Folger conference on Early Modern Cities

I have been asked to pass along this reminder about an exciting conference at the Folger:

Registrations for the Folger Institute’s September conference, “Early Modern Cities in Comparative Perspective,” will be accepted through 14 September (assuming space remains.)

Support from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation extends grants-in-aid to conference participants from U.S. institutions who are not affiliates of the Folger Institute consortium. The application deadline is 4 September 2012. Please visit the Institute’s website for application materials and guidelines.

The conference schedule and abstracts may be found here.

Questions? Please contact institute@folger.edu.

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Centlivre play at the Folger next year!

For anyone who can get to DC next winter:

The Gaming Table
By Susanna Centlivre | Directed by Eleanor Holdridge
January 24 – March 4
A sparkling comedy as effervescent as a glass of champagne. The thrills of the gaming table stylishly play out against the eccentricities of English manners in this comedy by one of the most successful playwrights of the 18th century.

I’m guessing that this is The Basset Table, renamed because no one plays basset anymore.

Seduction! Rebellion!

For anyone in the DC area, here are two exciting events of interest:

“Force or Fraud: British Seduction Stories and the Problem of Resistance, 1660-1760 “

Toni Bowers

University of Pennsylvania

September 24, 12:30 pm; Tawes 3132; The Univeristy of Maryland

AND

“Bacon’s Rebellion and Behn’s Widow Ranter, or How the Collective Lost Its Honor”

  

                                                 Melissa Mowry

St. John’s University

Wednesday, October 6^th, 3 p.m. Tawes 2115; The University of Maryland

 

so who’s going to mla?

This is just to let Long 18th readers know that Laura Rosenthal and Laura Mandell will be hosting a session on assessment that I’ll be participating in.  Here’s the information:

215. Learning from Assessment
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Liberty Ballroom Salon A, Philadelphia Marriott
Program arranged by the MLA Office of Research
Presiding: Donna Heiland, Teagle Foundation
Speakers: Laura C. Mandell, Miami Univ., Oxford; David Samuel Mazella, Univ. of Houston; John Ottenhoff, Associated Colls. of the Midwest; Laura Rosenthal, Univ. of Maryland, College Park

Otherwise, I’d like to hear if any other readers doing 18th century or early modern stuff would like to announce their panels here.  If anyone attending wants to get together for drinks during the convention, contact me here or offline at dmazella@uh.edu.

Happy holidays,

DM

a message from ASECS President, Peter Reill

[h/t: C18-L; x-posted on EMOB]

[Hi everyone, sorry for the light posting over the past few weeks.  We’ll get more activity here shortly, but in the meantime, I wanted to direct your attention to a very important message from Peter Reill.  If you feel strongly about this issue, please contact Peter at the email below.  Best, DM]

Dear Colleagues:

I am writing to ask for you help and guidance concerning an issue that is becoming increasingly important as the digital revolution in scholarship gathers momentum. I have been asked to attend a meeting hosted by the Mellon Foundation that addresses the question of the increasingly unequal access of scholars to digital resource databases that are critical to pursuing research in their fields. I have become more aware of this problem after a meeting of the ISECS executive meeting where our Japanese colleagues asked for help to access ECCO. And the more I talk with people newly hired at universities or colleges unable to afford the fees charged by specialist databases the more important this issue has become for me. As I ponder the implications of this tendency, it is clear that it’s solution is even  more crucial for recent graduates who have yet to get a permanent position and independent scholars who cannot afford to subscribe to specialist databases.

It is a problem very few address. The Mellon meeting, which will be held in February asks us, members of societies “focused on clearly delineated areas and primarily concerned with advancing scholarship in their fields” to answer a number of queries that are both scholarly and organizational in character. I hope that those of you concerned with these issues would send me your thoughts about them. It is my plan to propose your ideas that I will outline in the next Newsletter, which will appear before the meeting, giving you another chance to express you views on the subject and any others relevant to the issue.

The questions the Mellon proposes are: “How important is access to commercial databases to scholars in your field, and how are scholars’
careers affected when they are at institutions that do not subscribe to those resources? Which databases are likely to be of greatest value to the broadest segment of your membership? How well situated is your society to serve as a conduit to these resources, and what would be required to make that possible?”

Are these questions sufficient? Are there any more issues I should be raising? What kinds of solutions do you propose?

I look forward to your responses and to using them to highlight an important issue for all of us.

Yours,

Peter

My email address is;

reill@humnet.ucla.edu

Emilie du Chatelet

From the Arena Stage (Washington, DC) blog, about two new plays that have opened based on the life of Emilie du Chatelet:

Emilie is everywhere

by Janine Sobeck

This past weekend I attended the Pacific Playwrights Festival, hosted by South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa.  A great weekend full of new play enthusiasts celebrating the next chapter in American playwriting. 

Among the works offered (and let me tell you, they ran the full spectrum of styles, subject matter, and languages) was South Coast Rep’s production of Emilie by Lauren Gunderson.  Yup, it was based on Emilie du Chatelet, the same woman who inspired the writing of Karen Zacarias Legacy of Light which will be opening here next week.  Talk about synergy.  Both plays are commissions, started around the same time, and are premiering within weeks of each other.  And both plays are truly unique.  It was absolutely intriguing to sit in the audience and watch the woman (as well as the men in her life) that I have gotten to know so well through all the research, drafts and rehearsals portrayed through a different artistic vision.  In talking with fellow PPF attendees, Emilie has captured their interest, leaving a strong fascination about this intelligent and enchanting woman that very few people know about.  I hope that some of them will get to see Karen’s play, allowing them the opportunity to continue to expand their vision of who she was and what she did.

