Michaelmas Term 2012

Alternate Tuesdays, 12.30-14.30 during term time,
CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground Floor

Thinking Things
Tuesday, 9 Oct 2012
Jonathan Lamb (Vanderbilt University) and Elizabeth Eger (King’s College London)

Worshipping Things
Tuesday, 23 Oct 2012
Mary Laven (University of Cambridge) and Maia Nuku (University of Cambridge)

Stilling Things
Tuesday, 6 Nov 2012
Hanneke Grootenboer (Oxford) and Joserra Marcaida Lopez (Cambridge)

Curing Things
Tuesday, 20 Nov 2012
Simon Chaplin (Wellcome Library) and Christelle Rabier (London School of Economics)

Open to all. No registration required

INTERDISCIPLINARY EARLY MODERN SEMINAR
Seminars are held in St. Catharine’s College OCR,
1.30 – 3pm (unless otherwise indicated).
Tea, coffee and biscuits are served.
All welcome!

MICHAELMAS TERM
10th October: Roundtable discussion on Diaries: What are the
implications of using diaries as sources? How are they useful
and how are they problematic?
Brief presentations from Simon Healy (History of Parliament), Cassie Gorman (English) and John Galagher (History).

24th October: 17th Century London: Public Spaces, Public Presence
Michelle Wallis (History and Philosophy of Science), ‘“A Favourable Construction Upon this Public Way of Practice”: Handbill Advertisements and the Medical Marketplace of Early Modern England’ and Kristen Klebba
(History), ‘For the Recreation of Our People’: Civic Culture, Merchant Elites and the Emergence of London’s Moorfields’.

7th November: Dr Adam Smyth (Birkbeck, London), ‘Scissors and Bibles at
Little Gidding’.

21st November: Dr Eoin Devlin (Selwyn College), ‘Restoring Catholic
England: Lord Castlemaine’s Mission to Papal Rome’.

For further details, or for the full 2012-13 programme, please contact:
Liesbeth Corens (lc495) Phoebe Dickerson (pd291)
Charles Drummond (cd432)

Thursdays at 5:30pm, room SR-24, Faculty of English, 9 West Road

Thursday 11 October

Andrew Zurcher, ‘Spenser’s Vomit: Imitation, Language, Materiality’

There are three short optional pre-readings for this seminar–download them here, here and here

Thursday 8 November

Abigail Brundin and Dunstan Roberts, ‘Italian books in an English great house library: The case of Belton House in Lincolnshire’

All welcome. Wine & soft drinks will be served at the start of the seminar.

For more information, please contact Jason Scott-Warren (jes1003@cam.ac.uk), Andrew Zurcher (aez20@cam.ac.uk) or Dunstan Roberts (dcdr2@cam.ac.uk)

From Adam Mars-Jones’ review of the latest Ian McEwan, in the London Review of Books:

“Any residual nastiness in the new novel Sweet Tooth has been curiously displaced, onto the cover of the book. I don’t mean the photographic image, which shows a glamorous woman in a red dress … I mean the texture of the actual lamination used on the dust jacket, almost sticky yet almost slimy, creating a subliminal urge to wash the hands that have been in contact with it. This is an effect no ebook can hope to duplicate.’

Perhaps someone from the publishers (Cape) could tell us how the effect was achieved, and whether it was intended or just a happy accident?

for all those who contributed to the ‘Texts and Textiles’ conference earlier this week. An opportunity to reconnect head with hand, the fabric of language with the language of fabric, this event drew a wonderfully diverse crowd from across the world. We discussed all manner of topics from all manner of angles, kaleidoscopic interests jostling with dazzling images, extraordinary pieces of textile art, and (in one talk) a slab of flesh quivering under the needle. The conference’s numerous threads were drawn together in a plenary lecture by the anthropologist Tim Ingold that offered a lyrical unfolding of all that the human hand can know. His account of what it takes to make a piece of string was a highlight: simple yet miraculous.

Ahead of next week’s CMT conference on ‘Texts and Textiles’, I thought I’d share this beautiful notebook which was given to me by a friend. The handsewn book has been bound in Shetland wool, knitted in a Fair Isle style, thus combining in one object, as the label above says, two traditional skills. The knitted wool creates an especially tactile surface, quite the opposite of the smooth, glossy covers of mass-produced hardback books. And I like the way that the repeated patterns of dark stitches against a pale background evoke the appearance of written text on a page.

