2019/20 MA Dissertation Prize

Rachel Feldberg, winner of the 2019/20 dissertation prize, introduces us to her work on "Absent Bodies?: Illness, Embodiment and the Articulation of Gender, Winifred and William Constable (1768-1773)" Anton von Maron (1733-1808). Portrait of William and Winifred Constable depicted as Marcius Porcius Cato and his wife Marcia, 1773. Oil on canvas. Leeds Museums and Galleries/The Burton…

Conversation as Sharing: From the Individual Body to Networks of Communication

By Yusuke Wakazawa  Since my undergraduate days in the philosophy department, the idea and practice of conversation has underpinned my pursuit of intellectual history. Despite the commonly held association of philosophy with solitude, I have encountered many historical examples of philosophers who were active participants in social exchanges. As depicted in Plato’s dialogues, ancient Greeks…

A Letter from Japan: Postdoctoral Life at the University of Tokyo

By Yusuke Wakazawa 1. Hume and Eighteenth-Century Studies in Japan After spending five and a half years in York, I flew back to Japan in February and started working as a project research fellow at the University of Tokyo (UT). My one-year research fellowship is sponsored by the East Asian Academy for New Liberal Arts…

2018/19 MA Dissertation Prize

By Kathryn Holdsworth Dissertation Overview My MA dissertation research focused on the role of gossip in late eighteenth-century adultery narratives, exploring the relationship between gossip and the formation and circulation of knowledge about women.  Drawing on two criminal conversation trials and one novel as case studies (Worsley v Bissett, 1782; Duberly v Gunning, 1792 and Edgeworth’s 1801…

Research Spotlight: Sharon Choe

Studying: PhD in English Literature (full-time)Supervisor: Prof. Jon MeeThesis title: ‘Deformed, Dismembered, Disembodied: Re-inventing the Body Politic in William Blake’Research Interests: William Blake, poetry, medical humanities, the body, disability theory, ‘Britishness’, eighteenth-century Northern antiquarianism, Old Norse reception, myth theory, 1790s. Thesis Overview My doctoral thesis addresses two specific parts of William Blake’s poetry: Blake’s use…

A Visit to the John Carter Brown Library (WRoCAH REP)

By Lilian Tabois  In August 2019 I did a one-month placement at the John Carter Brown Library (JCB) in Providence (RI) as part of the WRoCAH Researcher Employability Project (REP) scheme. These placements provide PhD students with the opportunity to gain experience in a professional context away from the home university in the form of a month-long project with an external…

Research Spotlight: Cheng Li

Studying: PhD in History (full-time)Supervisor: Professor Miles TaylorThesis Title: Pursuing a noble dream of legal codification: Jeremy Bentham’s law reform strategies, 1808-1832Research Interest: British politics and reforms in the eighteenth century and nineteenth century; utilitarianism; Bentham studies; intellectual biography studies; the Age of Reform. Thesis Overview My thesis explores the strategies made by the British…

Conference Report: ‘Crusoe at 300: Adaptations, Afterlives & Futures’

With the words “I was Born in the Year 1632, in the City of York” opening Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, it was only fitting that as we celebrate the 300th anniversary of this work Crusoe should come home to York. Organised by Dr Chloe Wigston Smith and Dr Gabriel Cervantes (University of Glasgow), the Centre for…

Conference Report: Small Things in the Eighteenth Century

By Holly Day On the 6th-7th June, CECS hosted the conference ‘Small Things in the Eighteenth Century,’ organised by Professor Beth Fowkes Tobin (University of Georgia), and our own Dr Chloe Wigston Smith, and funded by CECS and the British Academy. Brittany Scowcroft of CECS provided essential support. Speakers from several disciplines, including literary studies,…

Research Spotlight: Caitlin Kitchener

Studying: PhD in Archaeology (full-time)Supervisor: Dr. Jon FinchThesis Title: ‘Unite and Be Free’: The Historical Archaeology of British Political Radicalism, c. 1815-1822. Research Interests: political radicalism; landscape; early modern material culture; queer theory; archaeological theory  Thesis Overview The post-Napoleonic period was one of lively political activity. The emerging working class protested against a parliamentary system which failed to represent them…

John Thelwall Manuscripts at Derby Local Studies and Family History Library

By Alice Rhodes This May, thanks to the BARS Stephen Copley Research Award, I was able to spend a week in Derby Local Studies and Family History Library, carrying out research into poet and political orator turned speech therapist, John Thelwall’s “Derby Manuscript”. The collection, contained within three volumes of notebooks and spanning almost a…

