Please note the Call for Papers for the conference on ‘The Irish and the London Stage: Identity, Culture, and Politics, 1680-1830’ to be held at Trinity College Dublin, 17-18 February 2017 is closing on 30 September.
Keynote speakers: Professor Helen Burke (Florida State) and Professor Felicity Nussbaum (UCLA)
Further details here: https://londonirishtheatreblog.wordpress.com/
The 2017 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference will be held in Minneapolis (MN), from March 30 – April 2; for more information, please see https://asecs.press.jhu.edu/general%20site/Final%202017%20Call%20for%20Papers%20edited.pdf.
The Irish Caucus will be organizing two panels at the annual ASECS meeting and an additional panel jointly with the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society. Please see the descriptions of these panels below and consider proposing a paper for one of them. Graduate students and junior scholars are especially encouraged to submit proposals.
Irish Caucus Panel 1: “The Irish Enlightenment IX”
(Irish Caucus; Scott Breuninger; University of South Dakota; Email: [email protected])
Over the past decade, scholars of the Enlightenment have increasingly recognized the contributions of Ireland to broader strands of eighteenth-century thought and the place of Irish thinkers’ work within the context of European and Atlantic intellectual movements. This research has spawned an increasing number of essays, books, and conference panels, illustrating the vitality of debate concerning the Irish dimension of the Enlightenment and collectively helping to define the nature of the Irish Enlightenment. This panel welcomes participants whose work focuses on Irish thought and/or its relationship to the Enlightenment world, especially papers that utilize new methodological approaches to the study of intellectual history; including (but not limited to) models drawn from the digital humanities, global history, and/or gender studies. If interested, please send an abstract of your paper (approximately 300 words) to Scott Breuninger ([email protected]) by September 15, 2016.
Irish Caucus Panel 2: “Aesthetics and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Ireland”
(Irish Caucus; Scott Breuninger; University of South Dakota; Email: [email protected])
During the eighteenth century, questions of aesthetics in Ireland were often linked to notions of political or social authority. Working in a society divided by religion, gender, and race, Irish artists were faced with the uncomfortably stark nature of political power and the (mis-)attribution of meaning(s) to their work. In this context, many of the themes explored by Irish poets, playwrights, and musicians (among others) were necessarily grounded in discourses that tried to walk a fine line between personal expression and social expectations. Some of these creative works explicitly drew from Ireland’s past to inform their meaning, others looked toward the future with varying degrees of optimism and pessimism. In this nexus of aesthetic creativity, artists were forced to negotiate with a wide range of pressures that were unique to Hibernia.
This panel welcomes proposals that address how issues of artistic representation related to questions of political and social power within eighteenth-century Ireland. Of particular interest are proposals that investigate how politically disenfranchised groups in Ireland addressed the connection between artistic representation, political power, and/or historical memory along lines associated with religion, gender, and race If interested, please send an abstract of your paper (approximately 300 words) to Scott Breuninger ([email protected]) by September 15, 2016.
Joint Irish Studies/Scottish Studies Panel: “New Directions in Irish and Scottish Studies”
(Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society and Irish Studies Caucus) Leith Davis, Simon Fraser University; E-mail: [email protected]
The nations which we now know as Ireland and Scotland have a long history of connection and conflict dating back to prehistoric times when, as Tom Devine puts it, the two formed a “single cultural, religious, linguistic and economic zone” (3). It was only in the late 1990’s, however, in the context of the growing political strength of the Scottish devolution movement and the gains of the peace process in Northern Ireland, that academics working in Irish Studies and Scottish Studies began to look at connections between their fields of inquiry. Putting Irish Studies and Scottish Studies in dialogue with one another has had important implications, although it has also revealed some limitations. This panel invites scholars to reflect on the scholarly dialogue between Irish and Scottish studies either in the past or present. Submissions may consider new theoretical perspectives and/or examine specific textual or historical examples of connections between Ireland and Scotland. If interested, please send an abstract of your paper (approximately 300 words) to Leith Davis ([email protected]) by September 15, 2016.
