BARS Exchange

By Amy Wilcockson

The British Association for Romantic Studies Digital Events Committee are glad to invite proposals for 2024. We’ll be looking to run fewer events this year, but we’re keen to keep the series going.

As before, we invite proposals for curated roundtable sessions; these usually consist of four or five speakers, at least one of whom must be a doctoral student or early career scholar. Events last for 90 minutes and will generally take place via Zoom at 5pm UK time on a weekday. The usual format is a series of talks of between 7 and 12 minutes in length, then a discussion among the speakers, then a Q&A session. Events are free and open to all; they will be recorded and shared on the BARS YouTube channel.

As part of our partnership with the Wordsworth Grasmere, we are also inviting proposals for our exciting new collaborative Digital Events programme. We plan to run three events each year with Wordsworth Grasmere, sharing our audiences. The link to the first of these can be found here, and can be booked here. These events aim to be more conversational than standard BARS …read more

Source:: https://www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=4937

By Amy Wilcockson

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 19:30 – 21:00 GMT

Tickets available here.

Join Sharon Ruston, Frank James, and Sara Cole on Thursday 25 January 2024 for a fascinating roundtable on Romanticism and Science, focusing mainly on Humphry Davy.

This is the first of a new collaborative digital event series between Wordsworth Grasmere and BARS. If you are a BARS Member, you will have received an email with a code allowing free access to this event.

Sir Humphry Davy (1778-29) was the foremost British chemist of the nineteenth century, most famous for the miners’ safety lamp that he invented which became known as the ‘Davy lamp’, as well as isolating the chemical elements sodium and potassium. Davy also wrote poetry throughout his life and was a friend of many of the Romantic poets, including S. T. Coleridge and William Wordsworth. In this webinar, we will explore the findings of the Davy Notebooks Project (https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/davynotebooks/). Over the past few years, nearly 3500 volunteers from around the world have transcribed 83 of Davy’s notebooks. Prof Sharon Ruston will discuss some of the poetry that is found in Davy’s notebooks; Prof Frank James will explore ‘Humphry Davy in the West Indies: The Chemical ‘Explanation’ of Race’; …read more

Source:: https://www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=4934

By Amy Wilcockson

The organizers of the 2024 BWWC invite papers and panel proposals related to the theme of ‘Reproduction(s)’ in global, transatlantic, and British women’s writing from the long eighteenth century to the present. Beyond the more obvious correlation between this theme and the centrality of reproductive rights to women’s lives, a vital resonance exists between this topic and the commitment of the British Women Writers Association to recovering “women/womxn from the margins to the center of literary history.” The act of recovery (and all forms of reproduction, for that matter) contains the potential for re-emergence and mutation—for moments of slippage and opportunities for change. Participants are encouraged to be especially aware of the potential for disruption embedded within the concept/practice/enactment of reproduction(s).

This year’s organizers have deliberately chosen the plural form of “reproduction” because the word is simultaneously a noun, a verb, and an adjective. Also, reproduction is both biological and technological, as seen in the reverberating effects the industrial revolution had on blurring the supposed boundaries between women’s labor, leisure, and traditional familial structures. The ways in which aesthetics and print culture reproduce these cultural tensions reveal the continual transformations and mutations of women’s roles in society.

By Amy Wilcockson

Romanticists interested in the popular theatre of the 1820s and 30s will be happy to hear that Retrospect Opera has released a recording of the melodrama Jack Sheppard from 1839. Melodrama first arrived in Britain in 1802, and steadily grew in popularity through the later Romantic period. Jack Sheppard, with a text by John Baldwin Buckstone, adapted from William Harrison Ainsworth’s sensationally popular novel of the same name, and music by G. Herbert Rodwell, was one of the most successful examples of the genre. It contains some of the biggest musical hits of the early Victorian period.

No melodramas from this period survive complete, musically speaking, so we have filled the gaps in the Jack Sheppard score with music from Rodwell’s earlier melodrama, The Flying Dutchman, or The Phantom Ship (1826), another extremely popular melodrama that was played on both sides of the Atlantic for decades, and represents the most successful theatrical version of the story later treated by Richard Wagner.

We believe that nothing like this has been done before, and that the album represents a unique chance to experience the music from two seminal melodramas. Full of fun, excitement, sentiment, and great tunes, it would be a delightful stocking-filler! It …read more

Source:: https://www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=4928

By Amy Wilcockson

Call for Papers: Romanticism Today

Venue: Umeå University, in person

Date: September 19-20, 2024

Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Ian Haywood (University of Roehampton)

Romanticism today embodies an evolving discourse that transcends traditional boundaries as a mosaic of diverse literary cultures and media landscapes. Over the past years, the connotations of the “present” and its relevance within the domain of Romanticism have encompassed pivotal strands ranging from reading methods and book histories, artifacts and cultural heritage in the digital age, visual cultures then and now, ecology and the Anthropocene, gender and identity, national and translational borders.

With the 20th anniversary of the Nordic Association for Romantic Studies (NARS) approaching in 2024, we welcome diverse approaches from current research in Romanticism that expand the material, aesthetic, historical, and disciplinary confines of this field. Our objective for this symposium is to provide a platform for considering the current position of Romanticism as a vital area of humanist inquiry and mapping its future trajectory.