Research Spotlight: Kurt Baird

Studying: PhD in History (full-time)Supervisor: Dr Jasper HeinzenThesis Title: Fighting for the Habsburgs: Community, Patriotism and the Kaiserlich-königliche Armee during the Wars against France, 1792-1818.Research Interests: The Military Enlightenment, martial citizenship, war time experience, military culture, social militarisation, conscription and the effects of military processes and practices on gender, regional identity and dynastic loyalty in the Austrian Hereditary Lands. Thesis…

Award Report: Harry Ransom Center AHRC IPS Fellowship

By Jenny Buckley Earlier this year I was delighted to be able to explore the rich holdings of eighteenth-century periodicals in the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. Thanks to a two-month AHRC IPS Fellowship, I’m now in a great position to finish work on my PhD thesis, which examines the influence of the periodical…

Research Spotlight: Elizabeth Potter

Studying: PhD in English and Related Literature (full-time)Supervisor: Prof. Jon MeeThesis Title: William Blake, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Annotation Research Interests: Eighteenth-century literature and visual culture; history of the book; eighteenth-century British art; digital humanities; aesthetics; postcolonial theory. Thesis Overview Inside of William Blake’s copy of The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds(1798) are extensive annotations; some contentious, others concurring, some poetic, others…

‘The Essays of George III’: Working in the Royal Archives

By Jenny Buckley If you’ve ever wondered how easy it is to get from York to Windsor, the answer is not very. But the long train ride and multiple changes is certainly worth it, especially when a visit to the Royal Archives lies at the other end. During autumn term I was able to make…

Eighteenth-Century Study Day, Wantage, Oxfordshire

By Frances Long On 7 January, a large proportion of CECS descended on the Vale and Downland Museum, Oxfordshire, to host an Eighteenth-Century Study Day for local sixth-form students. Six postgraduate speakers, of whom five were from York, were joined by our own Joanna de Groot as keynote speaker. The collaboration was the result of…

Research Spotlight: Lilian Tabois

Studying: PhD in English and Related Literature (full-time)Supervisor: Dr Emma MajorThesis Title: British Women's Travel Writing to Latin America and Historiography, 1820-1850Research Interests: Early nineteenth-century British literature; travel writing; historiography; transatlantic literary studies; women’s writing; the Age of Revolution Thesis Overview My thesis explores the relationship between travel writing, historiography, and revolution in the journals of British…

Difficult Women in the Long Eighteenth Century

By Anna Mercer The 2015 CECS conference ‘Difficult Women 1680-1830’ in 2015 invited researchers to reflect on their own interpretation of the many ‘Difficult Women’ who lived in the long eighteenth century. Papers addressed many different female experiences and lifestyles, from religiously non-conformist women to women bearing arms The Difficult Women team consisted of four…

Research Spotlight: Millie Schurch

Studying: PhD in English and Related Literature (full-time)Supervisor: Dr Mary FaircloughThesis Title: Women, Empiricism, and Epistolarity, 1740-1810Research Interests: Eighteenth-century literature and culture; history of science; gender studies; letters; sociability Thesis Overview My thesis examines the relationship between epistolarity and empirical culture in the mid-late eighteenth century. I focus on female-authored epistolary writing, in the form of letters…

Guided Tour of Fairfax House

On the morning of Saturday, 13th October a group of CECS postgraduate students met on the steps of Fairfax House for a guided tour of the house. The visit was organised as part of the CECS Postgraduate Forum to welcome the new students to York and to provide more context for one of the seminars…

Animals, Apples, and Climate Change: A Chawton House Visit

By Harrie Neal With thanks to BARS and the Stephen Copley Bursary that enabled me to visit Chawton House in September this year. Thanks also goes to everyone at Chawton House, especially Darren Bevin and Clio O’Sullivan, for helping me navigate the library’s collection of Maria Edgeworth’s children’s tales about animals, which is the focus…

William Blake at the British Library

By Elizabeth Potter For the past few years, the British Library has sought out PhD students to engage with their vibrant collection in innovative ways. Interested in intensive and methodical engagement, the Library has arranged themed research projects on specific subjects or collections. This is done to most fully offer practical support to develop meaningful…

Award Report: Lewis Walpole Library Visiting Fellowship

By Gabriella Barnard-Edmunds This summer I was delighted to be let loose for one month in the rich collections of the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale. Thanks to their Visiting Fellowship, I commence my third year of doctoral research with a vast array of unique visual material to support my literary enquiry into the role…

Postgrad Forum Away Day: Harewood House

This year, on 21 June, we had our first Postgraduate Forum Away day. Our destination was Harewood House, built in 1759. The finest craftsmen were involved in building Edwin Lascelles’ family home: York-born architect John Carr, interior designer Robert Adam, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, and Thomas Chippendale. Photo Credit: Harewood.org Situated just outside Leeds, the Harewood…

