1660-1830
| |
| home |
| the executive board |
| conference information |
| for members |
| links |
| Spring/Summer 2010 Newsletter |
MESSAGE FROM NEWSLETTER EDITOR Welcome to the Aprha Behn Society’s online newsletter for spring and summer 2010. We’ve had a fairly lengthy hiatus of a year since the last newsletter due to a changeover in websites and newsletter editors. This is your new editor Ann Campbell, writing from Boise, Idaho where I am an Associate Professor of English at Boise State University. After Aleksondra decided to retire as newsletter editor last spring, Karen Gevirtz approached me at ASECS 2009 about the possibility of taking her place. Full of wine-induced bonhomie, I agreed. Aleksondra is well known and well loved by all of you, so I am sure you are sad to see her leave this position. However, as she is remaining as co-managing editor for Aphra Behn Online, she’ll still be heavily involved in the organization. She has left very big shoes to fill, and I will try my best to live up to the high standards she has established. There will be at least one significant change in the newsletter: I will be publishing two rather than three issues per year, one during the fall semester, and the second during the spring semester. This schedule coincides best, I think, with academic schedules and the realities of summer absences from home institutions for research. Please send along news about your latest accomplishments me any time at anncampbell@boisestate.edu. Our next newsletter will appear during fall 2010. All Best, Ann Campbell anncampbell@boisestate.edu NEW WEBSITE AND FACEBOOK PRESENCE Please reset your web browser toolbars so that they take you to our new website, aphrabehn.org. All our updated content will be on this site. Visit us early and often. Also, please become a fan of the Aphra Behn Society on facebook. MESSAGE FROM EXECUTIVE PRESIDENT Good morning, one and all, from my perch in sunny Georgia. I am enjoying spring break and catching up on my duties, including my long-overdue submissions for our newsletter. I am testing the patience of our new newsletter editor, Ann Campbell, and I apologize to her! Please take a minute to look at the financial statement and the minutes from the annual meeting. I would like to call your attention to several matters. The first is the new journal, which, since our meeting, has a title: Aphra Behn Online: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1660-1830. I would like to thank all the people who have been working so hard to get this journal moving forward: Aleksondra Hultquist, Laura Runge, Judy Hayden, Jennifer Golightly, Emily Bowles, and Robin Runia. Expect to be hearing more from them soon. Related to the journal is the decision to raise our dues from $15 to $20, still a modest sum in the affiliate societies’ world. The extra money will be required to run the journal. For that reason, and for many others, I urge you to pay your 2010 dues, if you have not already (and thank you for those who have). When you do so, if you use pay pal, please check to see that it is showing the correct amount. It was correct in January and February; it was not in late February and early March. We are working on correcting it, and will monitor it. If it is the wrong amount when you go to the site, please let me know, and I will see about fixing it. The financial statement demonstrates our fiscal good health. Michael Rex brought the conference expenses in almost exactly to the penny; combining receipts from dues and registration, we were a few dollars ahead. While the statement shows we are $69.45 short of where we were on January 1, 2009, that is because we had to pay for a new host for the website. It is worth the expense, however, because we now have an address that will not have to change if the webmaster does. Visit aphrabehn.org regularly! I should also add that since the beginning of the year, we have collected enough dues to put us ahead of the January 1, 2009, starting balance, even taking into account the payment of the student essay prize, which was won by Maura Smyth. And I cannot make all these remarks about conference-related matters without thanking Michael Rex once again for welcoming us so hospitably to Cumberland University in Lebanon, TN. We had a great conference, complete with a presentation of Behn’s The Luckey Chance, and a terrific plenary, “Poking Aphra,” by Margaret Ezell. Finally, let me share the good news about conferences. In 2011, we will be joining the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies