Tag: wsg group

WSG SEMINAR SERIES 2026-27: SCHEDULE

To see the abstracts for each of these papers, please click here.

Saturday 17 October 2026

In Person at the Foundling Museum, 1.30pm for 2pm start (BST or GMT +1)

Abigail M. Carr

‘This poor woman’: the importance of compassion and perception for Wet Nurses of the London Foundling Hospital

Amory S. Zhao

The Automated and the Autonomous: Frances Burney’s Scribulerations

Angela Escott

‘I swung and walked a great deal upon deck’; women at sea

Peter Radford

A rediscovered, but untitled, anonymous, and old (but undated) engraving of women playing cricket – the search for its ‘meaning’

Thursday 12 November

ZOOM 6.45pm for 7pm (GMT)

Sara Read

A Physician’s Wife? Revisiting the Biography of the German Princess Using Digital Genealogy

Valerie Schutte

A Comparison of the Coronation Rings of Queens Mary I and Elizabeth I

Ailsa Maxwell 

Women’s Home(work): Creating Sweets and Sausages in Georgian Britain

Saturday 16 January 2027

In Person at the Foundling Museum. 1.45pm for 2pm (GMT)

Luisa Signorelli

Misogyny and Shakespeare’s Eighteenth-Century Women Critics

Dr Jean G-Owen

Poachers in Petticoats: ‘Unwomanly Practices in Rural Britain’

Teresa Jung-Sin Hsie.
The Afterlives of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Eliza Haywood, and the Long Eighteenth Century in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando

Thursday 11 February 2027

ZOOM. 6.45pm for 7pm (GMT)

Francesca Saggini

A pen to correct the imbalance. Metaphors and communicative asymmetries in Frances Burney’s ‘A Mastectomy Letter’

Tabitha Kenlon

A Disabling Education: Gender, Knowledge, and Disability in Fanny Burney’s Camilla

Flávia Varella

Familiar Conversations and Historical Learning in Elizabeth Penrose and Elizabeth Helme

Saturday 20 March 2027

In Person at the Foundling Museum. 1.45pm for 2pm (GMT)

Mary Nevin

At the Hearth of Taste, Propriety, and Decorum: Female Consumers and the Eighteenth-Century Chimneypiece

Laura Granda-Mateu

Ladies of Liverpool and their lost collections: natural history knowledge-making in the North West, c. 1768–1837

Eszter Kovácz

Anne Conway and Ancient Wisdom

Thursday 29 April 2027

ZOOM. 6.45pm for 7pm (BST or GMT+1)

Elisabetta Marino

Not Just ‘the Mother of…’: Frances Trollope and the Beginning of Her Literary Career

Laura Giuliano.

Writing Art Across Borders: British Women Travellers, Artistic Identity, and Cultural Comparison in Eighteenth-Century Italy

Adriana Marinelli (Parthenope University of Naples)

Reclaiming Parthenope: Women Travellers and the Neapolitan Myth of the Siren

WSG ‘Her Stories’ Reading Group: Upcoming session

Reading for WSG reading group session on 28th October, 7–8pm 2025 (GMT)

Frances Brooke’s The History of Emily Montague (Jasmin Bieber’s suggestion).

Please see the WSG October Newsletter for the Zoom link.

All WSG members are welcome to join this session, co-ordinated and facilitated by Karen Lipsedge.

About the reading:

Jasmin Bieber has kindly prepared a PDF of Brooke’s novel, which will be available to participants. If you cannot manage to read the entire novel, Jasmin recommends prioritising the first half, which takes place in Quebec and introduces intriguing, sensible romance plots. Alternatively, you might read from letter 57 to letter 177, which covers the troubled relationship between the main characters.

How the session will be organised:

Jasmin will begin by sharing why she chose Brooke’s novel and discussing the core themes. As with previous sessions, each participant will then share one thing they found noteworthy about the text.

At this meeting, we will also discuss and plan reading group sessions for December 2025 to October 2026, so please bring your suggestions and diaries.

To participate in ‘Her Stories’:

Contact Karen Lipsedge directly: K.Lipsedge@Kingston.ac.uk

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.

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.

Call for papers from the Women’s Studies Group: 1558-1837 (London)

CFP Deadline: 6 August 2024

The Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837 is a small, informal, multidisciplinary group formed to promote women’s studies in the early modern period and the long eighteenth century. Established in the 1980s, the group has enabled those interested in women’s and gender studies to keep in touch, hear about one another’s research, meetings and publications, and meet regularly to discuss relevant topics. We organize regular meetings and an annual workshop (see membership application form) where members can meet and discuss women’s studies topics. This season we shall also be hosting two book launches for publications by our members. We can offer advice and opportunities to engage in activities that increase opportunities for publication, or enhance professional profiles in other ways. The WSG is open to men, women, and non-binary people, students, faculty, and independent scholars, all of whom are invited to join the group and give papers.

The group now has two kinds of meeting for seminars.

In-person seminar meetings. These will 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 – 4.30 pm. So please arrive a little early if you can.

ZOOM seminar meetings. These will take place on Thursday evenings and will be hosted by a member of the wsg committee. They will run from 7-8.30 pm, with the waiting room opening at 18.45 pm.

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, or 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 to the condition of women in this period are also a potential topic. Papers tackling aspects of women’s studies within or alongside the wider histories of gender and sexuality are particularly welcome; so are topics from the early part of our period. We would also welcome how-to presentations for discussion: examples of suitable topics would include, but are not limited to, grant applications, setting up research networks, becoming a curator, co-authorship, using specialised data, and writing about images. Papers should be 20-25 minutes.

Last year’s titles and abstracts are available on the website seminars page to provide examples of papers accepted in the past. 

Dates of seminar meetings:

Saturday 19 October 2024       In-person 

Saturday 9 November 2024      In-person

Thursday 16 January   2025      ZOOM. 7-8.30 pm, Greenwich Mean Time

Thursday 6 February   2025      ZOOM. 7-8.30 pm, Greenwich Mean Time.

Saturday 15 March     2025       In-person

Thursday 10 April       2025       ZOOM. 7-8.30 pm, British Summer Time

Find out more about us on https://womensstudiesgroup.org

Please reply to Carolyn D. Williams on cdwilliamslyle@aol.com