Category: WSG Members

Reminder: Two WSG Seminars This Week

Zoom Seminar

Thursday 16 January, 2025 – ZOOM

STARTING 6.45 FOR 7 PM, FINISHING 8.30 PM. GREENWICH MEAN TIME

Speakers and papers:

Jasmin Bieber: Unprecedented Paths Beyond Europe: British Women’s Travel Writing 1680-1780.

Chandni (Anjali) Rampersad: Female Genius In Memoriam: Women Writers’ Afterlife in the Gentleman’s Magazine (1731-1806).

Rosalyn Sklar: Healing women: Early modern women as healers in their own texts, practices and representations.

The seminar will take place on Zoom. Please be aware, you must be a member of the WSG to gain access to the Zoom sessions. The links are distributed through our WSG mailing list 24-hours before the event.

For further information, please see our seminars page.  To join the WSG, please see our membership page.

Special Seminar Travellers in Eighteenth-Century Europe: The Sexes Abroad

Saturday 18 January, 2025 – FOUNDLING MUSEUM, LONDON

STARTING 1 FOR 1.30 PM, FINISHING 4.30 PM GREENWICH MEAN TIME

The Women’s Studies Group will be holding a special seminar at the Foundling Museum in London on 18 January 2025, from 1.30pm to 4.30pm. Come along and listen to Julie Peakman introduce a new edited collection, Travellers in Eighteenth-Century Europe: The Sexes Abroad.

Julie and contributors from the book will give short talks on their chapters. Speakers include Valentina Aparicio, Maria Grazia Dongu, Louise Duckling, Miriam al Jamil, and Teresa Rączka-Jeziorska. Please see the attached PDF for more details and the full book contents.

There will be plenty of time for sociability, so we hope you can join us. Friends and partners are welcome. Please RSVP to wsgpostbox@gmail.com with ‘Travellers’ in the Subject Line and please indicate if you are bringing a guest.

The Foundling is a wheelchair accessible venue, and directions for getting to the Museum can be found here, including for those who are partially sighted.

Come and join us for a glass of wine at this social event.

Call for Papers: Adapting the Tudors: From Novels to Film to Public History

WSG member and historian Valerie Schutte is co-editing an exciting new two-volume collection with Jessica S. Hower and William B. Robison that explores how the Tudor period has been adapted across various media and forms. This timely collection comes as Tudor-themed adaptations continue to captivate audiences, from the National Portrait Gallery’s recent Six Lives exhibition to new screen productions like Firebrand and Shardlake.

The editors welcome submissions examining any aspect of Tudor adaptation, from historical novels and screen adaptations to museum exhibits and heritage sites. The collection aims to investigate how history is adapted for public audiences and what these adaptations reveal about both the Tudor period and the times in which they were created.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Historical novelists and their works, focused on the Tudor period
  • Screen adaptations of Tudor-themed novels
  • Theatrical adaptations
  • Historians who have ventured into historical fiction
  • Museum exhibitions and heritage sites
  • Digital adaptations, including virtual exhibitions and video games

Submission Guidelines:

  • Abstract length: 250-300 words
  • Chapter length: approximately 7,500 words
  • Deadline: Friday, 31 January 2025
  • Full contributions due: early 2026
  • Please include a brief academic CV (max 3 pages)

Submit abstracts to all three co-editors:

This collection promises to be an essential resource for academics, students, and enthusiasts of Tudor history and its contemporary interpretations.

For the complete CFP and further details, please see the full CFP: Adapting the Tudors

Do not miss this opportunity to contribute to this significant collection—remember to submit your abstract by Friday, 31 January 2025.

Special Seminar Travellers in Eighteenth-Century Europe: The Sexes Abroad

The Women’s Studies Group will be holding a special seminar at the Foundling Museum in London on 18 January 2025, from 1.30pm to 4.30pm. Come along and listen to Julie Peakman introduce a new edited collection, Travellers in Eighteenth-Century Europe: The Sexes Abroad.

