Fall 2011 Newsletter

Greetings ABS members, and happy holidays. I’m sure this newsletter finds you deeply immersed in grading and other end-of-the-semester work. Please take a minute away from these hectic activities and enjoy our fall newsletter. It’s been a very exciting summer and fall 2011 for ABS. Our biannual conference was in October, and numerous ABS members are also looking forward to chairing panels, presenting papers, and participating in roundtables in the new year at the upcoming 2012 American Society for Eighteenth-Century conference in San Antonio and the Aphra Behn Europe Conference in England.

We have been a busy group since the last newsletter, with many successes. Martha Bowden, who organized the Aphra Behn Society’s part of our joint conference with the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (CSECS) and the Northeast Association for Eighteenth-Century Studies (NEASECS), will give you a full report in this newsletter; suffice it for me to say here that it was a splendid conference, full of scholarly and collegial riches. Peter Walmsley, the CSECS conference organizer and host, admiringly called the Aphra Behn Society “A walking party.” Indeed we are!

We conducted a great deal of business at what is now our biannual meeting. We officially bid farewell to officers who have served with distinction, Nicole Spottke and Ereck Jarvis, and officially welcomed new officers: British Representative Elaine Hobby, Membership Secretary Michael Rex, and Member-at-Large Cassie Childs. We also heard from Jennifer Airey, Conference President for the 2013 conference at the University of Tulsa, who has a report on the upcoming conference in this newsletter.

We also addressed issues pertaining to the governance and existence of the Society. We reviewed the finances of the Aphra Behn Society, as usual. The financial report will be available in the spring newsletter. We have also successfully adopted several proposed amendments to our Constitution.

The activities of our membership are inspiring. We are engaged at all levels and in all activities of the profession, from scholarship to pedagogy, from publishing to mentoring. The news of the membership contained here and in your listserv reports touches the tip of the iceberg, and I invite you to share your news with the rest of us in months to come. I also invite you to attend the Aphra Behn Society panels at ASECS (Friday morning, for those of you making reservations) and look for other ABS activities at the conference. Members are presenting papers around the world this year, including at our sister organization, Aphra Behn--Europe, in April. Last but hardly least, there is our spectacular journal ABO, renamed from Aphra Behn Online. Please read it, contribute to it, and remind your friends and colleagues of its groundbreaking approach to scholarship.

ABO, an interactive scholarly journal which focuses exclusively on the issues related to women in the arts from 1640 to 1830 and provides cutting edge work in an open access, online format, is looking for a volunteer to help run and develop the website.

Duties will include making changes to the site, uploading new content, and developing new areas of the site in concert with the Lead Web Developer and the Editorial Staff. Anticipated commitment is 2-5 hours per week with increased time when the journal is released. Some basic familiarity with web design and coding desired, but not required.

GRADUATE ESSAY PRIZE

The Aphra Behn Society Graduate Essay Prize is a biannual award made by the Society for the best graduate student paper presented at the ABS Meeting. Papers will be judged on the following criteria: provides clear articulation of the argument, advances critical understanding of the subject, demonstrates an intelligent relationship to secondary resources, and shows adeptness of close reading skills. In addition to special recognition, the prize carries a cash award of $300, as well as publication in our journal, ABO.

The contest this year is open to any graduate student who presented at the combined meeting of CSECS/SCEDHS and ABS in Hamilton Ontario, http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~csecs/ . To enter, you must be a member of the Aphra Behn Society; for membership information, please visit http://aphrabehn.org/members.htm.

The paper you submit for the prize should be the one you presented at the conference with expansion and revision (about 4,000-6,000 words). Papers should be correctly formatted according to MLA documentation style. Submissions must be sent directly to Dr. Aleksondra Hultquist AND Dr. Laura Runge, the committee for the 2011 Graduate Student Essay Prize. Submissions must be received by January 10, 2012. Please send an attached Word Document or PDF to ahul@unimelb.edu.au AND runge@usf.edu.

The winner of the prize will be notified soon after the committee has made its decision and will be announced through the Aphra Behn Society’s Newsletter and listserv.

REPORT ON ABS BIANNUAL MEETING at McMaster University October 27-29 FROM Martha F. Bowden, Conference President

This year, instead of a stand-alone conference, the Aphra Behn Society collaborated with various other scholarly societies in a single conference in Hamilton, Ontario. In Spring 2010, then executive president Martha Bowden was approached by Peter Walmsley, of McMaster about joining with CSECS/SCEDHS (the Canadian eighteenth-century studies group) for the Fall 2011 conference. Because we had no other offers, I was glad to accept. By the time we all arrived in Hamilton, participation had spread to so many other societies that I had begun to think of it as the Alphabet Society.

