Enfilade

The dates of the conference topic range from 1450 to 1650 — yes, well before even the ‘long eighteenth century’ — but there’s one phrase in the Call for Papers that caught my attention: “topics falling outside of this date range will be considered if a compelling reason for their inclusion can be made.” Details are available here. -CAH

Early Modern Merchants as Collectors
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, 15-16 June 2012

Proposals due by 31 May 2011

In 1615, Vincenzo Scamozzi highlighted the importance in Venice of the merchant-collectors Bartolomeo dalla Nave and Daniel Nijs by including descriptions of their collections in his L’Idea della architettura universale. Scholarship has also moved beyond the consideration of the artist and the patron as the principal protagonists in the history of collecting. As a result, merchants are now being regarded by historians as influential collectors in their own right.

With the 1985 publication of The Origin of Museums, a collection of conference papers edited by Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, the Ashmolean Museum became established as a leading institution for research in the history of collecting. Recently re-opened with innovative galleries displaying objects exploring the theme ‘Crossing Cultures Crossing Time’, the new Ashmolean now affords an opportunity to re-visit the 1985 conference topic and not only to update but also to expand it into this fresh area of research and debate. This interdisciplinary conference will explore early modern merchants as collectors across a wide range of geographical regions and collecting categories, investigating whether there are any patterns connecting these merchant-collectors of the early modern period and what theoretical frameworks can be applied to them. (more…)

Between the ‘Old’ and the ‘New’: Furnishing the Elite Interior 1740-1940
European Social Science History Conference (ESSHC), Glasgow, 11-14 April 2012

Proposals due by 1 May 2011

This ESSHC session examines European and North American market practice in order to address class difference and identification in the lust for the ‘new’ of the eighteenth-century elites and the desire for the ‘old’ amongst the aspirant middle classes thereafter. As Thomas Chippendale asserted in 1762, ‘The Title-Page has already called the following Work, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, as being calculated to assist the one in the Choice, and the other in the Execution of the Designs; which are so contrived, that if no one Drawing should singly answer the Gentleman’s Taste, there will yet be found a Variety of Hints, sufficient to construct a new one’. This suggests that furnishing the elite interior could be a collaborative process between patron and cabinetmaker/upholder, as witnessed in the demand for increasingly novel styles of furniture capable of integration into the new architect-designed interiors of the later eighteenth century.

For the nouveaux riches, or those like the Wynns of Nostell Priory and the Lascelles family of Harewood House whose wealth increased dramatically as the century progressed, taste (and thus class identity) was best expressed through the acquisition of fine art, furniture and other items to fill their new town and country houses. Once such families became part of the Establishment, with associated titles and influence, their original consumption practices became the model for the next generation of arrivisti and their ‘new’ objects became the desirable ‘antiques’ of the nineteenth century. (more…)

English Catholic Women Writers, 1660-1829
Special Issue of Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, edited by Anna Battigelli and Laura M. Stevens

Abstracts due by 1 June 2011

This special issue of Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature will focus on English Catholic women’s imaginative work as it was inflected by Catholicism or through self-identification with a Catholic minority culture during the long eighteenth century. Articles on eighteenth-century Catholic women from the British Isles, including exiled English women working abroad or in the colonies, are sought exploring topics including, though not limited to, the following:

1. the strategies English Catholic women used to express, promote, or protect their faith
2. the intersections of gender and faith, particularly in the face of anti-Catholic polemic equating all Catholics with women or with the feminine
3. women’s education
4. the role of religious houses or religious orders within literary texts or as sites of literary or artistic production
5. the reciprocal influence of Anglo-Catholic culture and Gothic literature
6. Catholic women’s political engagement as Torries or Jacobites
7. their literary, artistic, or political responses to the Catholicism of the Restoration Court, the Stuart kings, the Revolution of 1688, the Whig ascendancy, or Catholic emancipation
8. their representation of English national history or English national identity
9. their participation in the minority press.

