Category: WSG News

WSG seminar and book launch December 2018

Come and help the Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837 celebrate the launch of their 30th anniversary book, Exploring the Lives of Women!  On 8 December at the Clore room in the Foundling Museum, London, WSG will be holding a one-off edition of one of their winter seminars, featuring a special set of 3 papers, ‘Women’s and Gender Studies in 2018 and Beyond’, followed by the book launch.  Booking for this seminar is now open on eventbrite. Reserve your place to join us for three stimulating papers, a glass of bubbly or a soft drink and an opportunity to peruse the new book.*  Hardback copies will be available for purchase on the day at the special pre-order price of £15.99 and editors and contributors will be there to sign or dedicate your copy. It would make an ideal Christmas present…

Speakers are:

  • Louise Duckling on ‘Exploring the Lives of Women, 1558-1837: A Journey in Images’
  • Bernadette Andrea on ‘‘English Daughters’ in Eighteenth-Century Morocco: Abjection and Assimilation in the Narratives of Thomas Pellow and Elizabeth Marsh’
  • Felicity Roberts on ‘The Academic Precariat: Writing Women’s History Now’

The Foundling Museum, 40 Brunswick Square, WC1N 1AZ, 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 and open to the public, start promptly at 1pm and finish at 4, doors open at 12.30pm, and those attending the seminars are welcome to look round the museum before or after.  This seminar is a parent and baby-friendly event.

*Once you have booked, no printed ticket is necessary to attend this event. Just turn up and give your name. If you are experiencing trouble booking, please email the WSG organisers on wsgpostbox@gmail.com.

*If you are intending to purchase a book, please also indicate to the organisers by emailing wsgpostbox@gmail.com. Please bring cash.

To order a copy online, see our publisher Pen & Sword’s page.

WSG Bursary 2018 now open

In 2016 the Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837 established its bursaries for PhD students, early career researchers or independent scholars who are members of the Group to support their research “in any aspect of women’s studies in the period 1558-1837”.  This year we are pleased to be able to offer two awards again, the first of £500 and the second of £250.  Awards may be made for new or continuing, single-discipline or interdisciplinary projects. Money will be paid on presentation of receipts and the winners will be expected to give a paper at a WSG seminar the following year, or, if based abroad, write a report for the WSG website.

For further information about the bursary, and to apply, please download the application form.  The deadline for applications is November 30th 2018.  Applicants will be notified of the outcome by January 2019. For further information on membership, see here.

 

Madeleine Pelling and Rebecca Simpson awarded WSG bursaries

The WSG is pleased to announce it has awarded bursaries of £500 to Madeleine Pelling and £250 t0 Rebecca Simpson, both doctoral researchers at the University of York.  Last year the inaugural bursary was won by Charmian Mansell.

Madeleine is a final-year PhD candidate in History of Art at the University of York.  She will use the award to travel to the John Rylands Library where she will be researching the friendship between Horace Walpole and lesser-known bluestocking Mary Hamilton.  She tweets as @MaddyPelling.

Rebecca Simpson is a PhD candidate in English Literature at the University of York.  She works on narratives of pregnancy and will use the award to transcribe MSS in the Douglas papers at the Hunterian Museum and Glasgow University Special Collections, which include the Mary Toft (‘rabbit births’) confessions.  She tweets as @rebellsimpson.

The WSG bursaries are intended to support early career researchers, PhD students and independent scholars research “any aspect of women’s studies in the period 1558-1837”.  Bursaries can be awarded for new or continuing, single or multidisciplinary projects.  They can be used to subsidise any costs incurred by the project.  To be eligible, applicants must be a member of the WSG.  The WSG bursary panel wish to thank all of this year’s applicants for their applications, and encourage those who have been unsuccessful to consider re-applying the following year.

Women’s Studies Group 2017 Anniversary Bursary

Last year, the Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837 offered its first ever bursary to an early career researcher, independent scholar or PhD student who was a member of the Group to  “support research in any aspect of women’s studies in the period 1558-1837”.  The bursary was very popular, we had many applications and so this year we are pleased to be able to offer it again, but this time to make two awards, the first of £500 and the second of £250.  The money will be paid on presentation of receipts and the winners will be expected to give a paper at a WSG seminar the following year, or, if based abroad, write a report for the WSG website.

The grant may be awarded for a new or continuing interdisciplinary or single-discipline project.  For further information about the bursary, and to apply, please download the application form.  The deadline for applications is November 30th 2017.  Applicants will be notified of the outcome by January 2018. For further information on membership, see here.

 

WSG 30th Anniversary Commonplace Book

As regular readers of this blog will know, the WSG is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2017 (the date is a little bit hazy – it was so long ago! – but it is generally agreed that our panel at BSECS 1987 was our first meaningful action). As part of the celebrations, WSG has not only instituted a bursary, but is in the process of compiling and editing a volume intended to be a reflection of its members’ 30 years of research and activism.  Edited by Carolyn Williams, Sara Read and Louise Duckling and with a working title of the Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837 Commonplace Book, it will comprise a mixture of short research articles, reminiscences, interviews and poems by members past and present.  Those interested in the upcoming book can get a taste of it by listening to Elaine Hobby, Professor of Seventeenth-Century Studies at Loughborough University and a long-time associate of WSG, in conversation with Sara Read in a separate blog post later this month.

Commonplacing was a common knowledge-making practice during the early modern period whereby people would write short extracts or digests from their reading into books under topical headings.  These could be poetry, prose, quotations, proverbs, letters and prayers, which the compiler could then reference and recombine.  Books could be kept for pragmatic as well as recreational reasons.  Men such as Francis Bacon and John Locke famously wrote about and kept commonplace books, but women kept them too, and in recent years much work has been done on a closely related genre, the recipe book, to which the whole household might contribute.  Some thought the practice of commonplacing a cause for concern, because it would encourage superficial reading.

The commonplace book as a discursive practice arguably reached its peak during the early modern period but commonplacing is by its very nature also highly personal and has continued in various forms into the Romantic period and the present day.  WSG’s Commonplace Book will be a printed rather than manuscript form, but it will reflect the collaborative, interdisciplinary, unruly, highly mobile forms of interaction and support WSG has encouraged over the years. We hope to see it published in 2018.