at their meeting in Hamilton, Ontario at McMaster University. The chair for the meeting is Peter Walmsley, the editor of Eighteenth-Century Fiction. I will be the ABS contact person. I intend to inquire about specific Aphra Behn sessions, and there will be one plenary speaker designated the ABS plenary. Take a moment to check out McMaster’s eighteenth-century collections, for which its library is well-known. In 2013, we will be at the University of Tulsa; that meeting will be organized by Jennifer Airey. In 2015, Judy Hayden will welcome us to the University of Tampa. Thank you for your support, this year and always. I wish all of you well, in your teaching, your projects, your dissertations, and all your endeavors, and I hope to see you all soon, at the various affiliate conferences and elsewhere. Best wishes, Martha Martha F. Bowden FINANCIAL STATEMENT, FISCAL YEAR 2009 Checking Account Receipts Disbursements Ending Balance Certificate of Deposit: Total Interest earned in 2009: $53.37 Respectfully Submitted Martha F. Bowden 2009 CONFERENCE ADDRESS BY CONFERENCE PRESIDENT DR. MICHAEL REX APHRA BEHN SOCIETY CONFERENCE The 2009 Aphra Behn and Women in the Arts Conference was held at Cumberland University in Lebanon, TN over the Guy Fawkes Weekend. We had over 45 papers of very high quality as well as intense intersession discussions. The Conference started with a charming reception at the hotel which featured a Red Velvet cake with cream-cheese icing and three varieties of Tennessee wines. We chatted and re-established friendships for several hours. Everyone seemed relaxed and energized. I was personally grateful for the "wow" factor when the president of CU arrived. He was most impressed with the range and depth of the scholarship in the room. On the first morning of the Conference, there was a small snafu with the shuttle bus – I hadn’t realized that I needed a driver, but I went to campus, got the van, and drove the shuttle myself. Other than that, everything went smoothly. The first sessions were well attended and enjoyable. The food was good and the service lovely. Our lunch and business meeting went well – the keynote address by Margaret J.M. Ezell, Abbot Chair at Texas A&M University delved into modes of publication and author identity creation. As several undergraduates in the audience said, “it was cool” as Margaret intertwined Restoration publication practices with modern electronic methods like blogs and Facebook. After another marvelous group of panels in the afternoon, everyone took a break to get ready for that evening’s performance. The Third Knight Players – a group of my students – put on a dramatic reading of Aphra Behn’s The Lucky Chance. Although the acoustics in the hall were not great, the show was a success. I got to play Sir Feeble – one of the dirty old men – and had a blast. Look for clips on the group's Facebook page coming soon. Saturday’s sessions were capped off by a very nice meal of roasted chicken, greens, and pasta. Not quite 18th century, but good nonetheless. The meal ended with a very 18th century dessert – Portugal Cakes, much like the ones served at the Court of Charles II and his Portuguese queen, Catherine of Braganza. Most of us then adjourned to O’Charley’s for a drink. All in all, the 20th Anniversary Conference of the Aphra Behn Society was a smashing success. I can’t wait to see everyone again at the 2011 conference in Hamilton. Your Humble, Now Former Conference President, Michael Rex As Promised, the recipe for Portugal Cakes: OUR MODERN EQUIVALENTS The batter can also be baked in patty pans or muffin tins for about 35 - 40 minutes. First cake: Rub in: butter, "till it is thick like grated white bread” Add: currants Whisk: egg yolks and wine to a thick cream, about 10 minutes Blend: whisked yolks into dry ingredients Whisk: egg whites and rosewater until stiff, about 10 minutes Fold: whites into batter Turn into: a buttered or greased 33 cm x 23 cm (13" x 9") pan Bake: in a moderate oven, 180 C (350 F), for about one hour or until toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean This year’s Aphra Behn affiliate session at ASECS, “Women and Spirituality in the Eighteenth Century,” featured a discussion of religious enthusiasm as represented in writing and painting. Kari Lokke’s paper, The ‘Eccentric Force’ of Female Spirituality: Ann Batten Cristall’s ‘The Enthusiast. Arla,’” detailed spirituality in “’The Enthusiast.’ Arla” as a distinctly gendered and sexualized experience. Caroline Babcock’s presentation, “Saint Theresa Incarnate: The Sexualization of Female Spiritual Experience in French Literature and Painting of the Eighteenth Century,” illuminated the connection between religious enthusiasm and female sexuality in French paining. Agab Fazlollahi’s presentation, “The Spiritual World of Elizabeth Carter,” explored the reversal of gender stereotypes in Elizabeth Carter’s poetic depictions of spirituality. Each participant’s work complicated the connection between embodied lived experience, aesthetic representation, and religious engagement by women in the eighteenth-century. Our online journal has a name and a mission, and is slated to launch on January 1, 2011. Aphra Behn Online is an online annual publication that serves as a forum for interactive scholarly discussion on all aspects of women in arts between 1640 and 1830, especially literature, visual arts, music, performance art, film criticism, and production arts. The journal features peer-reviewed articles encompassing subjects on a global range and is intended for scholars and students. The journal is comprised of four divisions: Scholarship; Pedagogy; New Media Applications/ Women on the Web; and Reviews. A team of web designers, Anne Greenfield from the University of Denver, and Kevin Jordan and Marisa Iglesias from the University of South Florida, will work together to create the website for the journal. Congratulations to Maura Smyth for winning the graduate student essay prize of $300 for her paper, “Margaret Cavendish's Worlds of Fancy,” which was chosen due to its well articulated argument, intelligent relationship secondary resources, and originality of thought. Maura describes her award-winning essay in the following paragraph. In the mid-seventeenth century, writers like Thomas Hobbes explicitly describe Fancy as a creative faculty distinct from the post-Reformation Imagination whose perpetual motion, constant production and specifically female associations could be fruitfully corralled into patriarchal projects (like Hobbes’ new model of absolute sovereignty)—only when, of course, properly governed by Reason and Judgment. Rejecting this call for containment, Margaret Cavendish seizes the culturally available notion of Fancy and its capacity for prolific, expansive, feminized production to create new and multiple models of female authority in The Blazing World. Cavendish does not only use the notion of absolute sovereignty already tied to Fancy from Hobbes’ earlier invocation, by famously casting herself “Margaret the First,” ruler of the Blazing World. She also revises Fancy to be yoked to creation itself, declaring herself a “happy creatoress”—and not just a monarch—of her own world. This essay, "Margaret Cavendish's Worlds of Fancy," tracks how, by emphatically asserting her own authority on these multiple levels, Cavendish heralds a female brand of sovereignty under the sign of Fancy uniquely available to other women writers and “creatoresses” like herself. In a larger sense, then, Cavendish’s Blazing World offers Fancy as an aesthetic tool for providing early modern women with “creative space” in which they too can invent alternatives to the oppressions of the English patriarchal culture. This essay is part of my larger dissertation, “The Flight of Fancy, 1611-1745,” which tracks Fancy as an active form of female aesthetic creative agency throughout this period. Special thanks to the committee members, Aleksondra Hultquist from the University of West Georgia, and Karen Gevirtz, from Seton Hall University, who selected this year’s winning essay. Carolyn Woodward, Associate Professor of English at the University of New Mexico, has published “The Modern Figure of The Author, Sarah Fielding, and the Case of The Histories of Some of the Penitents of The Magdalen House” in the Oxford journal of English: advance access online and may be full-text accessed at http://english.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/efp031? ijkey=4jozrbTxRwfa7fR&keytype=ref Professor Nicole Boucher Spottke from the Valencia Community College, West, writes that she has finished her doctorate. She graduated with her PhD from the University of South Florida, Tampa, in December. Her dissertation was titled “Coffins, Closets, Kitchens, and Convents: Dreaming of Home in Gendered Spaces.” Professor Aleksondra Hulquist is an International Visiting Scholar at the University of Melbourne for 2010, and has received a fellowship at Chawton for the spring of 2010. |
|
MEMBERSHIP DUES APHRA BEHN ONLINE: NEWSLETTER |