The annual competition for fellowships tenable in the academic year 2013-14 is about to take place, with a closing date for applications of 30 November 2012.

The Research Division welcomes applications both for long-term awards of between 9 and 12 months and for short-term awards of 3 months or less. Among the long-term awards, the division is particularly keen to receive applications for the two Barbara Thom fellowships designed for non-tenured early-career faculty who will use the award to revise their doctoral dissertations into their first monographs. While the Thom fellowships essentially offer successful candidates the time to write, virtually all our other fellowships are aimed at those who wish to make extensive use of our collections. Our peer review committees, which make judgments about the quality and viability of applications, pay particular attention to the Huntington materials on which the applicant intends to work. There is also a separate competition for the Dibner Program in the History of Science and Technology.

More Info

The British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme is now accepting applications for the next round of funding – find out here how to apply. The deadline for the submission of preliminary application forms is 2 November 2012.

Unless action is taken now, much of mankind’s documentary heritage may vanish – discarded as no longer of relevance or left to deteriorate beyond recovery. This website explains what the Endangered Archives Programme is, and how it can help.

Learn about the threat to archives.
Find out more about the scope of the Programme.
Search the Endangered Archives Programme’s Projects.
Browse the Programme’s digital collections.

Grants may be awarded to individual researchers to identify collections that can be preserved for fruitful use. The original archives and the master digital copies will be transferred to a safe archival home in their country of origin, while copies will be deposited at the British Library for use by scholars worldwide.

The Endangered Archives Programme is generously sponsored by Arcadia.

If you know of any collections or cultures that are worthy of investigation, please contact us.

A fascinating media tangle is unfolding in the UK today, as The Sun newspaper goes against the wishes of Buckingham Palace and publishes pictures of a naked Prince Harry that have been widely circulated on the web. The newspaper’s editor pleads the freedom of the press and the public interest; media lawyers deny that there is any public interest in this particular game of strip billiards. Meanwhile radio pundits point out that ‘the genie was out of the bottle’–which strikes me as a lovely metaphor for the internet.

The whole debate is framed by the Leveson Inquiry, an ongoing parliamentary investigation into the malpractices of ‘red-top’ newspapers which, over the past few years, have got many of their most salacious stories through illegal phone-hacking. And it’s given added piquancy by the eternal soap opera of the royal family, which The Sun professes (ma’am!) to hold in the highest esteem. Beyond that, there’s the serious anxiety that newspapers might prove unsustainable in the age of free and instant online content. It’s a right royal mess, but with implications that go far beyond this prince caught with his pants down.

Writing Materials: Women of Letters from Enlightenment to Modernity

V&A Museum in partnership with King’s College London and the Elizabeth Montagu Letters Project (an AHRC-funded research network)
29-30 November 2012

This one and a half day conference will explore the tools and environments of women’s writing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  It aims to create new connections between texts and material objects, connecting intellectual history with its material medium – paper, quills, desks, letter-cases and ink. It takes as its inspiration the figure of Elizabeth Montagu, ‘Queen of the Bluestockings’ (1718-1800), a voracious writer, Shakespeare critic, coal owner, cultural patron and bluestocking salonnière. She placed herself at the centre of several key intellectual, cultural and social networks of her day – frequently securing her position through the display of materials – for example, her famous ‘feathered room’ attracted eminent visitors from poets to princesses.  Hester Thrale described her as ‘brilliant in diamonds, solid in judgement and critical in talk.’  Her Portman Square mansion became an important metropolitan site for the discussion of books and viewing of paintings.

We would like to invite proposals for speakers at a graduate student workshop on material cultures of writing from the Enlightenment to Modernity. We ask you to send in ideas for 5-10-minute presentations inspired by any object in the Victoria and Albert Museum concerned with the material culture of writing. This might include paper, ink, furniture, tools, printers, typewriters and keyboards, spaces and times, the postal system, digital images, friendship, business, privacy and publication. Proposals should not exceed one sheet of A4 and an image of the object should be attached if possible. Your presentation could be in the form of critical and/or creative writing; it could take the form of a missive, letter, journal, blog, email or tweet and it should invite a response from the audience.

Please send your proposals to k.spiller@swansea.ac.uk by 1 September 2012.