Conference Report: BARS Early Career and Postgraduate Conference

By Lilian Tabois PhD students Alice Rhodes and Lilian Tabois attended the biennial Early Career and Postgraduate Conference for the British Association of Romantic Studies (BARS). This year the conference was held at the University of Glasgow on 15-16 June, 2018. In addition to speakers from the UK, there were colleagues from Canada, France, Ireland, Japan,…

Trip to the Bowes Museum

Early in the morning of Friday, June 15, a group of intrepid early risers set off for (what we think was) the first joint day trip for CECS and CREMS postgraduate students, organised by The Cabinet of Curiosities. Students were joined by Dr Simon Ditchfield (CREMS), Dr Chloe Wigston Smith (CECS) and Brittany Scowcroft, the…

Behind the Scenes: Tales of Fashionable Life

We're gearing up for our celebrations as part of #Edgeworth250, a series of events taking place to commemorate 250 year anniversary of the birth of Maria Edgeworth. Often described as the ‘Irish Jane Austen’ and much admired by Austen, Edgeworth was one of the most commercially successful and respected writers of her time. In addition to…

Award Report: QMCECS/BSECS Visiting Fellowship

By Jennifer Buckley This year, I had the honour of being the recipient of the QMCECS/BSECS Visiting Fellowship to support my PhD project on periodical print culture in the early eighteenth century (1700-1760); the research that I am currently undertaking has a particular focus on fictionality and 'false news'. I spent my time in London…

Eighteenth Century Fun for all the Family!

Last week, several CECS postgraduate students took part in the Fringe Family Fun Festival as part of York’s Festival of Ideas, 2018. Aimed at children aged up to eleven, the Family Fringe offers a series of activities that are inspired by research being undertaken by staff and students in the Humanities Research Centre (HRC). This…

Imagining the Impossible: Festival of (Eighteenth-Century) Ideas

Several CECS members will be running events across York next month as part of the Festival of Ideas. The Festival takes place each year in June, and for 2018 has the theme of “Imagining the Impossible”. Taking this as inspiration, we’ve come up with a series of events that explore other worlds, lead participants on…

ASECS Conference Report: Orlando, 2018

Several CECS members attended the 49th annual conference for the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (ASECS). Held in Orlando, Florida, in March 2018, this year’s event was organized in conjunction with the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SEASECS). Staff members Alison O’Byrne, Jim Watt, and Chloe Wigston Smith, and PhD students Gabriella Barnard-Edmunds,…

Award Report: Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837 Anniversary Bursary

By Madeleine Pelling This year, I had the honour of being awarded the Women’s Studies Group 1558-1837 Anniversary Bursary for my proposed research into the little-know Bluestocking, courtier, and diarist Mary Hamilton (1756-1816). Using the rich archive of Hamilton’s diaries, letters and antiquarian manuscripts held at the John Rylands Library (University of Manchester) in combination…

Student Success!

Many of our PhD students have received awards this term to assist them with travel to archives, libraries, and collections that are relevant to their research. Congratulations go to: Madeleine Pelling – Women’s Studies Group Bursary Rebecca Simpson - Women’s Studies Group Bursary Elizabeth Spencer - BECC/BSECS Travel Award Harriet Neal -  BARS Stephen Copley Award Jennifer…

Workshop: “Fictional ‘Facts’: Pirate Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Archive”

Last week, we were delighted to have the privilege of hosting Associate Professor Manushag N. Powell, from Purdue University. Powell offered us a two-day insight into the world of eighteenth-century pirates. On the first day of her visit, she led a workshop for our postgraduate students on using archival materials, and gave a paper entitled ‘Mapping…

Outings in Oxford: BSECS Annual Conference

Taking place the week before term gets underway, the first event on the calendar for the New Year is the BSECS Annual Conference, held at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, on 3rd-5th January. Several of our postgraduate students travelled up to Oxford to attend the society’s 47th annual meeting, which this year had the very timely…

Global CECS

In December 2017, CECS staff members Jim Watt and Alison O’Byrne attended the David Nichol Smith Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies in Brisbane, Australia on the theme Natures and Spaces of Enlightenment.  The event is organized every three years by the Australia and New Zealand Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and offered a wonderful opportunity to reconnect…

Conference Report: ‘Contested Inheritances 1750-1830’

By Elizabeth Bobbitt With the autumn term at an end (Happy Holidays, everyone!), we thought it would be a good opportunity to look back at some of the exciting events which CECS has hosted this term. Here is a review of the first conference which kicked off the academic year back in October. ‘Contested Inheritances…

Workshop: “So You Want to Submit a Journal Article!”