The membership of ABS distinguished itself in all the usual and expected ways: fine scholarship, scholarly acuity, and the ability to have a really good time. A group of ABS members went to the Planetarium on Thursday evening, and others ran away to the wine district and Niagara Falls on Friday. In addition to general participation in many different panels, the society had two “showcase” panels and was allowed to choose one of the plenaries.

The first of the panels, “Editing Eighteenth-Century Women’s Texts,” was chaired by Anne Russell from Wilfred Laurier University. Ingrid Horrocks (Massey University) reflected on the “vital ungrammaticality” of Mary Wollstonecraft’s prose. Laura Runge (University of South Florida) demonstrated the fluctuations in reliability of the many editions of Oroonoko from the seventeenth-century to the present, including the copy texts being used for ebooks. Michael Rex (Cumberland University) argued for use of various electronic forms of texts as opposed to paper ones as a means of making them available and affordable.

The second panel, “Eighteenth-Century Women’s Texts in the Classroom,” was chaired by Michael Rex. Karen Gevirtz (Seton Hall University) illustrated her “parallel texts” approach, which pairs women’s and men’s texts, allowing them to speak in dialogue with each other. Martha Bowden (Kennesaw State University) explained her choice of texts and editions in an upper level Gender Studies course. Jonathan Sadow revealed his “subversive” use of women’s texts in a course focusing on genre studies.

One of the highlights of the conference, for the general audience as well as for ABS, was Martine Watson Brownley’s (Emory University) plenary address, “Gender, Sovereignty, and Biographical Constructions of Mary II.” Her presentation made clear both the historical importance of Mary II’s reign and the reasons for the lack of attention paid to her. She was central to the joint reign with her husband, acting as sole monarch for long periods of time while William was fighting in Flanders, and being responsible for the appointment of the many of the Latitudinarian bishops who would shape the English church for several generations. Many of her attributes, however, including her submission and unquestioning devotion to her husband, make her an unlikely figure in feminist discourse. The plenary generated much lively discussion and many questions. Professor Brownley was introduced by Martha Bowden.

The Executive President convened an informational meeting of the society on Saturday afternoon.

REPORT ON UPCOMING ABS BIANNUAL CONFERENCE 2013 AT UNIVERSITY OF TULSA

The Aphra Behn Society for Women in the Arts, 1660-1830 invites you to its upcoming biannual conference to be held at the University of Tulsa, October 24-25, 2013. Sponsored by the Aphra Behn Society and the University of Tulsa NEH-Endowed Comparative Literature Symposium, the 2013 conference will feature a plenary banquet at the Gilcrease Museum, an evening of Restoration theatre performed by the University of Tulsa's Department of Theatre, and many exciting papers delivered by scholars from around the country. For more information and the forthcoming call for papers, please visit the conference website at www.aphrabehn.org/conference.html. If there are any questions, please contact the conference organizer, Dr. Jennifer L. Airey, at jennifer-airey@utulsa.edu.

REPORT ON VOLUME I OF ABO: AN INTERACTIVE JOURNAL FOR WOMEN AND THE ARTS, 1640-1830, FROM THE EDITORS

The first volume of ABO: An Interactive Journal for Women and the Arts, 1640-1830, published in March 2011, was a huge success. The volume featured several book reviews as well as essays on the theme of women’s poetry by Catherine Ingrassia, Katharine Kittredge, Danielle Bobker, Claudia Thomas Kairoff, and Elizabeth Kraft. Our second volume, which will feature essays on the question of open access, will be available in March 2012; in the interim, on December 15, the journal will publish new book reviews and unveil a new feature, Ask Aphra, an advice column for academic professionals providing answers to questions about scholarly etiquette, publication, tenure, and teaching. Two other new features are planned for release with the March volume: “Notes and Discoveries,” which will allow users to share brief research notes, and “Pedagogy Sharing Center,” a space allowing readers to share syllabi and engage in discussions about teaching.

Please join the journal’s editors and contributors to the first volume on Friday, March 23, from 4:15 to 5:45 p.m. for a roundtable discussion of the journal’s first year at ASECS in San Antonio.

