WSG Seminars – Page 16 – Women's Studies Group 1558

Cfp: WSG Seminars 2016-2017

UPDATE: 13 April 2016. We are delighted to announce that a fourth date has been added to our seminar series: we will now also be meeting on 18 March 2017, with a focus on work in progress.

WSG is issuing its annual cfp. Please note potential topics and the change of seminar dates to the 3rd Saturday in each month.

The Women’s Studies Group: 1558-1837 is a small, informal multi-disciplinary group formed to promote women’s studies in the early modern period and the long eighteenth century. The group organises regular meetings and an annual workshop.

WSG membership is open to men and women, graduate students, faculty, and independent scholars. Papers can be any length up to 25 minutes, and can be formal or informal, or even work in progress. The papers are followed by very supportive and informal discussion. Speakers are strongly encouraged to become members of WSG.

Topics can be related to any aspect of women’s studies:

Not only women writers, but any activity of a woman or women in the period of our concern, anything that affects or is affected by women in this period, such as the law, religion, etc
Male writers writing about women or male historical figures relevant the condition of women in this period
Papers tackling aspects of women’s studies within or alongside the wider histories of gender and sexuality are particularly welcome
Topics from the early part of our period are also especially welcome
Work in progress is invited for the March session.

Venue: Foundling Museum, 40 Brunswick Square, WC1N 1AZ
Dates: Saturday 17th September, 2016, Saturday 19th November, 2016, Saturday 21st January, 2017, Saturday 18th March, 2017.

We will be allowed into the room at 12.30 pm, to give us time sort out paperwork and technology, but sessions will run from 1.00 – 4.00pm. So please arrive a little early if you can. Please reply to WSG Seminars Organiser Carolyn D. Williams on cdwilliamslyle@aol.com.

Reminder: WSG Seminar Jan 2016

Update: 29 January 2016:

Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances, Chrisy Dennis is unable to give her paper at our seminar tomorrow. The rest of the programme remains unchanged, and we hope to invite Chrisy back to talk on Mary Robinson at a later date. Apologies for any inconvenience.

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The third WSG seminar of the academic year will take place in just over a week’s time at the Foundling Museum. Directions for getting to the Museum can be found here. Doors open after 12.30pm with the session starting promptly at 1, and tea, coffee and biscuits at about 2.30pm. Non-members who wish to attend the seminar are very welcome to come but will be asked to make a small donation for refreshments.

For the January session seminars organiser Carolyn Williams has scheduled papers on queens, singers, and writers. WSG are also very pleased that Chrisy Dennis, who couldn’t make it in November, will present her paper at this session. As ever, attendees are also encouraged to visit the current Foundling exhibition (free!), which in January is about illustrators of orphans from the eighteenth-century to the present day.

Saturday 30th January 2016, 1-4pm, Foundling Museum
Chair: Lois Chaber

Valerie Schutte, ‘Pre-accession Printed Book Dedications to Mary and Elizabeth Tudor’
This paper will offer a comparison of the printed book dedications received by Mary and Elizabeth Tudor before each woman became queen. This analysis will demonstrate how each royal sibling was connected to early book culture and how that interplayed with her course of education.

Brianna Elyse Robertson-Kirkland, ‘Venanzio Rauzzini (1746-1810) and his female operatic students’
Venanzio Rauzzini, an Italian castrato, was described by The Monthly Mirror in 1807 as ‘the father of a new style of English singing and a new race of singers’, and lists a number of the most esteemed opera singers of the period as his students, including Nancy Storace and Elizabeth Billington.

Sarah Oliver, ‘From Rape to Desire: Mary Hays’s Revision of the Love Theme and Jane Austen’s “New” Heroines’
The discussion argues that fictional representations of female sexual desire were problematic for women writers in the Long Eighteenth Century, until Radical writers including Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Hays re-worked the theme.

Chrisy Dennis, ‘“We were born to grace society: but not to be its slaves”: Chivalry and Revolution in Mary Robinson’s Hubert de Sevrac, A Romance of the Eighteenth Century (1796)’
Mary Robinson’s Romance, written during a period of anti-revolutionary backlash in England, overtly criticises the patriarchal order that pervades Europe. It offers the reader a new family dynamic – one that is based on equality.

Reminder: WSG November Seminar 2015

The second WSG seminar of the academic year will take place in just over a week’s time at the Foundling Museum. Directions for getting to the Museum can be found here. Doors open after 12.30pm with the session starting promptly at 1, and tea, coffee and biscuits at about 2.30pm. Non-members who wish to attend the seminar are very welcome to come but will be asked to make a donation for refreshments.

For the November session seminars organiser Carolyn Williams has scheduled papers on knowledge work, discipline and rebellion. It promises to be a stirring discussion and will provide an interesting counterpart to the Foundling’s current exhibition, The Fallen Woman in Victorian Britain.