Most of the essays will concentrate on women writers, but proposals for essays on other forms of women’s imaginative work, particularly the visual and domestic arts, are welcome. All essays should be informed by the rich repository of recent work in early modern Catholic studies. Articles should not exceed 25 pages (6250 words) and should conform to the 15th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. All submissions should be in Microsoft Word. Initial queries and abstracts are encouraged, though final acceptance will be determined by the completed essay. Please send abstracts by June 1, 2011 and final submissions via e-mail by September 1, 2011 to both: Anna Battigelli (SUNY, Plattsburgh), a.battigelli@att.net AND Laura M. Stevens (editor, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, University of Tulsa), laura-stevens@utulsa.edu

New Edited Collection on Women in Eighteenth-Century Scotland
Proposals due by 18 April 2011

The eighteenth century looms large in the Scottish imagination. It is a century that saw the doubling of the population, rapid urbanisation, industrial growth, the political Union of 1707, the Jacobite Rebellions and the Enlightenment – events that were intrinsic to the creation of the modern nation and to putting Scotland on the international map. The impact of the era on modern Scotland can be seen in the numerous buildings named after the luminaries of the period –Adam Smith, David Hume, William Robertson, the endorsement of Robert Burns as the national poet/ hero, the preservation of the Culloden battlefield as a tourist attraction, and the physical geographies of its major towns. Yet, while it is a century that remains central to modern constructions of national identity, it is a period associated with men. Until recently, the history of women in eighteenth-century Scotland, with perhaps the honourable exception of Flora McDonald, remained unwritten. Over the last decade however, research on women and gender in Scotland has flourished and we have an increasingly full picture of women’s lives at all social levels across the century. As a result, this is an appropriate moment to reflect on what we know about Scottish women during the eighteenth century, to ask how their history affects the traditional narratives of the period, and to reflect on the implications for a national history of Scotland and Scottish identity. (more…)

From the APAHAU blog:

Special Issue of Histoire de l’Art — Future Directions
Proposals due 2 May 2011; finished articles due 1 September 2011

La reconsidération du champ et des objets de l’histoire de l’art depuis les années soixante-dix, comme l’apparition et le développement d’approches théoriques nouvelles dans cette discipline, ont conduit à une transformation de nos pratiques, voire à leurs redéfinitions au sein des sciences humaines et sociales. Parmi elles, la tendance récente à embrasser la production visuelle au sens large et à revendiquer les expérimentations théoriques et pratiques propre aux études visuelles fait émerger de nouvelles interrogations.

A quels défis l’histoire de l’art se confronte-t-elle en participant de ce mouvement général qui appréhende globalement les œuvres – pour la plupart sacralisées par l’institution muséale – et l’ensemble des images et des objets qui se prêtent plus trivialement au regard et à la manipulation ? Dans cette reconfiguration des humanités (visual turn), quelle pourrait être la place de l’histoire de l’art ? Comment peut-elle ou doit-elle asseoir son rôle éventuel de moteur des visual studies sur sa pratique traditionnelle, d’autant qu’il s’agit sans doute de la discipline la plus à même de mettre en évidence la façon, dont les mondes visuels s’informent les uns les autres ? Enfin, face à cette nouvelle donne, l’histoire de l’art sera-t-elle à l’avant-poste des sciences de l’homme et de la société, ou, au contraire, sujette à une forme de dilution ? (more…)

Bluestockings: The Social Network
Swansea University, 3-4 June 2011

Proposals due by 14 March 2011

This colloquium is the first in a series initiated by an AHRC-funded network whose purpose is to set in motion a project to edit Elizabeth Montagu’s letters. The c. 8,000 letters of the ‘Queen of the Bluestockings’ (1718-1800) have been described by Barbara Schnorrenberg as “among the most important surviving collections from the eighteenth century.” The Steering Committee comprises Caroline Franklin (Swansea), Elizabeth Eger (King’s, London), Nicole Pohl (Oxford Brookes), and Michael Franklin (Swansea) and our ultimate aim is a complete critical edition in electronic format, providing unparalleled access to these documents.

Our colloquium Bluestockings: The Social Network will be held on 3-4 June 2011 at Swansea University and the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea, featuring keynote lectures by Professor Betty Schellenberg and Professor Felicity Nussbaum. In attempting to diversify and extend our own network, we invite the contributions of editors and scholars working on aspects of bluestocking culture from a variety of disciplinary approaches, including history, literature, classics, politics, economics, linguistics, art, architecture and women’s studies. Possible themes and topics might include: the chief salonnières and their correspondents and how this interchange effected, in the words of David Hume, “the increase of arts, pleasures, and social commerce”; the distinctions between friendship, patronage and love; the role of letters in bridging distances. Consideration of the mixture of informality, intimacy and rivalry which characterized these overlapping networks of conversation, correspondence, criticism, and patronage will undoubtedly further the social and intellectual progress of our own twenty-first-century network. We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers. Please send abstracts of approximately 200 words to both Caroline Franklin c.franklin@swansea.ac.uk and Elizabeth Eger elizabeth.eger@kcl.ac.uk by 14 March 2011.