ABS MEMBER PANEL CHAIRS AND PANEL ROUNDTABLE PARTICIPANTS UPCOMING 2012 ASECS AND ABS EUROPE CONFERENCES

Karen Gevirtz, ABS Executive President and Seton Hall University Associate Professor of English will be presenting “Two Thumbs Down: Sterilizing the Past in Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, and Becoming Jane” on the NEASECS/ASECS panel “The Eighteenth Century on Film,” as well as chairing the panel “Adaptation and the 18th Century” at ASECS. She will also be presenting “From Epistle to Epistemology: Love-Letters and the Royal Society” at ABS Europe.

Robin Runia, Book Review Editor of ABO and Angelo State University Assistant Professor of English, will be participating in two ASECS roundtables: “Reading Richardson in the New Mid-Century”; and “A Digital Humanities Experiment, Year One: Aphra Behn Online.” She will also be presenting a paper titled “Sarah Fielding and the Patronage of the Countess of Pomfret” on the ASECS panel “Eighteenth-Century Women and Social Networks.”

Anne Greenfield, New Media Editor of ABO and Assistant Professor of English at Valdosta State University, will chair the panel “Representations of Sexual Violence in the Long Eighteenth Century” at ASECS. She will also present a paper titled “English Interpretations of the French Formal Garden” on the ASECS panel “Import/Export: Cultural Exchanges between France and its Neighbors.”

Elizabeth Mathews from the University of California at Irvine will be presenting paper titled “The Power of Powerlessness: Law and Agency in the work of Delarivier Manley” on the panel “The Lady’s Paquet of Letters (1707): Re-Considering Delarivier Manley” at ASECS.

Ereck Jarvis from the University of Wisconsin-Madison will be presenting a paper titled “Green Ribband Width: The Broken Metaphors of New Social Forms, c. 1680 & c. 2012” on the ASECS panel “Social Networks in the Long Eighteenth-Century: Clubs, Literary Salons, Textual Coteries.”

Martine Brownley, Goodrich C. White Professor of English at Emory University, will chair the ASECS panel “Beyond Sense and Sensibility: New Perspectives on Moral Education in Eighteenth-Century England.”

Catherine Keohane from Montclair State University will be presenting a paper titled “‘The Pleasures of Charity’: Imaginative Substitution and the Sentimental Model of Charity” on the ASECS panel “Philanthropy and Feeling.”

Aleksondra Hultquist from the University of Melbourne will chair the ABO roundtable “A Digital Humanities Experiment, Year One: Aphra Behn Online.” The participants in the roundtable will be Jennifer Golightly (University of Denver), Catherine Ingrassia (Virginia Commonwealth University), Katharine Kitteredge (Ithaca College), Robin Runia (Angelo State University), and George Williams (University of South Carolina Upstate).

Cassie Childs from the University of South Florida will chair the Aphra Behn Society panel “Intersections of Eco-feminist Criticism and Place Theory in Female-Authored Texts of the Long Eighteenth Century” at ASECS. The panel will include papers from Judy Hayden (University of Tampa), Jessica Cook (University of South Florida), Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook (University of California Santa Barbara), and Anne Milne (University of Guelph).

Nicole Buscemi-Garret from Stony Brook University will chair the ABS panel “Espionage: Love and War” at ASECS. The panel will include papers from Leah Schwebel (University of Connecticut), Maria Traub (Neumann University), Sylvia Brown (Denison University), and Marie Thomson (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale).

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Cassie Childs from the University of South Florida presented a paper titled “Victoria's knowledge of [her] sex' and Accomplishments of Gender in Hannah Cowley's A Bold Stroke for a Husband” at the 2011 Biannual ABS Conference.

Jennifer Golightly from University of Denver will be publishing her book, The Family, Marriage, and Radicalism in British Women's Novels of the 1790s: Public Affection and Private Affliction with Bucknell University Press at the end of December 2011.

Judy Hayden from the University of Tampa edited a collection of essays titled The New Science and Women’s Literary Discourse: Prefiguring Frankenstein that was published by Palgrave in April of 2011. The book, which focuses on ways in which women writers utilized the New Science in their writing, contains essays on Hutchinson, Cavendish, Conway, Behn, Astell, Centlivre, Du Chatelet, Burney, Inchbald, Lee, Barbauld, and Grant.

Karen Eterovich recently collaborated with Cheryl Wanko to create a tailor-made “Aphra Behn on Skype” Interview. This interview was successfully accomplished in April with Cheryl’s undergraduate students at West Chester University in West Chester, PA. For information and costs, contact karen_eterovich@hotmail.com and write “Aphra on Skype” in the subject header. Karen also recently completed a year of touring as Jane Austen in her solo participation play, Cheer from Chawton. The tour was bookended by two Jane Austen Festival, commencing in Bath, England and closing in Louisville, KY!