Julie and contributors from the book will give short talks on their chapters. Speakers include Valentina Aparicio, Maria Grazia Dongu, Louise Duckling, Miriam al Jamil, and Teresa Rączka-Jeziorska. Please see the attached PDF for more details and the full book contents.

There will be plenty of time for sociability, so we hope you can join us. Friends and partners are welcome. Please RSVP to wsgpostbox@gmail.com with ‘Travellers’ in the Subject Line and please indicate if you are bringing a guest.

WSG Virtual Reading Group : Her Stories, starting September 2024

The aim of ‘Her Stories’, the new WSG virtual reading group, is to provide an opportunity for members to discuss together a diverse range of literary texts; from novels, to plays and critical texts. Taking our WSG timeline of 1558-1837 as a general guide, there will be 3-4 one hour reading group sessions a year, with participants proposing and selecting the texts in a 30 min pre-meeting at the start of each annual reading group schedule.

Each virtual reading group session will be co-ordinated and facilitated by Karen Lipsedge and will open to all WSG members. The selected text discussed at each session of ‘Her Stories’ will be determined by participants and, thus, the themes and questions raised and discussed will vary accordingly. To ensure that all participants can contribute to each reading group session, however, at the start of each meeting of ‘Her Story’ each participant will share one thing they thought was noteworthy about the selected text. Based on my experience, this strategy serves as an inclusive ice breaker and is also the ideal conversation starter.

If you are interested in taking part in ‘Her Stories’, by Monday 9th September 2024 please contact Karen directly on K.Lipsedge@Kingston.ac.uk. Please also suggest one text that you would like ‘Her Stories’ to discuss in one of the forthcoming sessions.

Here are some of my suggestions for forthcoming sessions of ‘Her Story’

(NB. All of these have accessible versions and links to some of those)

anonymous Eliza’s Babes: or The Virgins–offering (1652)

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy Letters, 1716-18; and 1793 and/or Lady Nugent’s Journal, first published in 1839

The parrot. With A compendium of the times. By the authors of the Female spectator.  1746

Mary Robinson, Walsingham: Or, The Pupil of Nature (1797)

Amanda Vickery, ‘Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women’s History’, The Historical Journal, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Jun., 1993), pp. 383-414.Cambridge University Press

Saidiya Hartman, ‘Venus in Two Acts ‘, Small Axe (2008) 12 (2): 1–14.

The Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837 is pleased to announce the speakers for their seminar series 2024-25

The Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837 is pleased to announce the speakers for their seminar series 2024-25.

*RESCHEDULED* Our first seminar of the year will now take place on Zoom, starting at the earlier time of 5.45 for 6 pm and finishing 7.30 pm British Summer Time on Monday 14 October 2024. This first seminar features the following presentations:

Marion Wynne-Davies: Isabella Whitney and London.

Avantika Pokhriyal: The Sign of the Woman: Reading Spatial Negotiations in Betsy Thoughtless.

Emily C. Cotton: Elite Women’s Agency in Marriage Negotiations, 1742-1788.

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The group has two kinds of meeting for seminars.

In-person seminar meetings. These take place at the Foundling Museum, 40 Brunswick Square, WC1N 1AZ, UK, on Saturday afternoons. We will be allowed into the room at 1.00 pm, to give us time to sort out paperwork and technology, but sessions will run from 1.30 pm – 4.30 pm. Please arrive between 1.00 pm – 1.30 pm. The Foundling is a wheelchair accessible venue, and directions for getting to the Museum can be found here, including for those who are partially sighted. Seminars are free to WSG members. Non-members are welcome and are kindly requested to pay the Museum entrance fee and make a donation of £2 for refreshments. Those attending the seminars are welcome to look round the museum before or after.

ZOOM seminar meetings. These take place on Thursday evenings and will be hosted by a member of the WSG committee. They run from 7.00 pm – 8.30 pm, with the waiting room opening at 6.45 pm. Please be aware, you must be a member of the WSG to gain access to the Zoom sessions. The links are distributed through our WSG mailing list 24-hours before the event.