We were delighted to have the privilege of hosting Dr. Eugenia Zuroski, editor-in-chief of Eighteenth-Century Fiction and Associate Professor of English at McMaster University,  earlier this term. Following a fascinating and vibrant paper on 'The Cat-Arion of Strawberry Hill: Bentley’s Illustrations for Gray’s Poem about the Death of Walpole's Cat', Eugenia ran a workshop on journal publication…

Maria Edgeworth and the ‘Irish Education Bill’ (1799) Pt.2

By Susan Manly (The first part of this post can be found here.) Having spent several years now reading through the manuscript notes and letters in the Edgeworth family papers held in the Bodleian and the National Library of Ireland, I’ve become ever more convinced that Marilyn Butler was quite right: collaborative exchange underpins Richard…

Maria Edgeworth and the ‘Irish Education Bill’ (1799) Pt.1

By Joanna Wharton Last summer, I visited Dublin to follow up on a hunch about a manuscript. In truth, it was barely even a hunch, but it was a good enough excuse for my mother and I to do some travelling together: neither of us had ever been to Ireland, though we’d often talked about…

Q&A with our own Poldark historical advisor, Hannah Greig

Here's the link to a fairly extensive Poldark history Q&A Hannah did with an American blogger recently.http://austenprose.com/2015/07/22/qa-with-poldark-historical-advisor-hannah-greig/

Another award for Anna

Congratulations again to one of our CECS doctoral students, Anna Mercer, on being awarded a Stephen Copley Postgraduate Research Award this year. This is a highly competitive annual bursary scheme run by the British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS) in order to support postgraduate research in the UK or aboard. Anna will be going to the USA for her research trip:…

Keats-Shelley essay prize success

Congratulations to one of our English Phd students, Anna Mercer, for winning the runner-up Keats-Shelley essay prize, awarded annually by the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association. Her essay was entitled 'Beyond Frankenstein: the Collaborative Literary Relationship of Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley', and is based on her thesis work. Carol Ann Duffy was the prize chair this year. There's more…

Waterloo 200 Public lectures at York

The first in this series of public lectures organised by Catriona Kennedy for CECS was held on Tuesday evening to a packed room of nearly 100 people. Many thanks to Professor Alan Forrest, who gave a wonderful paper,  'Waterloo, France and the Napoleonic Legend', to a very appreciative York  audience. The next lecture in the series…

British Studies Centre, Bardic News, and the Highlands

**********IMPORTANT OSSIAN CONFERENCE 18-19 APRIL 2015************** https://macphersonsossianiclegacy.wordpress.com/conference-heritage-festival-18th-19th-april-2015/ Emma Major reports: Earlier this month I went to the Highlands to bring a York Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies perspective to the very exciting new interdisciplinary MLitt in British Studies that Kristin Lindfield-Ott (English Literature) and Jim McPherson (History) have developed together with their colleagues archaeologist Simon Clarke…

John Brewer’s visit to CECS

Sarah Goldsmith On the 24-25th February, CECS and the Department of History had the privilege of hosting Professor John Brewer for two days. On Tuesday night, speaking to a packed room of staff, postgrads and even some stray undergrads, John gave a paper on his latest research project: ‘Sublime Tourism, Neapolitan Science and Counter-Revolution: Vesuvius…

Jon Mee and an Amphibious Animal

I was lucky enough to be involved at a Library Day at the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne yesterday. Thanks to the good offices of the President Paul Gailiunas and the Librarian Kay Easson I was able to get access to the archives. Paul showed me this page from the minute book for…

Congratulations on REF results

Late December saw the announcement of the results of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework. All 4 of the departments involved in CECS – Archaeology, English and Related Literatures, History of Art, and History – came in the top five in their relevant subject category. This speaks volumes for the quality of research being produced by…

Podcast: launch of the Letters of William Godwin, Vol II

Studies in William Godwin has been undergoing a revival over the last few years. From a position within literary studies as a fall guy to Coleridge and Wordsworth, Godwin's importance to the broader intellectual culture of the late eighteenth century has been reiterated lately by the publication of his diary on-line by the Bodleian Library…

CECS in Tokyo and in POETICA

I've just completed an essay 'Electrical Science and Della Cruscan Poetics in the 1790s' which will come out in a special issue of the journal POETICA vol. 82 pp.1-21, in December 2014. The essay is taken from my current research project on 'cultures of electricity' in the long eighteenth century. The journal special issues features selected papers…