enquiries via the website - or by post – are welcomed.

Please visit our site - and encourage others to take a look at it too if their research interests touch our area. Don't be put off by the apparently very specialist nature of the collection. It IS about carpets, but it's NOT - by any means - JUST about carpets!

Chris Pickford (Consultant Archivist), Carpet Museum Trust - Archives Centre, Unit 28 - MCF Complex, 60 New Road, Kidderminster DY10 1AQ. Tel: 01562 69001

The Mental World of Restoration England: A Spring Faculty Weekend Seminar directed by Annabel Patterson (Yale University)

There is evidently a surge of new interest in the reign of Charles II. Work on Milton and Dryden continues, but Marvell studies have taken a leap forward. Historians have brought the Dutch wars into focus, and it is becoming clear that the history of the press and of Parliament in Restoration England can be studied with access to a wealth of records not available for earlier periods. Court paintings and painters like Lely have begun to attract the kind of attention demanded for the art world of Charles I. John Spurr's England in the 1670s (2000) began the task of relating all the different aspects of the era: the court, the church, the theater, etc., but there remains a good deal of disciplinary compartmentalization. This seminar calls scholars in these and other areas for a weekend of sharing and comparing their work, in the hope that from this broader contextualization will come a larger understanding of the period. As many as twelve faculty members with relevant works-in-progress will be selected. No papers will be read, but the seminar will consider collectively whether such a thing as a mental world might be conceptualized, and if so, what its contours might be, mindful of the model provided for the reign of James I in a Folger conference and a subsequent volume (edited by Linda Levy Peck, 1991).

Director: Annabel Patterson is Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University. Her publications include Censorship and Interpretation (1980, 1994), Early Modern Liberalism (1997), and Andrew Marvell: The Prose Works (2003).

Schedule: All day, Friday and Saturday, 13 – 14 April 2007.

Application Deadlines: 3 January 2007 for admission (and grants-in-aid for Folger consortium affiliates). Visit http://www.folger.edu/institute for our online application form.

Questions? Contact institute@folger.edu

Eighteenth Century Studies Research Fellowships at the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

The Lewis Walpole Library will reopen its doors to readers in summer 2007 after eighteen months of extensive building renovation. The new spaces will include a splendid reading room, state-of-the-art collection storage, and new staff and conservation workspace. The Library's fellowship programs will resume then as well, and applications are invited for the 2007-2008 year (July through June).

The Library, a department of the Yale University Library located in Farmington, Connecticut, forty miles from New Haven, has significant holdings of eighteenth-century prints, drawings, manuscripts, books, and paintings. Fellows in residence also have access to additional materials at Yale, including those at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Yale Center for British Art.

The Library offers visiting fellowships, normally for four weeks, as well as travel grants of lesser duration, to scholars engaged in post-doctoral or equivalent research and to doctoral candidates at the dissertation stage. In a typical year the Library awards up to a dozen fellowships and travel grants.

The visiting fellowships, which include the cost of travel to and from Farmington, provide a stipend of $1,800 per month in addition to accommodation in an eighteenth-century house on site. The travel grants, which vary in duration and amount, also include accommodation. Additional information about the library, its collections, facilities, and programs, may be found at http://www.library.yale.edu/walpole/

To apply for a fellowship or travel grant, candidates should send a curriculum vitae, including educational background, professional experience and publications, and a brief outline of the research proposal (not to exceed three pages) to: The Librarian, The Lewis Walpole Library, 154 Main Street, Farmington, CT 06032, USA. FAX (860) 677-6369. Two confidential letters of recommendation are also required by the application deadline, which is January 12, 2007. Awards will be announced in March.

Additional information may be obtained by email: walpole@yale.edu.

News of Members

Barbara Benedict (English, Trinity College), is the co-editor, with Deidre Le Faye, of a new edition of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Professor Benedict is the author of several forthcoming publications, including "The Trouble with Things: Objects and the Commodification of Value," to be published in Blackwell's Companion to Jane Austen, eds. Claudia L. Johnson and Clara Tuite (Blackwell, 2007); and "Encounters with the Object: Advertisements, Time, and Literary Discourse in the Early Eighteenth-Century Thing-Poem," forthcoming in Eighteenth-Century Studies 40:2 (Winter, 2006).