Additional Irish-Themed Panel for ASECS
“The Ulster Scots in Ireland and North America”
David Clare, National University of Ireland, Galway
Email: [email protected]
The Ulster Scots are an ethnic group descended from the Scottish people who settled in the North of Ireland during the reign of King James I. Today, they play an important role in Northern Irish political life and possess a vibrant, unique culture which is currently experiencing a revival. In the eighteenth century, the Ulster Scots emigrated in great numbers to North America, and, in the United States (where they became known as the “Scotch-Irish”), they contributed greatly to the development of American music, handicrafts, and political values. Despite their considerable impact on Irish and North American life, the Ulster Scots remain an under-regarded Irish subculture. For example, the excellent, eighteenth-century Rhyming Weaver poets are routinely omitted from “definitive” anthologies of Irish literature. Likewise, the Ulster Scots role in the 1798 Rebellion and their post-Rebellion transition to diehard British loyalty warrants further study. And there are still gaps in our understanding of the deep imprint that the Ulster Scots made on American politics and culture in the decades following their arrival. As such, this panel solicits papers which explore the impact of the Ulster Scots on Irish and/or North American political and cultural life in the long eighteenth-century.
If interested in this panel, please send an abstract of your paper (approximately 300 words) to David Clare ([email protected]) by 15 September 2016.
Alvin Chen is a D.Phil candidate in History at Christ Church, University of Oxford. He is interested in Eighteenth-Century European intellectual history, Enlightenment intellectual history and historiography. He will be speaking about his research in this area at the ECIS Annual Conference on 10-11 June 2016.
Favourite archive:
Bodleian Library, British Library, and the National Library of Scotland
Favourite museum, gallery or heritage site:
Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and National Palace Museum in Taipei
Most exciting place or time in the eighteenth-century:
I would say Strand, London, in the 1760s.
Best online resource:
ECCO and EEBO
Best book of 18th century interest:
Blair Worden’s Roundhead Reputation and J.G.A. Pocock’s Barbarism and Religion, especially volumes III, IV, and V
What eighteenth century figure would you most like to have a drink with?
I haven’t really thought about this. William Strahan might be a good drinking partner. It would be interesting to learn more details about eighteenth-century publishing industry.
What will you be talking about at the ECIS Annual Conference 2016?
My D.Phil thesis is on George Berkeley’s criticism of free-thinkers’ idea of an ‘enlightened age’. At the moment I am looking at Berkeley’s responses to free-thinkers’ mathematisation of natural philosophy, and their visions of human progress in terms of moral philosophy and political economy. My paper at the Annual Conference will be about Berkeley’s reflection on the problem of social stability, and the way in which this may enrich the present discussion of the theme by historians of Enlightenment political thought.
The 2016 Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society / An Cumann Éire San Ochtú Céad Déag Annual Conference will be held in National University of Ireland Galway on 10 – 11 June 2016.
If you wish to register, or to view the conference programme, please visit our annual conference page.
Online registration will close on Monday 6 June at 5pm.
Proposals for papers are now being invited for a conference entitled ‘The Irish and the London Stage: Identity, Culture, and Politics, 1680-1830’ which will take place in the Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin on 17-18 February 2017.
The conference will consider the varied Irish contribution to the development of London’s theatrical world over the course of the eighteenth century. This event is generously supported by the Marie-Curie programme.
Please visit the conference website for further information.
Ciaran McDonough is a doctoral research scholar at NUI Galway. Her research looks at nineteenth-century Irish antiquarianism and she will be speaking about her work at the ECIS Annual Conference on 10-11 June 2016. You can find out more about Ciaran’s research by visiting her academia.edu page or by following her on twitter.
