Job Post: Teaching Fellow in English Literature

      Comments Off on Job Post: Teaching Fellow in English Literature

University of Birmingham – School of English, Drama and Creative Studies

Salary:  As this vacancy has limited funding the maximum salary that can be offered is Grade 7, salary £36,024.
Closes: 30th June 2024

Contract Type: Fixed Term contract up to August 2025

Role Summary

As full-time Teaching Fellows in the Department of English Literature, the post holders will be expected to teach for approximately 14 hours of timetabled teaching per week at undergraduate and postgraduate level. The post holders will also undertake personal tutoring and supervise undergraduate and postgraduate taught dissertations. The posts will include organisation, management and leadership duties. Successful candidates will have considerable relevant teaching and assessment experience in the fields of 18th and 19th-century British literature and be committed to providing an excellent student learning experience.

Teaching may include modules such as Reading English (Year 1), English in the World (Year 1), Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature (Year 2), Gothic (Year 2), Jane Austen (Year 3), Hidden Romanticism (Year 3), and Dissertation (Year 3), among others. 

There are two posts available. One is fixed-term for one year (1st September 2024 – 31st August 2025) and is funded by external research income. The second post is fixed-term for two years (1st September 2024 – 31st August 2026) and is funded partly by external research income and partly by other non-recurrent funding. 

Person Specification

  • A PhD (or near to completion) in English Literature or related field
  • Experience of teaching students and co-ordinating modules
  • Experience of marking and co-ordinating the assessment of student work in English Literature
  • High level analytical capability
  • Ability to design and deliver module materials successfully
  • Ability to assess and organise resources effectively
  • Understanding of and ability to contribute to broader management/administration processes
  • Knowledge of the protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010, and how to actively ensure in day-to-day activity that those with protected characteristics are treated equally and fairly.

Informal enquires can be made to Professor Rebecca Mitchell, Head of the Department of English Literature, email: R.N.Mitchell@bham.ac.uk 

https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DHY204/teaching-fellow-in-english-literature

BARS Conference 2024 Update: Registration Deadline and Dinners

      Comments Off on BARS Conference 2024 Update: Registration Deadline and Dinners

Dear BARS Members,

We’re now within six weeks of ‘Romantic Making and Unmaking’, so we’re approaching the deadline for registration and are very close to the deadline for the conference dinner at Òran Mór.  We’re writing now to remind you about these and to ask about interest in an alternative dinner alongside the one at Òran Mór for those attending the conference for whom the £65 cost is prohibitive.

Registration for the conference closes on Friday 5th July.  This deadline applies to both the in-person elements in Glasgow (23rd-25th July) and the digital elements on the 1st and 2nd of August.  Booking for the New Lanark trip through the Eventbrite will close at the same time.  Please register as soon as you can (this will be very helpful for finishing our room and catering arrangements).

Booking for the conference dinner at Òran Mór closes sooner, as we need to confirm numbers and menus.  If you would like to come to the conference dinner, please pay via this PayPal link by Friday 22nd June.

All the registration details for the conference can be found on the conference website.

We are aware that the conference dinner is quite expensive, so we’re looking into the possibility of organising a cheaper alternative dinner in a restaurant near the University in the same slot (Wednesday 24th July, 7:30pm-9:30pm).  If you’re attending the conference and would be interested in being a part of this, please fill out this very brief form by Friday 22nd June.  If there’s sufficient interest, we’ll arrange this in the next few weeks.

Many thanks and best wishes,

The BARS 2024 Conference Committee

Publication: The Wordsworth Circle: In Honour of Michael O’Neill

      Comments Off on Publication: The Wordsworth Circle: In Honour of Michael O’Neill

Issue 55.1 (2024)

Mark Sandy and Duncan Wu are pleased to announce the publication of their guest-edited issue of The Wordsworth Circle in honour of the life and work of Michael O’Neill (1953-2018), as well as celebrating the bicentennial year of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Posthumous Poems (1824) of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The contents of this journal issue can be sampled here: 

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/730398  

Stephen Copley Research Awards 2024 (Round One): Awardees Announced

      Comments Off on Stephen Copley Research Awards 2024 (Round One): Awardees Announced

The BARS Executive Committee established the Stephen Copley bursary scheme in order to support postgraduate and early-career research within the UK. The bursaries primarily fund expenses incurred through travel to libraries and archives necessary for the applicant’s research, alongside other research-focused costs, such as (but not limited to) photocopying, scanning, and childcare. Please do join us in congratulating the very worthy winners and their projects:

Roseanna Kettle (York) – ‘Poetry and Industrialism in the Romantic Age: Liverpool, Sheffield and Manchester’

Francesco Marchionni (Durham) – ‘En Dehors: A History of Romantic Ballet in Europe’

Hannah Wilson (Cambridge) – ‘Gift Exchange and Consent in Eighteenth-Century Courtship Novels, 1740-1820’

Megan Louise Gray (Newcastle) – ‘“What a shocking thing […to] fight about our common friend Lord Byron”: The competing constructions of Byron’s posthumous reputation in the 1820s’

Once they have completed their research projects, each winner will write a brief report. These reports will be published on the BARS Blog and circulated through our social media. For more information about the bursaries, including reports from past winners, please visit our website: www.bars.ac.uk.