We invite proposals for 10-minute paper presentations in English. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Visual culture and aesthetics

• Digital humanities, archives, and resources

• Reading methods …read more

Source:: https://www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=4926

By Amy Wilcockson

Saturday 6th July
(Free Hybrid Event) Hilton Leeds City

As early as The Book of Lost Tales (1910s-1930s) Tolkien’s prose and poetry was infused with elements of the stylistics, aesthetics, and philosophies of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romantics. Although it has been shown that Tolkien learnt about and read a range of Romantic works, his dialogue with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief” in ‘On Fairy-stories’ has dominated the intersections between Romantic and Tolkien studies. This has overshadowed the role that Romantic influences played in the shaping of Middle-earth, as well as the Romantic legacies in Victorian literature and art that had a significant impact on Tolkien’s writing. While Tolkien clearly rejected certain forms of Romanticism, he worked within a literary tradition that was partially shaped by the Romantics.

This seminar seeks fresh and innovative readings of Tolkien’s Romantic Resonances that are in dialogue with modern scholarship on Romanticisms, Romantic aesthetics and Romantic-period histories. The seminar understands ‘Romanticism’ and the ‘Romantic’ as complex, nuanced terms that elude simplification, traditional historical markers, and solely Anglocentric readings. We welcome proposals that address the broader application of the terms.

Papers may address but are in no way limited to the following topics:

• Parallels between Tolkien’s narratives and artistic, …read more

  Source:: https://www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=4924

By Amy Wilcockson

In addition to our existing funding schemes, BARS has launched a new initiative in 2024: the Open Fellowship, which is available to scholars at any career stage undertaking exceptional work at the forefront of Romantic studies.

We are thrilled to announce that the recipient of the inaugural BARS Open Fellowship is Dr Patricia Matthew, based at Montclair State University. The Open Fellowship will support Patricia’s work on ‘Trust and the Archives: New Methodologies for Inclusion’, a multi-institutional project that reimagines what accessibility and trust mean for institutions reassessing their responsibilities to the multiple communities they serve.

Click here for more information on the BARS Open Fellowship scheme.

Gerard McKeever

BARS Bursary Officer

28 November 2023

…read more

Source:: https://www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=4915

By Amy Wilcockson

In June 2020, the British Association for Romantic Studies announced its unequivocal support of the Black community, its condemnation of all forms of racism and its commitment to practical action. In response to the enduring and systemic damage caused by racism, the BARS Executive commenced a programme of initiatives focused on the histories and literatures of People of Colour. Among these initiatives is the BARS President’s Fellowship.

We are delighted to announce that the recipient of the BARS President’s Fellowship 2024 is Dr Yasser Shams Khan, who is based at Qatar University. Yasser’s project is titled, ‘Staging the Orient: A Study of Oriental Scenography on the Romantic Stage’.

Click here for more information on the BARS President’s Fellowship scheme.

Gerard McKeever

BARS Bursary Officer

28 November 2023

…read more

Source:: https://www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=4916

By Isabelle Murray

My PhD examines respiratory embodiment in Romantic theatre, particularly that of S.T Coleridge. I was extremely grateful to use a BARS travel scholarship in October to visit the National Library of Malta theatre archive and Melitensia collection at the University of Malta, to study records from 1804-805 when Coleridge lived in La Vallette.

There has been limited work on the setting of Malta as influential to Coleridge’s dramaturgy, including brief mention in Donald Sultana’s authoritative book Coleridge on Malta (1969). Most attention has been paid to Coleridge’s political writing due to his job as administrator for the British protectorate in Malta. Hough and Davis (2010) have re-examined government records at Rabat and Greenwich, to form the perspective of Coleridge as an accountable civil servant.

During my visit, I questioned whether Coleridge’s stay on the island, where he sketched scenes and productions for the stage, was instrumental in Coleridge’s shift into a Romantic playwright and realised in a successful Drury Lane production after his return?

Given Coleridge travelled (only partly successfully) to improve his physical and mental health, and it was one of his most productive periods of journal writing, I aimed to explore the theatre and medical histories relating to Coleridge’s time on …read more

Source:: https://www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=4908

By Isabelle Murray

Closing date 8th December 5pm.

Applications are invited for two 36-month postdoctoral positions at University College Dublin working on the exciting interdisciplinary Wellcome Trust funded project “Drinking Cultures: The Cultural Reception of Medical Developments Related to Alcohol in Ireland, 1700-1900.” The “Drinking Cultures” project is the first long-view study to analyse the relationship between medical constructions of alcohol misuse and literary representations of alcohol consumption in Ireland from 1700-1900. Candidates should have evidence of research expertise in Medical Humanities or 18th-19th century Irish literature.

Applications are particularly encouraged from those whose work involves studying topics such as: literary representations of alcohol or drug use; the medicalisation of habits and behaviours in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries; the cultural dissemination of medical concepts or frameworks in literary texts in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries; governmentality and the disciplinary apparatus in eighteenth or nineteenth century Irish culture.

Informal inquiries should be directed towards Dr Lucy Cogan (lucy.cogan2@ucd.ie)

About the Role:

Applications are invited for two Temporary posts of Post-doctoral Research Fellow Level 1 within UCD School of English, Drama & Film. The successful candidates will work on the Wellcome Trust funded project “Drinking Cultures: The Cultural Reception of Medical Developments Related …read more

Source:: https://www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=4898