‘Frankenstein at 200’, a Public Event in the city of Lincoln 

Venue:  the Lincoln Drill Hall, Free School Lane, Lincoln. LN2 1EY

Date: 31^st October 2018 (9.30am-4pm)

Keynote speaker: Professor Mark Jancovich (University of East Anglia)

Ticket price: £7.50 (including a light lunch). Available from http://lncn.eu/frank

In celebration of the bi-centenary of the publication of the first edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the University of Lincoln is holding a public event, to which all are welcome.

The morning session (10am-1pm) comprises a programme of papers, with questions from the audience.

The afternoon session (2-4pm) comprises a work in progress performance by Chamelon 53, followed by a Round Table discussion (with audience participation) titled ‘Frankenstein’s Relevance to the C21st’, chaired by Professor Lucie Armitt (University of Lincoln).

Programme of Papers:

Prof. Mark Jancovich (University of East Anglia): ‘Frankenstein’s Hideous Progeny: Science Fiction, Horror and Political Discourse.’

Bysshe Inigo Coffey (University of Exeter): ‘A Study, the Senses and the Soul’

Eleanor Bryan (University of Lincoln) ‘Hideous Progenies: Reimagining Frankenstein’s monster’

Lauren Christie (University of Dundee): ‘Monstrous Legacies: Literary Adaptations of Frankenstein for Young Readers’

Dr Kelly Jones (University of Lincoln) ‘Adaptations of monstrous “liveness” in contemporary theatrical representations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’

Enquiries and further information: Lucie Armitt (larmitt@lincoln.ac.uk) or Eleanor Bryan (ebryan@lincoln.ac.uk)

The first C19 session of this year will be James Yeoman (Uni of Sheffield) talking about memoir and autobiography in the Spanish anarchist movement. The session will take place in the Minvera Building, MB1019 at 4pm this Wednesday (3rd Oct). We hope to see you there.

Please find James’ abstract and biography below.

Writing the Revolutionary Self: Memoir and Autobiography in the Spanish Anarchist Movement

This paper will discuss life-writing within the Spanish anarchist movement. It focuses the creation of identity through the creation of autobiographies and memoirs, texts in which memory interacts with the multiple, shifting discourses of both the movement, and of Spanish culture more broadly. As such it draws upon historical works on selfhood and ‘ego-documents’ (e.g. Summerfield, 1998; Voglis, 2002; Hellbeck, 2006) drawing comparisons with different genres (such as oral history, diaries and letters) and across different international contexts. Key questions to be discussed include:

• What this material can and cannot tell us
• How anarchist autobiographical writing changed and developed over the shifting political and social contexts of turn-of-the-century Spain
• How authors related anarchist ideology to their experiences through their writing, in areas such as gender, and the relationship between the individual and collective

This paper will focus on one example of anarchist life-writing in particular: volume I of Mi Vida (3 vols., 1929-1932), the autobiography of the eminent publisher and theorist Federico Urales (1864-1942). Urales’ work provides an engaging and colourful example of how childhood, self-realisation, success and failure were framed within a discourse of a ‘good anarchist life’, set in the context of late nineteenth-century Spain, in which the individual and ideological merged to form an ethical, exemplary self-narrative.

Biography: James Michael Yeoman (University of Sheffield)

James is a teaching associate in Modern European History at the University of Sheffield. His work has examined the formation of the anarchist movement in Spain, with a particular focus on the role of print culture in the development of anarchist ideology and practice. His current research and most recent publications have emphasised transnational connections and exchanges between radical movements across Europe and Latin America. In 2016 James guest-edited a special edition of International Journal of Iberian Studies (29:3) with Dr Danny Evans (University of Leeds), which includes his article ‘Salud y Anarquía desde Dowlais,’ which presents a case study of Spanish anarchist migration to South Wales in the early twentieth century. He has also contributed a chapter on the Spanish Civil War for the recently-published Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism (2018).

We are delighted to announce the Programme of events for Semester A.

Events Programme, 2018-19 – Semester A

4pm Weds 3^rd October 2018: James Yeoman (Sheffield) ‘Writing the Revolutionary Self: Memoir and Autobiography in the Spanish Anarchist Movement’

5pm Weds 24^th October 2018: Jason Whittaker (Lincoln), ‘Cleaving: Blake, Whitman and the aggravations of influence’

4pm Weds 14^th November 2018: Deborah Whelan (Lincoln): ‘Controversial clerics and rambunctious rebels: Lessons in relationship, race and the retrospective lens. James Allison and Langalibalele in 19^th century Natal.’