Lisa Berglund (English, Buffalo State University) has published "Teaching Book History on the Road," in Teaching Book History, Textual Criticism and Bibliography. Ed. Ann Hawkins. ( Pickering & Chatto, 2006).

Elizabeth Blood (Foreign Languages, Salem State College), is the co-author, with Yasmina Mobarek, of the intermediate French textbook Intrigue: langue, culture et mystere dans le monde francophone, which has recently been released in a second edition (Prentice-Hall, 2007).

Carmen Depasquale (French, University of Malta) has published an edition and translation (with introduction and notes) of Joseph de Fassion de Sainte-Jay's Le Commandeur dans sa famille, (Malta: Agenda, 2005). Dr. Depasquale has also published several articles recently, including "Voyageurs, corsaires, caravanistes: aventures en mer, spectacle dans les ports," in The Northern Mariner/ Le marin du Nord (April 2005), the Journal of the Canadian Nautical Research Society; "Le theatre a Malte au XVIIIe siecle," in Mediterana (2006); "Books and Libraries in Eighteenth-century Malta," in Celebratio amicitiae, Essays in honour of Giovanni Bonello, ed. Maroma Camilleri-Theresa Valla, Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti (Malta: Midsea Books Limited, 2006).

Christopher Fauske (Salem State College), the organizer of our 2006 Annual Meeting, has been promoted to Associate Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and serves on the board of the the New England Educational Assessment Network. In Spring 2007, Cross Cultural Communications will publish Dean Fauske's translation from the Norwegian of Alexander Kielland's Skipper Worse.

A commemorative issue of The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation in memory of the late J. Douglas Canfield (1941-2003) has just been released. Sharon Harrow (English: Shippensburg University) edited the collection and wrote the introduction.

Ann A. Huse (English, John Jay College, CUNY) has published "Pox Britannica: The French Disease in the Age of Rochester" in Textual Healing: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Medicine, edited by Elizabeth Lane Furdell (Brill, 2005).

"The Nature of Fallen Things: Another Look at Lucretius and A Tale of a Tub," presented by Christopher Johnson (English, Francis Marion University) at the 2004 Annual Meeting of NEASECS in Burlington, will be published this year in Swift Studies. Professor Johnson will present another paper, "Well, Bless his Heart: Teaching Fielding in the American South" at Henry Fielding in Our Time: A Tercentenary Conference of His Birth, University of London, April, 2007.

Guillemette Johnston (Modern Languages, DePaul University) presented her paper "Rousseau's Dialogues and Individuation: A Jungian Analysis" to the Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies in Toronto, Ontario in June 2006.

Seeing High and Low: Representing Social Conflict in American Visual Culture, edited by Patricia Johnston (Art, Salem State College), has been published by the University of California Press. The book includes 15 original essays by well known scholars of American art; each essay looks at the representation of a crucial issue in American history and its representation in a variety of popular and elite arts.

Beverly Lemire (History, University of Alberta) is the author of The Business of Everyday Life: Gender, Practice & Social Politics in England, 1600-1900 (Manchester University Press, 2005).

Mira Morgenstern (Political Science, CUNY) is the author of "Crossing Lines: Rousseau and the Creation of Community" forthcoming in Historical Reflections/Reflexions historiques.

Janet E. Mullin (PhD Candidate in History, University of New Brunswick) will be a Visiting Fellow at the Yale Center for British Art in January 2007.