Favourite archive:
The Royal Irish Academy
Favourite museum, gallery or heritage site:
National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology
Most exciting place or time in the eighteenth-century:
Dublin in the 1780s and 1790s – such a hub of activity!
Best online resource:
Archive.org
Best book of 18th century interest:
Clare O’Halloran, Golden Ages and Barbarous Nations – a brilliant guide to eighteenth-century antiquarianism.
What eighteenth century figure would you most like to have a drink with?
Charles Vallancey. Having spent the past few years researching this fascinating character (and laughing at his ideas), I would like to see the man behind the mad ideas!
What will you be talking about at the ECIS Annual Conference 2016?
I work on nineteenth-century antiquarianism and will be discussing some of the problems I have faced in working on a definition of an ‘antiquarian’. My paper at the conference will focus on what the term meant in the eighteenth-century and what antiquarian research consisted of in this time period. I will also make reference to the discrepancies in usage between the terms ‘antiquarian’ and ‘scholar’. Did the use of these terms reflect the type of work carried out? When Charles O’Conor referred to Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh as an ‘antiquary’, did he mean that Mac Fhirbhisigh carried out different work than himself? O’Conor has subsequently been referred to as a ‘scholar’ – is this another difference? My paper will attempt to answer these questions.
A conference to mark the 350th anniversary of the birth of Jonathan Swift will be held from 7-9 June 2017 in Trinity College Dublin.
Proposals for 20-minute papers on any aspect of Jonathan Swift’s life and work are invited, with papers on Swift and Ireland particularly welcome. Suggestions for round tables (including names of participants) will also be considered. Please send titles and abstracts (200 words) to the conference organizers at:
The 2016 Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society / An Cumann Éire San Ochtú Céad Déag Annual Conference will be held in National University of Ireland Galway on 10 – 11 June 2016.
Plenaries will be delivered by Prof. Michael Brown (Aberdeen), Prof. Norma Clark (Kingston), and Dr Meidhbhín Ní Úrdail (UCD).
Registration is now open. Go to http://www.ecis.ie/annual-conference/ for further details.
The Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, Queen’s University Belfast is hosting a conference entitled ‘Women’s Networks in Eighteenth-Century London and Dublin’ which will take place at the Music Building, University Square, Old McMordie Hall on Friday 27 May 2016.
A one-day conference, ‘Women and Gender in Early Modern Britain and Ireland’, will be held in honour of Anne Laurence on 4 June 2016 at the Institute of Historical Research, London.
Speakers will include: Prof. James Daybell, Dr Amy Erickson, Dr Gemma Allen, Prof. Mary O’Dowd, Dr Frances Nolan, Dr Rosalind Carr, Prof. Jane Humphries, Dr Judith Spicksley and Dr Amanda Capern.
Further details are available at http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/history/
The Irish Protestant Playwrights Conference, will be held at the Moore Institute, NUI Galway on 1-3 June 2016.
The conference will feature papers on a number of dramatists from the long eighteenth-century, including George Farquhar, Charles Macklin, Arthur Murphy, Elizabeth Griffith, Oliver Goldsmith, various Sheridans (to be precise, Thomas, Jr., Frances, and Richard Brinsley), and Maria Edgeworth.
Keynote speakers will include Professor Seán Kennedy (St Mary’s University, Halifax) and Dr Emilie Pine (UCD).
Further details about this event can be found on the Irish Protestant Playwrights website.
The launch of Finnian Ó Cionnaith’s new book Exercise of authority: Surveyor Thomas Owen and the paving, cleansing and lighting of Georgian Dublin is taking place on Wednesday 10 Feb at the Mansion House, Dublin. The book considers the work of the Dublin Paving Board and the ways in which this organisation controlled and maintained the streets of Georgian Dublin. It is the second in a series of books sponsored but Dublin City council on the history of engineering in the city. The Lord Mayor and Dr. Kieran Feighan of Engineers Ireland will be speaking at the launch.