Dr Gerard McKeever
Bursaries Officer, BARS

K-SAA Call for Inputs: The K-SAA Public Commonplace Book Vol.2 – ‘Field Notes on Freedom’

      Comments Off on K-SAA Call for Inputs: The K-SAA Public Commonplace Book Vol.2 – ‘Field Notes on Freedom’

The K-SAA Public Commonplace Book Vol.2–’Field Notes on Freedom’—is now collecting observational snippets about literary travels and objects from your personal and reading notes. Revisit Vol.1 ‘Readings, Reading Habits’—along with its interactive Star Chart visualization of collected entries—here.

The K-SAA Public Commonplace Book of Romantic Readers is a public engagement digital project that seeks to map the breadth of connections between global Romantic-era writers and the readers of today. The inaugural volume explores the theme ‘Reading(s)/reading habits’ to chart all the ‘what’ and ‘who’ surrounding acts of reading across two centuries. What was read—by whom—where—to what end and outcome? Recontextualized in an interactive format, these crowd-sourced records of reading(s) from around and of the world reveal networks of ideas and (un)common feelings that continue to transcend the seeming constraints of time and space.   

The details + submission page can be found here: https://www.k-saa.org/blog/ksaa-public-commonplace-book-vol2-call

Alternatively, post on X/Instragram using the hashtag #ksaacmpbook2, or email ksaacomm@gmail.com for your entries to be included. 

Details:

Travelling around Switzerland in 1816, Byron read in the old walls of Chillon a story of captivity. Records of travels and poetic musings such as these reflect the power of the world-reader—as visitor, author or fictive prisoner—to interpret the world’s happenings both new and old, as well as the narratives upheld and embedded in all kinds of historical remnants. 

In Vol.2 of the K-SAA Public Commonplace Book, consider forms of world-reading, preferably in loose relation to freedom. Let us curate brief records of literary travels—the wanderings, metaphorical trails-following, fateful chancings-upon—in life, book pages and the archives—of you, 19th-century authors or fictional characters. Submit a sentence or a quotation for our collective field notes on freedom: taken from previous visits to museums, historic houses, archives or other sites of interest; objects observed (e.g. as crystallized historical events), socio-historical landscape surveyed; place & thought pertaining to freedom as a concept, or re-definitions. Collected responses will be published and visualized in the second volume.

What is striking, noteworthy or significant about the historical objects you have surveyed? In what ways do they crystalize, for you or for the others, ideas of freedom and forms of liberties—or the lack thereof? What narrative(s) do you think is (are) being written or rewritten? What authorial volition reflected? . . .

Your contribution can be in the form of 1) quotations collected from your readings or 2) short descriptions or records in your own words (“I stumbled across this [interesting object] which looks/is/belonged to. . .“). Get creative! 

Also consider these quotations from Byron’s writings as examples of possible submissions:

“There are seven pillars of Gothic mould,


In Chillon’s dungeons deep and old,


There are seven columns, massy and grey,


Dim with a dull imprison’d ray,


A sunbeam which hath lost its way . . .”

– The Prisoner of Chillon (1816), Lord Byron 

“I have traversed all Rousseau’s ground with the Heloise before me, and am struck to a degree that I cannot express with the force and accuracy of his descriptions, and the beauty of their reality. Meillerie, Clarens, and Vevay, and the Chateau of Chillon, are places of which I shall say little, because all I could say must fall short of the impressions they stamp.”

– Letter CCXLII (1816), Letters and Journals of Lord Byron vol.3, p.8. Full digitalized copy on Google Books here.

New Resource: ‘Robert Bloomfield and Labouring-class poetry’

      Comments Off on New Resource: ‘Robert Bloomfield and Labouring-class poetry’

Here is a first look at a new open access website devoted to Bloomfield and labouring-class poetry of the Romantic Era: https://robertbloomfield.co.uk/

The site features editions of Bloomfield’s Selected Poems including his most famous poem, The Farmer’s Boy, and an illustrated edition of his tour poem The Banks of Wye.