Maureen E. Mulvihill (Princeton Research Forum) is Advisory Editor, Encyclopedia of Irish-American Relations, 3 vols (ABC-Clio, early 07), to which she also contributed articles on Sir Michael Smurfit, Mary Robinson, and Donald Keough. Dr. Mulvihill will speak on this project at the upcoming American Conference for Irish Studies in New York City in 2007. Her publications have appeared in recent issues of Restoration, Seventeenth-Century News, and In Restoration & l8thC Theatre Research. Reading Early Modern Women, eds Ostovich & Sauer (Routledge 04) she has published chapters on Mary Villiers ['Ephelia'] and on Mary Beale's portrait of Behn. She was the introductory speaker at Dr Beverly Schneller's Anna Parnell lecture (American Irish Historical Society, NYC 2005) and also read from the letters of A.E. at Declan Foley's A.E. Forum (NY Yeats Soc., NYC 2005). Dr Mulvihill was a visiting professor at St John's University since Fall, 2005. She is at work on a new book, on Irishwomen's political texts, pre-1801, the subject of her recent papers, with exhibits, at the American Conference for Irish Studies and at the Society for Textual Scholarship conference.

Ruth Perry (English and Women's Studies, MIT) has received a NEH fellowship 2006-2007 for a work in progress, a biography of Anna Gordon Brown: The Finest Ballads: A Biography of Anna Gordon Brown. Professor Perry will be a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, Edinburgh, summer 2007; a plenary speaker at David Nichol Smith symposium, Dunedin, Otago, N.Z. April, 2007; and the Henrietta Harvey Distinguished Lecturer, Memorial University Newfoundland, October 2007. Among her recent publications are "Kinship in Clarissa," in Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Samuel Richardson, ed. Lisa Zunshine and Jocelyn Harris, MLA, 2006, pp. 156-61; and "Deserted Villages, Kindly Landlords, and Overdetermined Marriages in Eighteenth-Century England," in New Windows on a Woman's World: Festschrift for Jocelyn Harris, English Department, University of Otago, N.Z., 2006.

Adam Potkay (English, William and Mary ) has published "Joy and Happiness" in Companion to the Eighteenth-Century Novel and Culture, ed. Paula Backsheider and Catherine Ingrassia (Blackwell, 2006).

Katherine Quinsey (English, University of Windsor) has a number of publications forthcoming, including "No Christians Thirst for Gold! Religion and Colonialism in Pope," shortly to appear in Historical Reflections / Reflections Historiques, and "Satire, and Providence, and Pope," in "Sublimer Aspects": Interfaces between Literature, Aesthetics, and Theology, forthcoming from Cambridge Scholars Press. Dr Quinsey has been awarded a University of Windsor Humanities Research Fellowship for 2007, to aid in completion of her major project, Tempting Grace: The Religious Imagination of Alexander Pope.

Steven Scherwatzky (English, Merrimack College) is the author of "Samuel Johnson's Augustinianism Revisited" in The Age of Johnson (2006).

Norbert Schurer (English, California State University at Long Beach) was featured as a "New Scholar" at the annual meeting of the Bibliographical Society of America with the paper "Four Catalogues of the Lowndes Circulating Library, 1755-1766" in January 2006 (in the Woods Room at Christie's at Rockefeller Center in New York). A revised version of that talk will be appearing in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America next year.

Gina Walker (Social Sciences, The New School) is the author of Mary Hays (1759-1843): The Growth of a Woman's Mind, to be published by Ashgate (2006). Professor Walker is also the editor of The Idea of Being Free: A Mary Hays Reader (Broadview, 2006).

Jack Russell Weinstein (Philosophy, University of North Dakota) has published "Sympathy, Difference, and Education: Social Unity in the Work of Adam Smith," in Economics and Philosophy (2006). In 2005, Professor Weinstein received tenure and promotion and became the father of a daughter.

Calhoun Winton (English, University of Maryland) has published four entries in the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2005): on Richard Steele, Joseph Mitchell, and the two printers Samuel Keimer and William Bradford.

NEASECS 2006: Salem State College, Massachusetts, November 9-12, 2006

Johnson and the Theatre Conference

"The Long Eighteenth" on Blogspot

BSECS 36th Annual Conference, 3-5 January 2007 - St. Hugh's College, Oxford, U.K.

Samuel Johnson Tercentenary 2009

Carpet Industry Archives, Kidderminster

The Mental World of Restoration England: A Spring Faculty Weekend Seminar directed by Annabel Patterson (Yale University)

Eighteenth Century Studies Research Fellowships at the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

News of Members