Download the full programme in PDF format: 

Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837 seminars schedule 2024-25Download

Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837, Seminar Schedule 2024-2025

Monday 14 October 2024

ZOOM STARTING AT THE EARLIER TIME OF 5.45 FOR 6 PM, FINISHING 7.30 PM, BRITISH SUMMER TIME

Marion Wynne-Davies: Isabella Whitney and London.

Avantika Pokhriyal: The Sign of the Woman: Reading Spatial Negotiations in Betsy Thoughtless.

Emily C. Cotton: Elite Women’s Agency in Marriage Negotiations, 1742-1788.

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Saturday 19 October 2024

FOUNDLING MUSEUM, LONDON, 1 FOR 1.30 PM, FINISHING 4.30 PM. BRITISH SUMMER TIME

Lindsey Bauer: The Women of Lucca and Costanza Bonarelli: Why Modern Scholars Cannot Place a Full-Stop after ‘Victim’.

Holly Day: Recontextualising the Nine Living Muses of Great Britain.

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Saturday 9 November 2024

FOUNDLING MUSEUM, LONDON, 1 FOR 1.30 PM, FINISHING 4.30 PM. GREENWICH MEAN TIME.

Margarette Lincoln: Perfection: 400 Years of Women’s Quest for Beauty (Yale: Sept. 2024).

Luiza Tavares da Motta: Alchemy and Galvanism in legal theory: a look at nineteenth-century legitimation of common law through Frankenstein.

Megumi Ohsumi: Aphra Behn’s American Feathers.

Charlotte Vallis: An Empress’ Coronation: public display of gender identity for Elizabeth Petrovna, 1741-1761 and Catherine the Great, 1762-1796.

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Thursday January 16, 2025

ZOOM STARTING 6.45 FOR 7 PM, FINISHING 8.30 PM. GREENWICH MEAN TIME

Jasmin Bieber: Unprecedented Paths Beyond Europe: British Women’s Travel Writing 1680-1780.

Chandni (Anjali) Rampersad: Female Genius In Memoriam: Women Writers’ Afterlife in the Gentleman’s Magazine (1731-1806).

Rosalyn Sklar: Healing women: Early modern women as healers in their own texts, practices and representations.

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Thursday February 6, 2025

ZOOM STARTING 6.45 FOR 7 PM, FINISHING AT 8.30 PM, GREENWICH MEAN TIME

Dra. Pilar Botías Domínguez: ‘‘Masquerading! a lewd custom to debauch our youth’’: compliance and defiance in Aphra Behn’s The Rover (1677).

Amy Solomons and Elizabeth Ingham: Reconstructing Dispersed Collections: The Library of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

Charlotte MacKenzie: Women and knowledge making communities in Georgian Cornwall.

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Saturday March 15, 2025

FOUNDLING MUSEUM, LONDON, 1 FOR 1.30 PM, FINISHING 4.30 PM GREENWICH MEAN TIME

Susannah Lyon-Whaley: Small Enough to Hold: Stuart Consorts and Knowing Nature Through Cabinets, Miniatures, and Books.

Susan Bennett: ‘Fancy, Design and Taste’: Promoting female artistic talent in the 18th.century.

Valentina P Aparicio: Boundaries and Intimacy in Transatlantic Friendships: Maria Graham and Empress Maria Leopoldina.

Breeze Barrington: An introduction to the topic of her forthcoming book The Graces: The Untold Lives of the Women Who Transformed the Stuart Court.

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Thursday 10 April 2025

ZOOM STARTING 6.45 FOR 7 PM, FINISHING AT 8.30 PM, BRITISH SUMMER TIME

Claudia Cristell Maria Berttolini: Saint Gertrude as a female role model in 18th century Puebla de los Ángeles.

Jacqui Grainger: Mary Somerville, the United Service Museum and women of science.

Francesca Saggini: Jane Austen and the Golden Age of Crime Fiction.

For further information including abstracts, see our seminars page, or contact the organiser Carolyn D. Williams, cdwilliamslyle@aol.com. To join the WSG, see our membership page.