It also features essays by critics including Tim Burke, Bridget Keegan, Simon White, John Goodridge, Ian Haywood and Hugh Underhill on such topics as Bloomfield and — ecocriticism, the politics of patronage, the book market, Aeolian Harps, gender, and labour the picturesque tour, narrative tales, vaccination. It discusses Bloomfield’s relationships with writers including Clare, Byron, Dyer, Southey, Kirke White, Allan Cunningham, and Thomas Inskip.

Also included is Bloomfield’s fascinating prose narrative about his colleagues in the London workshop where he plied his trade as a shoemaker.  This narrative, an invaluable piece of social history, is one of the few places in which the lives and opinions of labouring people are represented in detail by someone of the same class.

BARS Executive: Role Descriptions 2024-2026

      Comments Off on BARS Executive: Role Descriptions 2024-2026

Please see the BARS Blog post here for more information on how to apply for these roles.

President

The President works with the Executive Committee in overseeing the strategic direction of BARS, new projects and research funding initiatives, future planning, and liaising with external partners. One of the core roles of the President is liaising with the organisers of the Society’s International Conference, ensuring that the needs of BARS Members are met with due diligence. The President also chairs regular meetings of the Executive Committee. The President also works with the Executive in identifying and filling any vacancies on the Committee, including elections, appointments and co-options, as appropriate.   

Roles and Responsibilities

  • Act as a voice for Romantic studies both nationally and internationally, advocating for the interests and the wellbeing of BARS Members.
  • Maintain the commitment of BARS to the principles of inclusion, diversity and equality, making the Society a welcoming and safe space for all of its Members.
  • Oversee the strategic business, constitutional and recruitment matters of BARS.
  • Work with the Executive in all aspects of BARS regular business in support of its Membership.
  • Chair the regular Executive Committee meetings (3–4 times/year).
  • Liaise with the organisers of the two major BARS conferences and other regular or one-off events.
  • Ensure that the BARS operating budget remains healthy, balancing need with financial security.
  • Resolve any critical issues or challenges in a timely, transparent and collaborative manner.
  • Develop new partnerships, initatives and funding sources.

Key Activities 

  • Working with the Vice President and the Past President, plan the strategic aims of BARS and their implementation for the current cycle.
  • Working with the Secretary, coordinate the routine business of BARS.
  • Working with the Treasurer, ensure that the Executive maintains a careful balance between expenditure and income, as well as dealing with any banking issues raised by the Treasurer.
  • Working with the Membership Secretary and PGR/ECR Representatives, review all Members’ needs, requests and feedback.
  • Working with the Communications Officer, ensure that important information is conveyed to the Membership in a timely and effective fashion.
  • Working with the Website Editor, to ensure that outward facing information is appropriate, updated and effective.
  • Working with the BARS Review Editor, ensure that each issue of the BARS Review is published as required.  
  • Working with the Bursaries Officer, review current funding mechanisms, revising them as necessary and implementing new schemes that support BARS values.
  • Working with the Research Officer, review the state of the field, the relationship of Romantic studies to institutional and governmental agendas, and ensure a responsive approach to the challenges facing our discipline.
  • Oversee the recruitment of new members of the Executive and associated Officers.
  • Provide mentoring and continuing professional support to fellow members of the Executive if they desire it.
  • Prepare and oversee the selection of the BARS International Conference, including paying a site visit to the selected host and liaising with the conference organising team. 
  • Working with the Digital Events team to ensure that BARS is represented fairly, engagingly and equitably in the programme of activities.
  • Working with the relevant Committee members (e.g. Impact & Outreach, Internationalisation, Non-Academic and Schools Officers) and other partners, oversee new strategic partnerships and outreach activities.
  • Oversee the appointment of the Book Prize Chair, and receive regular updates from the Chair once appointed.
  • Attend to any constitutional and practical issues relevant to BARS and its Members.

Treasurer

The Treasurer oversees all aspects of the Society’s financial management, working closely with other members of the Executive Committee to develop͕ maintain and safeguard the Society’s finances. While the Treasurer ensures that these responsibilities are met, work can be delegated as appropriate to the Bursaries Officer, the Membership Secretary and ad hoc sub-committees (e.g. for conferences and other events, projects or partnerships).

Roles and Responsibilities

  • Oversee general finances of the Society.
  • Oversee financial planning, budgeting and fundraising.
  • Manage the Society’s bank account and financial records͘.
  • Control any of the Society’s assets, stock and sources of income͘.