A conference entitled ‘Theatre in the Regency Era: Plays, Performance, Practice 1795-1843’ will take place in Downing College, University of Cambridge, on July 29-31, 2016. Early bird rates are available until 30 January 2016.
This conference will explore the Regency Era’s dance, music and drama from a wide range of historical and methodological perspectives. The keynote address will be given by Celina Fox (The Arts of Industry in the Age of Enlightenment), and historical gesture specialist Jed Wentz (Conservatorium van Amsterdam) will present a lecture-performance. In addition, the conference will open with an introduction by Iain Mackintosh (Architecture, Actor and Audience) at the remarkable Cambridge Festival Theatre (built in 1814), providing a rare opportunity for conference attendees to see an original surviving Regency three-level horseshoe auditorium.
For further details and to book the conference, please see: www.regencytheatre2016.com
Dr Eoin Kinsella (Irish Association of Professional Historians) will be presenting a paper entitled ‘Testing the limits of the penal laws’ at the next meeting of the Irish Historical Society on 17 November 2015.
The meeting will be held at 7.00 p.m. in the Centre for Irish Programmes, Boston College Dublin, 43 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2.
All are welcome.
The Dutch-Belgian Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies (DBSECS) annual conference will take place in Brussels on 10-11 March 2016.
The theme of the conference will be ‘Flavours of the Eighteenth Century’. The organisers have been in touch to encourage ECIS members with an interest in the subject to consider participation.
Click on this link to download the Call for Papers, which is open until 23 November.
The Limerick Early Modern Studies Forum will host a two-day conference on 20-21 November on the theme ‘Moments of Becoming: Transitions and Transformations in Early Modern Europe’.
The conference takes place at the University of Limerick.
Further information is available on the Forum’s website at https://emslimerick.wordpress.
The fourteenth Dublin International Symposium on Jonathan Swift will take place from 2 pm to 5 pm on Saturday 17 October 2015 at The Deanery, Upper Kevin Street, Dublin 8.
Speakers
Professor Michael Brown, (History, University of Aberdeen), “How English was Jonathan Swift?”
Professor Aida Ramos (Economics, University of Dallas), “Swift’s Economics: An Alternative to English Mercantilism”
Dr. Charles Ivar McGrath (History, University College, Dublin), “The Grand Question Debated: Swift, Army Barracks and Money”
Professor Moyra Haslett (English, Queen’s University, Belfast), “Singing at the Club: Songs on the Wood’s Halfpence Affair, Dublin 1724-25”
Respondent: Dr. Clíona Ó Gallchoir, Department of English, UCC.
To register please telephone 01 453 9472 or email [email protected]
Sunday 18 October 2015 – 15.15
Annual Service in Commemoration of Jonathan Swift; Saint Patrick’s Cathedral Dublin
Address: Dr. Aileen Douglas, Associate Professor of English, Trinity College, Dublin.
Tomorrow evening in the Royal Irish Academy member’s room, John Gibson, Chairman of the Dublin Decorative and Fine Arts Society, will give a talk entitled ‘Toile and Trouble: The Story of Toile de Jouy’.
Ever since it’s invention by Francis Nixon in Drumcondra in 1752, Toile de Jouy has been more than just a home furnishing fabric. It has chronicled the leisure and interests of the bourgeoisie of the period, from the pastoral ideal of picnicking in the countryside, to hot air ballooning, contemporary literature, opera, and theatre. It has also been used by those seeking to subvert the establishment, as reflected by American revolutionary and other republican designs. New generations of designers continued this tradition, from Ireland’s Sybil Connolly to New Yorker Sheila Bridges, whose Harlem Toile is pictured above. Our chairman, John Gibson, will explore the Irish origins and continuing relevance of this most unlikely of contested grounds.