Saturday 28th November 2015, 1-4pm, Foundling Museum
Chair: Felicity Roberts

Tita Chico, ‘Knowledge Seduction’
In this talk, I argue that the circulation of and belief in natural philosophy in the long eighteenth century can be understood through the logic of seduction, a well-established topos in literary history.

Andrew McInnes, ‘Resistant Readers in Sarah Fielding’s The Governess’
This presentation explores how the act of interpretation is portrayed in didactic children’s literature of the eighteenth century, allowing a glimpse of indiscipline in works which have otherwise been read as straightforwardly disciplinary.

Reminder: WSG September Seminar 2015

The first WSG seminar of the new academic year will take place in just over a week’s time. This will be the first in WSG’s new home, the Foundling Museum. Directions for getting to the Museum can be found here. Doors open after 12.30pm with the session starting promptly at 1, and tea, coffee and biscuits at about 2.30pm. Non-WSG members who wish to attend the seminar are welcome to come but will be asked to make a donation for refreshments.

For the September session seminars organiser Carolyn Williams has serendipitously gathered together a number of papers with musical and collecting themes, which chimes well with the Foundling’s own history. The Museum was founded to tell the story of the Foundling Hospital, the first charity for children in Britain. One of its first major supporters was the composer George Frideric Handel, and today the Museum holds an important archive related to his life and works, and holds a regular music programme.

Saturday 26th September 2015, 1-4pm, Foundling Museum
Chair: Angela Escott

Diana Ambache, ‘Women composers of the late 18th century’
This paper presents two Enlightenment composers. Sophia Dussek (1775-1830) was part of the lively musical scene in London. Marianne Martinez (1744-1812) wrote the 1st classical Symphony by a woman.

Paula Higgins, ‘Suppressing the Suppression of Fanny Hensel: Textual Ellipsis and Other Signs of Biographical Censorship’
A tell-tale sign of the longstanding gender politics in which Fanny Hensel (1805-1847) and her quest for musical authorship have become enmeshed are repeated attempts on the part of biographers to shield her brother, Felix Mendelssohn from accusations of thwarting his sister’s ambitions.

Elizabeth Weinfield, ‘Isabella d’Este: Patronage, Performance, and the Viola da Gamba’
This paper will explore Isabella d’Este (1474-1539) and her role as a major patron of music in Renaissance Italy.

Arlene Leis, ‘Sarah Sophia Banks as a Collector’
This talk will focus on the rich paper collections amassed by Sarah Sophia Banks (1744-1818), now housed in the British Museum and British Library.

WSG seminars 2015-2016 announced

Anonymous, trade card, paper, c1760, collected by Sarah Sophia Banks. BM D,2.3603. — Anonymous, trade card, paper, c1760, collected by Sarah Sophia Banks. British Museum D,2.3603. © The Trustees of the British Museum

The Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837 is pleased to announce its seminar schedule for the forthcoming academic year. Seminars will take place at the Foundling Museum, London, WC1N 1AZ, and start promptly at 1pm, finishing at about 4. Tea and biscuits are provided. Why not arrive early and see the Foundling’s current exhibition, or hear a gallery talk?

This year seminars organiser Dr Carolyn Williams has drawn together papers with musical themes, as well as on collecting, natural philosophy, literature, politics, and book history from across WSG’s 16th- to early 19th-century range. Dates and speakers are as follows:

Saturday 26th September, 2015, 1-4pm, Foundling Museum
Diana Ambache, ‘Women composers of the late 18th century’
Professor Paula Higgins, ‘Suppressing the Suppression of Fanny Hensel: Textual Ellipsis and Other Signs of Biographical Censorship’
Dr Arlene Leis, ‘Sarah Sophia Banks as a Collector’

NB Diana Ambache will have CDs of the composers profiled on sale, from £6 to £14.

Saturday 28th November, 2015, 1-4pm, Foundling Museum
Associate Professor Tita Chico, ‘Knowledge Seduction’
Dr Andrew McInnes, ‘Resistant Readers in Sarah Fielding’s The Governess’
Chrisy Dennis, ‘“We were born to grace society: but not to be its slaves”: Chivalry and Revolution in Mary Robinson’s Hubert de Sevrac, A Romance of the Eighteenth Century (1796)’

Saturday January 30, 2016, 1-4pm, Foundling Museum
Valerie Schutte, ‘Pre-accession Printed Book Dedications to Mary and Elizabeth Tudor’ (see a publication of Valerie’s here)
Brianna Elyse Robertson-Kirkland, ‘Venanzio Rauzzini (1746 – 1810) and his female operatic students’
Sarah Oliver, ‘From Rape to Desire: Mary Hays’s Revision of the Love Theme and Jane Austen’s “New” Heroines’ (see a publication of Sarah’s here)

For more information, and brief abstracts of the papers, see our current seminars page, like WSG’s facebook page, or follow @WSGUK.