Key Activities

  • Oversee and present budgets, accounts and financial statements to the Executive Committee and Members of the Society.
  • Liaise with designated members of the Committee and ad hoc partners (e.g. conference organisers) about financial matters.
  • Ensure that appropriate and robust financial systems and controls are in place.
  • Ensure that record-keeping and accounts meet statutory or best-practice expectations.
  • Liaise with the Membership Secretary in processing Members’ dues, including shared oversight of the Society’s PayPal account.
  • Liaise with the Bursaries Officer in the disbursement of any funding for Fellowships.
  • Disburse non-Fellowship claims that have been approved by the Executive Committee.
  • Disburse any other moneys that have been approved for expenditure by the President and/or Executive Committee.
  • Advise on the Society’s fundraising strategies͘.
  • Ensure use of funds complies with conditions set by relevant legislation, financial control systems and organisational bodies.
  • Prepare and present budgets for new and ongoing projects.
  • Prepare and present regular reports on the Society’s financial position (e͘g͘ at the Executive Committee meetings͕ at the Society’s Biennial General Meetings).
  • Manage bank and other financial accounts.
  • Set up appropriate systems for book-keeping, payments, lodgements and cash disbursements.
  • Ensure everyone handling money keeps proper records and documentation.

Review Editor

Applications welcome for the role of Editor of The BARS Review, the online journal of the British Association for Romantic Studies.

The BARS Review is published biannually (Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter issues).  Please see: http://www.bars.ac.uk/review/index.php/barsreview

The Editor is the main point of contact for publishers, the reviewers and the production team.

The Editor is expected to:
• order books from publishers
• ensure that books are promptly allocated for review by scholars with recognised expertise in the area
• ensure that reviewers stick to the agreed timeframe
• review and edit submitted manuscripts
• identify emerging trends in scholarship [for the Spotlight section]
• ensure that the journal has sufficient articles per issue, and that these are published to academic standards
• send the final issue to publishers and reviewers
• report to the BARS Executive to ensure ongoing development of the journal

Website Officer

The BARS Website Officer is expected to:

  • Handle the technical maintenance of the main BARS website, the BARS Blog and The BARS Review, periodically updating the designs and installations.
  • Update the BARS sites with information as required by the officers of the Exec.
  • Maintain the domain registrations and hosting account employed for BARS’ web presence (including working with the Treasurer to make payments).
  • Serve as Technical Editor of The BARS Review, conducting final checks for articles, creating and uploading galleys, and setting up and publishing issues (using Open Journal Systems).
  • Work with the Communications Officer and Assistant(s) on the digital aspects of BARS communications.
  • Serve on BARS committees (such as Digital Events) as required.
  • Play a full role in the Exec’s activities and discussions.

For this role, experience working with WordPress or a similar content management system is essential; experience with Open Journal Systems or the willingness to learn how the system works is essential; and some previous experience of website administration (via hosting tools and phpMyAdmin) would be an advantage.

Schools & Education Liaison:

The BARS Schools & Education Liaison Officer is expected to:

  • To promote BARS and the study of Romantic-period literature to school teachers and pupils 
  • To liaise with schools and related organisations to encourage engagement with Romantic-era literature 
  • To work with external partners in the education sector to promote outreach and widening participation activities that relate to Romanticism.
  • To engage with Examination Boards in ensuring the provision of Romantic literature within the UK National Curriculum.
  • To work with others in developing pedagogic resources for teachers and pupils.

Please see the BARS Blog post here for more information on how to apply for these roles.

BARS Executive: Elections and Appointments 2024–2026

      Comments Off on BARS Executive: Elections and Appointments 2024–2026

Dear BARS Members,

The BARS Executive is a friendly and collegial gathering of Romanticists from a wide range of career stages, which supports activities and initiatives in the field undertaken by the BARS Membership. Being part of the Executive gives you the opportunity to shape Romantic studies in the UK, and to meet our ambitions to provide a variety of financial support, events, training and resources for Romanticists both at home and overseas.

Over recent years, the Executive has been working to open up the processes for selecting the Exec more expansively, as well as to create structures that maintain the robustness and ‘institutional memory’ of the committee. To this end, we undertook to split elections of the Executive into two separate biennial cycles, while exploring more substantive constitutional changes that reflect our principles and modernize our structures in the longer term.

In March 2023, we held the first of these elections online to cover the 2023–2025 cycle, with the aim of advertising the remaining half for election in 2024–2026. We also re-elected a number of posts to cover the period 2023–2024 in order to achieve our goals.

We are now delighted to announce this second and concluding round of this process, and invite submissions of interest for the following posts to span an initial two-year term to summer 2026 (re-electable/renewable for a second term to 2028).