I think Emilie would be very intrigued…and very pleased.

 

May 06, 2009 in Janine Sobeck, Legacy of Light | Permalink

For more information about the one currently running at the Arena Stage in DC:

http://www.arenastage.org/season/08-09/sub-text/legacy-of-light/passionate-minds.shtml

http://www.arenastage.org/index.shtml

 

virtual burns memorial

[note: Sharon Alkers asked me to post this on her behalf]

Contest to Create Virtual Burns Memorial

The Centre for Scottish Studies at Simon Fraser University is holding a contest to create a virtual memorial to Robert Burns that is suitable for a twenty-first century mobile and globalized world. Statues, busts and portraits played an important part in interpreting Burns in nineteenth-century culture. We are looking for an image more suitable for our contemporary time and media in order to convey the fact that Burns’s messages regarding universal brotherhood (and, by extension, sisterhood), respect for nature, and the uplifting power of the human spirit have never been more relevant. The deadline for entry is April 1, 2009. The winning design will be awarded $300 (Canadian) and will appear in Second Life on SFU’s island. (Second Life is a virtual environment increasingly popular with students and educators interested in collaborative virtual learning). The unveiling will be at the Transatlantic Burns Conference, April 7-9 at SFU. For more details or to submit an entry (preferably in digital format), contact: Leith Davis at leith@sfu.ca

For more information, visit the Scottish Studies at SFU website here.

ECASECS at Georgetown

In the DC area we’re not only looking forward to our new neighbors moving in January 20, but also to the ECASECS meeting, tomorrow through Sunday at Georgetown University.  Anyone coming into town might want to get tickets for The Way of the World at the Shakespeare Theater.

Laura

the long eighteenth at galveston, tx: scsecs ’09, feb. 5-8

Since Galveston is busy rebuilding after the destruction of Ike, I thought it would be nice to chair a panel there for SCSECS, which will be held at the historic Tremont House in the downtown area.  This area, it seems, was not nearly as badly hit as some of the coastal areas, and so businesses are already reopening.

I will not try to compete with Kevin Cope’s exuberant prose, so here’s the CFP:

SCSECS 2009, February 5-8, GALVESTON, TEXAS
“An Effervescent Era”

All persons with an ardent interest in the long eighteenth-century are invited to present papers or to organize panels at SCSECS 2009.

There are many ways in which to join the program. Participants may send a paper proposal to any of the seminar organizers shown below. Those who may be writing papers on topics other than those represented in the preliminary list below may send their proposals directly to the conference organizer, Kevin L. Cope, at jovialintelligence@cox.net, who will insure that they find a place in one of the many seminars that will crop up from at-large submissions. Those who would like to organize a panel should send a description of that seminar to the aforementioned address. Especially welcome are completed panels for which the leader has recruited participants. Deadline for submission of proposals is December 31, 2008, although those in special circumstances may request a short extension.

If you prefer snail-mail, send your proposal to Professor Kevin L. Cope, Department of English, LSU, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 70803. Or fax it to 225-751-3161.

***

I’ll be chairing a round-table on life-writing, which still has several slots open, and I would urge anyone else who wishes to offer a paper or panel topic for this conference to get in touch with Kevin ASAP.

Those interested in submitting a proposal for my panel should send a paragraph-long proposal abstract to me at dmazella@uh.edu.  Proposals are welcome on any aspect of researching, interpreting, or teaching autobiography, memoir, or other forms of life-writing from our period.

I should also mention that two other members of the Long Eighteenth, namely Dwight Codr and Gena Zuroski (the Lady Z) will be chairing panels there as well.  If others intend to go, let us know about it.

Best wishes,

DM

Eighteenth-Century Talks in NYC

The Eighteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Group welcomes you to our speaker series this semester. We have three events planned, all of which will take place on the second Fridays of the month at the Graduate Center (365 Fifth Ave) in room 5414. For those who have been with us before, please notice that this is a different venue from our usual spot in the Eighteenth-Century Reading Room, which has, unfortunately, been closed. This semester, we will be meeting in a room on the fifth floor that has windows and a bit more space to move around in.

If you plan to attend any of our meetings this semester, please let me know so I can know how much food and drink to provide. (If you don’t have a CUNY ID, you will need to sign in at the front desk, but they don’t need a list of your names.) The Eighteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Group hosts a wide range of talks on eighteenth-century subjects, each followed by lively conversation.

Our first meeting will be on Friday, September 12 at 2 pm in room 5414. JoEllen DeLucia of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY will be presenting “The Celtic Paratext of Radcliffe’s Gothic: The Mysteries of Udolpho and Scottish Enlightenment Historiography.”

Please also save the dates for talks by Kathleen Urda of Bronx Community College, CUNY (Nov. 14th at 2pm) and James Horowitz of Yale University (Dec. 12th at 2pm).

Please email me at carrieshanafelt@gmail.com if you’d like to attend or join the email list!