Refreshments are available on the hour, with the session to begin at quarter past the hour. All sessions are in MB1019. Please follow us on Twitter (@19thCLincoln).

Our final C19 session of this Semester features Dr. Amy Culley (Lincoln) talking to us on ‘Narratives of Ageing in the Life Writing of Mary Berry’ (no, not that one).

The session will take place next Thursday, the 30^th November, in room MB3202. The paper will begin at 5.15pm, with refreshments from 5pm.

Please find Amy’s abstract and bio below.

See you there!

‘A journal of my feelings, mind & Body’

Narratives of Ageing in the Life Writing of Mary Berry (1763-1852)

This paper provides new perspectives on old age, gender, and sociability in the early nineteenth century through discussion of a rich variety of life writing texts by historian, biographer, and editor, Mary Berry. In her manuscript journal, Berry narrates her experience of the life course from her twenties until her death at the age of eighty-nine in a self-conscious and intimate commentary on ageing as a single woman. She mixes chronological, personal, cultural, and physical definitions of ageing, and addresses themes of the body, memory, reading, writing, faith and friendship. Yet a comparison of her manuscript with the posthumously published printed work of 1865 reveals how Berry’s reflections on old age were radically reshaped for a Victorian readership. Beyond the journal, Berry’s correspondence within a network of older male and female letter-writers provides insight into intragenerational relationships and highlights the significance of age for studies of friendship in this period. The theme also manifests in her biographical works, in which her depictions of older female figures do not treat old age as an epilogue to a life (as is typical of the biographical tradition) but rather develop the critical reflections on the pleasures and perils of ageing expressed in her journal. In recent years there has been a growing critical recognition of Berry, beyond her image as the youthful friend and editor of Horace Walpole, and her life and work have featured in studies of literary salons, travel writing, the theatre, historical writing, and women’s literary networks. Reading Berry’s life writing through the lens of ageing contributes to this work of recovery and reveals her as an acute reporter on her travels through late life.

Amy Culley is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Lincoln. She is the author of British Women’s Life Writing, 1760–1840: Friendship, Community, and Collaboration (Palgrave, 2014), co-editor with Anna Fitzer of Editing Women’s Writing, 1670-1840 (Routledge, 2017), co-editor with Daniel Cook of Women’s Life Writing, 1700–1850: Gender, Genre and Authorship (Palgrave, 2012), and editor of Women’s Court and Society Memoirs, volumes 1–4 (Pickering & Chatto, 2009). She is currently researching narratives of ageing and old age in women’s life writing of the early nineteenth century, supported by a BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant.

Please find below details of our first C19 Research Group session, which will take place on Thursday 12^th October in room MB3202 (Minerva building, 3^rd floor), with refreshments served from 5pm and the paper due to start at 5.15pm.

We hope to see lots of you there!

Dr. Cassie Ulph (Bishop Grosseteste University), ‘Anne Lister, the Halifax Lit and Phil, and Civic Improvement’

Anne Lister (1791-1840) is best – and rightly – known as a pivotal figure in the history of sexuality, whose detailed diaries of homosexual relationships, and same sex de facto marriage to her partner Ann Walker, disrupt assumptions about the sexual norms of the early nineteenth century.  This paper will address another aspect of Lister’s resistance to gendered norms, in the form of her active and determined engagement in the civic life and politics of Halifax.  Focusing on Lister’s membership of the Halifax Literary and Philosophical Society (est. 1830), I will consider the ways in which civic leaders hoped to shape the culture of their town through such institutions, and the opportunity this presented in turn for Lister to shape her own identity and dynastic legacy.  I will also examine the extent and meaningfulness of Lister’s participation in the Society, in light of other intellectual and social networks of which she was part.

Cassie Ulph is a Lecturer in English at Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, specialising in the literature and culture of the long eighteenth century.  She received her PhD from the University of Leeds in 2012, with a thesis that recontextualised Frances Burney’s work in relation to her formative experience of London artistic and musical culture, and her father Charles’s social and professional networks. Cassie’s recent work has focussed on women and intellectual community more broadly, and in particular on Hester Piozzi and Anne Lister.  Before joining BGU in 2016, Cassie was a research fellow on the Leverhulme-funded Networks of Improvement project at the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of York, and taught literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries at the Universities of Leeds and Manchester. In 2016, Cassie was awarded the McGill-ASECS Burney Fellowship, and the 2016-17 ASECS fellowship at the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Cassie is a committee member, conference organiser and former treasurer of the Burney Society UK, and was a member of the organising committee of the 2017 British Association of Victorian Studies conference held at BGU.