BARS would like to give our thanks to Anthony Mandal, Cassie Ulph, Mark Sandy, Matthew Sangster, and David Fallon for their sterling service as members of the Executive.

Elected Positions

To be selected by the highest number of votes through online polling, opened to the BARS Membership for a period of one week:

  • President (outgoing: Anthony Mandal)
  • Treasurer (outgoing: Cassie Ulph)

Please see the role descriptions here.

Appointed Positions (Executive and Co-opted)

To be selected by a review panel made up from members of the current Executive Committee:

  • BARS Review Editor (outgoing: Mark Sandy)
  • Website Editor (outgoing: Matthew Sangster)
  • Schools & Education Liaison (outgoing: David Fallon)

Please see the role descriptions here.

These post-holders will join the Executive members who were elected or appointed in 2023 (Vice-President Jennifer Orr; Secretary Andrew McInnes; Membership Secretary Yimon Lo; Communications Officer Amy Wilcockson; Bursaries Officer Gerard McKeever), as well as our Co-opted Members who are currently not elected or appointed (Outreach & Impact Jeff Cowton; Research Carmen Casaliggi; Internationalization Francesca Saggini; Non-Academic Emily Paterson-Morgan). They will also be joined by our yet-to-be-appointed Postgraduate and Early Career Representatives, the posts for which were advertised on 3 May 2024 (deadline for applications 3 June 2024).

Members of the new Executive will be invited to attend our Biennial General Meeting at the BARS 2024 Romantic Making and Unmaking conference at the University of Glasgow for the official handover of roles.

Submitting your Expression of Interest
If you are applying for Treasurer, BARS Review Editor, Website Editor, or Schools & Education Liaison, please send Expressions of Interest with a two-page CV including a brief description of your research to the BARS Secretary, Andrew McInnes (bars.secretary@gmail.com), copying in the President, Anthony Mandal (mandal@cardiff.ac.uk).

If you are applying for President, please sent your Expressions of Interest with a two-page CV including a brief description of your research directly to the current President, Anthony Mandal (mandal@cardiff.ac.uk).

Those applying for the elected posts should directly address the BARS Membership, as we will publish your statement online for the members to consider during the election process. Those applying for the appointed posts should outline the particular skills, experience and passion you would be able to bring to the relevant roles.

Timeline

  • EOIs to be returned to the BARS Secretary, Andrew McInnes, (bars.secretary@gmail.com) no later than midnight, 1 July 2024
  • Candidates’ statements to be published no later than 4 July 2024
  • Voting to take place between 4 and 10 July (Members will be emailed with precise instructions)
  • Candidates notified/Results published by 14 July 2024
  • Newly elected candidates invited to attend Biennial General Meeting at BARS 2024 Romantic Making and Unmaking (Glasgow) on 24 July 2024, 1–1.30pm

If you would like to discuss these positions further, please feel free to get in touch with:

PhD Scholarship: Scottish Masonic Scholarship at University of Glasgow

      Comments Off on PhD Scholarship: Scottish Masonic Scholarship at University of Glasgow

A PhD scholarship on the topic of ‘Robert Burns & Freemasonry’ funded by Scottish Freemasons is offered at the University of Glasgow. 

Full-time fees and stipend are included for a period of three years. The successful candidate will have access to masonic archives and collections in Edinburgh and elsewhere, and will also undertake some travel for research purposes to other places. The PhD scholar will be expected to work on outreach activity including contributing to the curation of an exhibition and delivering presentations on ‘Burns & Masonry’. 

They will be supervised and have access to resources from within the world-class Centre for Robert Burns Studies (recipient of the prestigious Queen’s Anniversary Prize in 2023). 

Candidates need to apply by 31st July 2024 with a covering letter, full CV and two academic referees to Professor Gerry Carruthers (gerard.carruthers@glasgow.ac.uk). 

Selection will follow an interview and a pro forma application to the Graduate School of the College of Arts and Humanities at Glasgow. Informal enquiries to Professor Carruthers are welcome in the first instance.  

The Trade Publishing Historian: Writing Non-Fiction

      Comments Off on The Trade Publishing Historian: Writing Non-Fiction

Where? Online
When? 18:00-20:30, 25 June 2024

Free to attend? Yes! Register here now to secure your spot!

So you want to write historical non-fiction for a public audience? But you’re just starting your research career? You’ve come to the right place. 

Join a panel of early career historians, some in the process of publishing their first trade book, others with between two and fifteen trade books under their belt, as they share their personal experiences of 

  • developing an idea
  • choosing which agent to approach
  • writing a proposal 
  • working with an agent and publisher as they write
  • book production and marketing

See here to find out more about our amazing speakers…

Register using this form today!