Saturday 23rd September 2006, Stewart House, 2nd Floor, Room 273:
Jean Baker, “ An Eighteenth-Century Entrepreneur: Sarah Baker and Her Kentish Theatres,” 2:00pm.
ABSTRACT: Sarah Baker was a remarkable woman. She was born in obscurity around the year 1737, the daughter of strolling players who made their living travelling around the country performing for the crowds that gathered at race meetings and country fairs. Little is known of her earlier years but by the time she died in February 1816 she had become one of the most successful provincial theatrical managers and entrepreneurs of her day. Not only did she own theatres in Canterbury, Rochester, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells but also in Faversham, in Folkestone and at Ore near Hastings in Sussex. In order to ascertain whether or not Sarah's success as manager and entrepreneur was as exceptional for that period as might be supposed, her life and achievements will be considered in the context of eighteenth-century attitudes towards gender and work.
Jenny Nex, “ Women in the Musical Instrument Trade in Georgian London,” 3:00pm.ABSTRACT: This paper explores the surviving evidence concerning women working in musical instrument building firms in London between 1750 and 1810. By drawing on materials from a variety of archival sources, glimpses of their lives and working activities may be seen. This process also helps to understand the structures and working practices of musical instrument making firms in general.
Saturday 25th November 2006, Senate House, North Block, ground floor, Room NG18.:
Kate Baker, “Lady Damaris Masham: ‘Her Learning, Judgement, Sagacity and Penetration together with Her Candor and Love of Truth, were very Observable to All that conversed with Her or were Acquainted with Those Small Treatises She Publish’d in Her Life’. An Appraisal of the Significance of a Seventeenth-Century Gentlewoman,” 2:00pm.
ABSTRACT: Lady Masham is primarily known as the daughter/pupil of Ralph Cudworth, the Cambridge Platonist and as the alleged disciple of the philosopher John Locke. What is the evidence to support the epitaph on her memorial that she had 'sufficient learning, judgement, sagacity and penetration' to influence the minds of those eminent and scholarly personages with whom she communicated? The paper will include examples from her letters, treatises and poems to demonstrate how she confidently challenged her contemporaries in matters of natural law, enthusiasm and faith and belief. In the process she anticipated modern themes of inspiration/imagination and creativity.
Marjo Kaartinen, “The Most Horrible Disease: Experiences of Breast Cancer in Early Modern England,” 3:00pm.
ABSTRACT: My paper will discuss the bodily as well as mental marks of breast cancer from a historical perspective. Suffering pain was an inevitable consequence of breast cancer, and drawing from a wealth of sources, I will explore the ways in which the suffering woman was perceived.
Saturday 27th January 2007, Stewart House, 2nd floor, Room 269:Yvonne Noble, “Ann Finch on the Improvements at Eastwell," 2:00pm.
Joy Hudson, “’Except through the medium of sport and raillery, I have Certainly no claim upon his patience’: Frances Burney at the Trial of Warren Hastings,” 3:00pm.
Sarah Oliver, “The Rape of Mary Raymond: Mary Hays’s Challenge to the Rape Trope in The Memoirs of Emma Courtney and The Victim of Prejudice,” 4:00pm.
Saturday 21st April 2007, Senate House, Room 273:
WSG Annual Workshop: Women and Laughter
Featuring Keynote speaker: Professor Isobel Grundy
Isobel Grundy, Co-investigator on the Orlando Project, is also the author of volume one of the Orlando history, the early period to about 1830 (forthcoming). She received her degrees from Oxford University, where she was a member of St Anne’s College. Between her BA and her DPhil she worked for six years in Finland, London, and New York. She taught at Queen Mary College (now Queen Mary and Westfield College), London University, from 1971, then moved to the University of Alberta in 1990 as Henry Marshall Tory Professor. Her areas of research interest are women writers in English from the Medieval period through the long eighteenth century: favourite authors Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Samuel Johnson. She was one of the authors of The Feminist Companion, 1990. Her Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Comet of the Enlightenment appeared from Oxford University Press in 1999 (paperback 2001). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In September 2000 she was awarded the University of Alberta's highest honour, the University Cup, for excellence in research and teaching, and in 2006 she shared with Patricia Clements and Susan Brown in the Award for Outstanding Achievement, Society for Computing in the Arts and Humanities, Canada.
The Orlando Project's electronic text Orlando, British Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present is now available by subscription to institutions and individuals. For more information about this fascinating project we recommend you visit the Cambridge Orlando Online website.
Saturday 19th May 2007:
WSG Group Tour of Chawton House Library & Study Centre, Alton, Hampshire
Details and call for participants to come at a later date.