In the summer 1706, three Protestant refugees from the last French war of religion arrived in London to prophesy the fall of Rome and Christ’s imminent Second Coming. They claimed to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, experienced bodily agitations and sought to revive the apostolic Church. Within two years, these ‘French Prophets’ counted nearly 500 followers, including Huguenots, Anglicans, Philadelphians, Quakers, Presbyterians, Baptists, Quietists and even Jews. Their movement launched missionary tribes after failing to resurrect one of their members from the dead and spread across Europe. They remained active in Britain until the late 1740s, reappearing sporadically among the first Methodists, Moravians and Shakers.
The French Prophets sparked one of the greatest controversies in eighteenth-century England, marked by a prodigious battle of pamphlets on revealed religion and miracles, violent riots and a political trial. They were branded as ‘enthusiasts’, then a derogatory label for religious fanaticism, but one whose modern representation largely draws upon the hostile discourse of Augustan moralists.
In his new book, Enlightening Enthusiasm: Prophecy and Religious Experience in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Manchester University Press, 2015), Lionel Laborie examines the nature of religious enthusiasm against the backdrop of the early English Enlightenment. It offers the first comprehensive approach to enthusiasm by looking at this multifarious issue from a social, religious, cultural, political and medical perspective. Based on new archival research, it challenges our modern understanding of this originally infamous term by dissociating religious experience from millenarianism, radical dissent and popular religion, to shed new light on the reality of enthusiasm in early Enlightenment England.
The book can be ordered from Manchester University Press. Follow this link for further information.
The first collected edition of James Macpherson’s Ossian poems, The Works of Ossian was published in two volumes in 1765. To mark the 250th anniversary of this significant cultural event and the development of a new online resource, Ossian Online, a one-day symposium and public lecture will be held in the Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson street, Dublin on Friday 4 September 2015.
Reflecting the diversity of Ossian’s appeal, the symposium will feature speakers from a range of disciplines, presenting papers on new and recent research on Macpherson’s work. These talks will present new perspectives on familiar topics such as the role and meaning of Ireland in Ossian and Gaelic sources for the poetry, alongside considerations of the current status of Ossian studies in the academy and its potential place in public humanities. Digital humanities projects that focus on Ossian are represented by presentations on Ossian Online and on network analysis of the Ossian corpus. The symposium concludes with a public lecture by James Mulholland (North Carolina State University) on “Ossian and the Global Crisis in Authenticity”.
Attendance is free, but delegates are asked to register for the symposium on the Eventbrite website where you can also access the full programme.
This symposium is supported by the Irish Research Council’s New Foundations Scheme. Ossian Online is supported by the Moore Institute; School of Humanities, National University of Ireland, Galway; and the National Library of Scotland.
Michelle from Ard na Sidhe Country House, in Co. Kerry has put together an interactive StoryMap called ‘A Literary Landscape of Ireland’ to celebrate all of Ireland’s most prolific writers and poets.
This StoryMap highlights many of the places that inspired the writers and poets involved, as well as the locations where the writers grew up and attended school.
The entry on Jonathan Swift might be of particular interest to ECIS blog readers.
Follow this link to view the Literary Landscape of Ireland StoryMap in a new window.
The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies will hold its annual meeting in Pittsburgh, PA on 31 March to 3 April 2016.
The Irish Caucus is given two panels at the annual ASECS meeting. Please see the descriptions of these panels below and consider proposing a paper for one of them. Graduate students and junior scholars are especially encouraged to submit proposals. Abstract of your paper (approximately 300 words) can be sent to [email protected] by 15 September 2015.
Panel 1: The Irish Enlightenment VIII
Over the past decade, scholars of the Enlightenment have increasingly recognized the contributions of Ireland to broader strands of eighteenth-century thought and the place of Irish thinkers’ work within the context of European and Atlantic intellectual movements. This research has spawned an increasing number of essays, books, and conference panels, illustrating the vitality of debate concerning the Irish dimension of the Enlightenment and collectively helping to define the nature of the Irish Enlightenment. This panel welcomes participants whose work focuses on Irish thought and/or its relationship to the Enlightenment world, especially papers that utilize new methodological approaches to the study of intellectual history; including (but not limited to) models drawn from the digital humanities, global history, and/or gender studies.
