Author: Suzanne Forbes

Marsh’s Library PG bursary (EUR300)

A bursary awarded by Marsh’s library in Dublin to the value of EUR300 towards conference costs (this may be used to pay for registration, conference dinner, accommodation and / or travel costs). This bursary is awarded to a student currently registered for PhD study and who has a paper accepted for the conference. Please signal when submitting an abstract that you would like to be considered for the Marsh’s Library bursary.

Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society bursaries (conference registration, conference dinner, and EICS membership)

Three ECIS bursaries for a student currently registered for PhD study and who has a paper accepted for the conference. Please signal when submitting an abstract that you would like to be considered for an ECIS PG bursary. These bursaries cover the following costs: conference fee, conference dinner, one year’s membership of the Society (including copies of the Society’s Journal, Eighteenth-Century Ireland Vol. 31 and Vol. 32).

PhD students should apply to present at the ECIS 2019 conference in the usual way and include with their abstract a short statement (maximum 500 words) on why presenting at the conference is important for your research.

A panel comprising three members of the executive committee of the Society will review all applications after the deadline for papers (Monday 29^th April 2019) and will notify successful applicants by email on Friday 10 May.

Submission of proposals for papers

Proposals should be submitted by e-mail to Moyra Haslett ([email protected]) before Monday 29 April 2019. Proposals should include: name, institutional affiliation, paper title, and a 250-word abstract. See our annual conference page for full details of the Call for Papers. Prospective speakers will be notified of a decision by Monday 6 May 2019.

The A.C. Elias Irish-American Research Travel Fellowship of ASECS, with $2500 in annual funding, supports “documentary scholarship on Ireland in the period between the Treaty of Limerick (1691) and the Act of Union (1800),” by enabling North American-based scholars to pursue research in Ireland and Irish-based scholars, in North America.  Projects conducting original research on any aspect of eighteenth-century Ireland qualify for consideration, but recipients must be members of ASECS with permanent residence in the United States or Canada or be members of its Irish sister organization, the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society, with residence in Ireland. Prize winners are chosen by an independent jury from different disciplines and applications are evaluated by several anonymous readers in the applicant’s field.

The next A.C. Elias Jr. Research Travel Fellowship will be awarded at the end of 2019, with applications due on 15 November 2019 to the fellowship’s two trustees: 

Dr. Jason McElligott, Director, Marsh’s Library, St. Patrick’s Close, Dublin 8, Ireland ([email protected]) and Dr. James May ([email protected]), 1423 Hillcrest Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17603, USA.

Applications should consist of the coversheet downloaded at the ASECS travel-fellowship website (https://asecs.press.jhu.edu/general%20site/travelgr.html), a short curriculum vitae, a narrative description of the project (3 pp. or less, treating its contribution to the field and work done and to be done during the proposed research period), a one-page bibliography of related studies, a short budget, and two signed letters of recommendation.

Further information is available at ASECS’s website or from the trustees. 

Scholars in any academic discipline are invited to submit abstracts of papers to be presented at the Irish Philosophy in the Age of Berkeley conference, to be held in Trinity College Dublin, 5 and 6 April 2019.

George Berkeley’s Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713) are standard texts in the philosophy curricula of most European and American universities. No other Irish philosopher, and no other work of Berkeley’s, has achieved this ‘canonical’ status. However, there was a vibrant philosophical scene in Ireland in Berkeley’s lifetime, to which Berkeley was far from the only contributor. Studying this broader Irish philosophical discussion will improve our understanding of Berkeley and also of early modern philosophy more generally.

The Irish Philosophy in the Age of Berkeley conference will include general exploration of the intellectual culture of early modern Ireland as well as examination of specific thinkers with significant connections to Ireland active during Berkeley’s lifetime (1685–1753). Such figures include Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh (1615–1691); Robert Boyle (1627–1691); Michael Moore (c. 1639–1726); William King (1650–1729); William Molyneux (1656–1698); Edward Synge (1659–1741); Jonathan Swift (1667–1745); John Toland (1670–1722); Peter Browne (d. 1735); and Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746).

Invited speakers will include:

• Lisa Downing, Professor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, USA
• Eric Schliesser, Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Kate Davison, Lecturer in Long Eighteenth-Century History, University of Sheffield, UK
Approximately nine additional papers will be selected by anonymous review of submitted abstracts.

We welcome abstracts from scholars in any discipline addressing one or more of the following issues:

• The Irish context of Berkeley’s philosophy.
• The philosophical work of other Irish thinkers active during Berkeley’s lifetime.
• The reception within Ireland of other philosophical figures, ideas, and movements.
• The reception of Irish philosophy outside Ireland.

Particular preference will be given to papers that address figures and/or topics outside the currently recognized philosophical ‘canon’, including the work of early modern women.
Papers presented at the conference will be published as part of the Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements series, Cambridge University Press.

Abstracts should be submitted by 15 October, 2018. Full details, including submission instructions, are available at: http://www.tcd.ie/Philosophy/events/IPAB/.

Participants and attendees may also be interested in attending Berkeleian Minds: Will and Understanding, to be held at the University of York on 2 and 3 April (https://philevents.org/event/show/63750).

Primary sponsorship for this conference is provided by the Royal Institute of Philosophy, together with the Mind Association. Additional support is provided by the Trinity Long Room Hub Making Ireland Research Theme and the Department of Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin.

Anne-Claire Michoux is a doctoral assistant at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Her research focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction, women’s writing, and national identity. She will be speaking about her work at the ECIS Annual Conference on 8-9 June 2018. 

Favourite archive:
I would love to have the opportunity to do more archival research but I would have to say the Huntington Library so far. Their art gallery and gardens are wonderful.

Favourite museum, gallery or heritage site:
The Musée d’Orsay. Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire is also worth a visit.

Most exciting place or time in the eighteenth-century:
Any event which the Duchess of Devonshire attended. Otherwise, I would be really curious to know what it was really to go to theatre at the time.

Best online resource:
ECCO and the Adam Matthews Digital Archives

Best book of 18th century interest:
It’s really hard to pick one, there are so many, but I would say Deidre Shauna Lynch, The Economy of Character, and Patricia Meyer Spacks’ Privacy: Concealing the Eighteenth-Century Self

What eighteenth century figure would you most like to have a drink with?
Marie Antoinette and Mary Wollstonecraft

What will you be talking about at the ECIS Annual Conference 2016?
My doctoral thesis examines the construction of British national identity in women’s fiction of the Romantic period, with a particular focus on Jane Austen, Frances Burney, and Maria Edgeworth, whose work has become increasingly prominent over the course of my research. The paper I will present at the conference offers a reading of Edgeworth’s last Irish novel, Ormond (1817), and its negotiation of national identity. Edgeworth’s protagonists often have complicated national allegiances and the eponymous Ormond is no exception: an English orphan, he is raised in Ireland by the Irish landlord Sir Ulick O’Shane, who served in the same regiment as his father. As he embarks on a career as an ‘Irish Tom Jones’, the young Ormond develops as a ‘gentleman’, an issue that many novels in the period also dramatized. It is this examination of the figure of the gentleman that is at the heart of the novel’s positioning of its hero as an Irish and British citizen. I will draw connections to Jane Austen’s Emma (1816) and William Shakespeare’s Henriad to demonstrate Edgeworth’s participation in the debates on the nation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.