{"id":5390,"date":"2024-07-12T11:15:55","date_gmt":"2024-07-12T11:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=5390"},"modified":"2024-07-12T11:15:55","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T11:15:55","slug":"call-for-papers-anna-letitia-barbauld-voicing-dissent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=5390","title":{"rendered":"Call for Papers. Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voicing Dissent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

27th<\/sup>-28th<\/sup> June 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, University of York, and online<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743-1825) was a poet, educator and polemicist, celebrated after her death as \u2018unquestionably the first of our female poets, and one of the most eloquent and powerful of our prose writers\u2019. The year 2025 marks the two-hundredth anniversary of Barbauld\u2019s death and the publication of a new four-volume scholarly edition of her Collected Works<\/em> by Oxford University Press. We announce a two-day hybrid and interdisciplinary conference which will celebrate these landmarks. This will be the first conference dedicated to Barbauld in over a decade, and will promote and build on important recent developments in Barbauld scholarship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voicing Dissent\u2019 will investigate the importance of dissenting thought and feeling for Barbauld\u2019s poetry and prose, and will explore the legacy of her work in much more recent voicings of religious and political dissent. William McCarthy in his landmark biography named Barbauld a \u2018Voice of the Enlightenment\u2019; hers was an influential mode of enlightenment, mediated by Dissent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barbauld was celebrated during her lifetime as a poet of genius, an innovative teacher and writer for children, and a powerful polemicist, but her reputation was distorted and eclipsed in the nineteenth century and her achievements have only gradually been recovered. Increasingly, scholars have noted the importance of Barbauld\u2019s dissenting identity for her creative and political achievements. She was a member of a Dissenting Protestant community excluded from social and political circles of power, but protested what she termed \u2018the mark of separation set upon us\u2019 and used her outsider status \u2013 both as a dissenter and a woman \u2013 to protest contemporary injustices, and to support the causes of social and political reform, including the abolition of the slave trade. For Barbauld, dissent was not only the source of her civic identity but also of her profound religious faith. New research is now revealing the significance of devotional forms, customs and practices for her creative and political work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We focus in this conference on the \u2018voices\u2019 of dissent in Barbauld\u2019s work. She commanded, in Isobel Grundy\u2019s words, a \u2018various set of voices\u2019, and she was acutely attuned to the rhetorical force of the human voice, working in forms and genres designed for vocalisation, from songs and hymns to speeches and sermons. Such voicings were informed by dissenting practices, but Barbauld produced powerfully creative responses to these traditions, and in turn inspired strong legacies of creative and polemical expression in her own lifetime and since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our confirmed keynote speakers are: Professor Emma Clery; Professor Elizabeth Kraft; Professor Scott Krawczyk; Professor William McCarthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers and pre-formed panels of three, to be delivered in-person or online. We especially encourage submissions from early-career researchers and independent scholars. To propose a paper or panel, please send an abstract of around 250 words per presentation to barbauld2025@gmail.com<\/a> before midnight on Friday 1 November 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Possible themes for papers include, but are not limited to:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7      Barbauld\u2019s dissenting life and community<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7      Barbauld\u2019s poetics of religious and political dissent<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7      Barbauld\u2019s abolitionist and anti-war writings<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7      Barbauld\u2019s engagements with devotional forms and practices<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7      The oral and aural contexts of Barbauld\u2019s dissent<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7      Barbauld\u2019s engagement with her dissenting contemporaries, male and female<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7      Nineteenth- and twentieth-century legacies of Barbauld\u2019s anti-war writing and ecofeminist thought<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7      Connections between Romantic-era and contemporary literatures of political and religious dissent<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b7      The limits of Barbauld\u2019s dissent<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A small number of bursaries will be available to support attendance by students and early career researchers. Please indicate in your submission if you wish to be considered for a bursary, briefly outlining your case for support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organisers: Professor Mary Fairclough and Dr Joanna Wharton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

27th-28th June 2025 Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, University of York, and online Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743-1825) was a poet, educator and polemicist, celebrated after her death as \u2018unquestionably the first… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5391,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390\/revisions\/5391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}