Panel 2: Conflict and Violence in Eighteenth-Century Ireland
During the long eighteenth-century, warfare and violence was inscribed upon Ireland. The century began in the wake of the Battle of the Boyne and ended with the aftermath of the Rebellion of 1798. Between these irruptions of conflict, Irish life was transformed by a series of internal rebellions and international wars. This panel welcomes papers that explore how these destructive forces shaped the lives of people in Ireland during this period (politically, religiously, economically, socially) and/or how they were represented in popular culture (theatre, literature, history).
Follow this link to visit the ASECS website for further information.
Philip Walsh is currently a doctoral student at UCD finishing his PhD thesis on ‘The Blakes of Ballyglunin: Catholic merchants and landowners of Galway Town and County in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’. He will be speaking at the 2015 Annual Conference in Cork.
What is your favourite museum, gallery or heritage site?
The Battle of the Boyne site does a great job of bringing history to life for all ages.
What is your favourite online resource?
Eighteenth-Century Collections Online is indispensable for anyone studying the eighteenth century.
Your favourite book/poem/painting/object of 18th century interest?
Gulliver’s Travels is a great read and has hardly dated.
What 18th century figure would you most like to have a drink with?
Meeting up with Turlough O’Carolan on some back road pub, with his tunes and undoubtedly stories, would be a fascinating experience.
What will you be talking about at the ECIS Annual Conference 2015?
Younger sons posed a challenge for the remaining Catholic landowners of Ireland in the eighteenth century, whether from a feeling of familial obligation or the cold hard reality of estate management. For the Blakes of Ballyglunin, County Galway the second son from the first two generations of the eighteenth century were given a substantial child’s portion and sent to the West Indies to make their fortune. Both did this to great effect. When these younger sons had made their fortune, they did not return to Ireland but to England, where subsequent generations were knighted and became part of the English gentry. I will be exploring the effect of this on the wider family, the financial implications and the continued links between the families in Galway, the West Indies and England.
Maeve O’Dwyer is a third year Art History PhD from the University of Edinburgh interested in all things C18- especially classicism, portraiture, sculpture, the Grand Tour and ideas of identity, especially Irishness. She will be speaking at the 2015 Annual Conference in Cork. Feel free to contact her ahead of the conference on Twitter @ODwyerMaeve.
What is your favourite museum, gallery or heritage site?
That’s a tough question. I’d have to say the Vatican Museum. They have one of my favourite sculptures, the Sleeping Ariadne, and there’s always a feeling that there’s more to see around the corner.
What is your favourite online resource?
The Internet Archive, for easy access to resources digitized and uploaded by other institutions.
What is your favourite book/poem/painting/object of 18th century interest?
I’d have to say the fabulous 1774 portrait of Thomas William Coke, by Pompeo Batoni. I’d love to get to Holkham Hall to see it in person.
What 18th century figure would you most like to have a drink with?
James Caulfield, Lord Charlemont. I’d ask him about his sense of identity, his portraits, and whether he was really mugged twice on his own land because he insisted it remain open to the public.
What will you be talking about at the ECIS Annual Conference 2015?
I’ll be discussing 1750s Rome, with a focus on the visual evidence of Irishmen abroad at a time when the Grand Tour itinerary was only just beginning to be set. I’ll consider how influential the Irish were in setting the standard for imagery of Grand Tourists for decades to come, and the possibility of reading a tension between Irishness and Britishness into their portraiture.
I have just uploaded to Academia.edu an amended version of my compact biography of Charles Lucas, the eighteenth-century Irish patriot, author and medical doctor. In contrast to figures such as Swift and Grattan, Lucas Continue reading A compact biography of Charles Lucas (1713-1771)
