Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Introduction: Teaching The History Of Mary Prince (1831), Guest Edited By Kerry Sinanan, Kerry Sinanan

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

No abstract provided.

Black Lives, White Witnesses: An Argument For A Presentist Approach To Teaching Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, Sharon Smith

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This essay outlines a presentist approach to teaching Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688), in which a white woman witnesses a Black man’s brutal execution at the hands of enslavers. This approach explores the capacity of Behn’s novel—a colonialist narrative scholars frequently identify as troubling or frustrating—to generate discussions about “white witnessing,” particularly white people’s consumption of images of Black people in peril. This includes recent videos of Black people killed by police or white citizen vigilantes. Many Black individuals identify these videos as traumatizing, frequently noting how they have failed to spur structural reform. Of central concern in the classroom discussion …

Chawton House And Its Library: Legacies And Futures, Kim Simpson

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

In a review of Women’s Writing, 1660-1830: Feminisms and Futures, Paula Backscheider draws attention to “the miracle that is Chawton House, whose conferences nurtured these essays” in the collection. This essay will examine the legacy of this unique institution and explore the futures for the organization both as heritage site and as home to a substantial collection of women’s writing of the long eighteenth century. The community encouraged and nurtured by Chawton House since it opened to the public in 2003, as is so often the case with all things related to Jane Austen, complicates divisions between the academic …

Why Austen, Not Burney? Tracing The Mechanisms Of Reputation And Legacy, Marilyn Francus

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

During the 200^th anniversary of Austen’s death in 2017, the narrative of Austen’s rise to fame and her ongoing celebrity circulated throughout modern culture. But how did this happen? When Austen died in 1817, it was not obvious that Austen would become the archetypal British woman writer. Frances Burney was far more famous in her lifetime than Austen was in hers, and Burney’s novels (particularly Evelina and Cecilia) achieved as much, if not more, critical acclaim than Austen’s works. By comparing the afterlives of Jane Austen and Frances Burney, the factors that shape legacy come into focus—and scholars …

Elizabeth Boyd's Disappearing Act: Performing Literary Legacy On The Georgian Stage, Kristina Straub

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

How do we trace the historical processes that grant some writers visibility and, hence, legacy, while shoving others into the historical closet? This essay offers the case study of Elizabeth Boyd (1727-1745), a novelist, poet, and playwright who has received some attention from scholars interested in women’s contributions to the legacy of William Shakespeare in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. In particular, her unperformed play, Don Sancho: Or, the Students Whim, a Ballad Opera of Two Acts, with Minerva’s Triumph, a Masque (1739) dramatizes a woman writer’s reflections on the politics of legacy at this formative moment in …

Introduction: Shaping The Legacy Of 18th-Century Women, Marilyn Francus

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

No abstract provided.

Review Of Placing Charlotte Smith, Eds Elizabeth A. Dolan And Jacqueline M. Labbe, Heather Heckman-Mckenna

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

A review of Placing Charlotte Smith edited by Elizabeth A. Dolan and Jacqueline M. Labbe, written by Heather Heckman-McKenna

Review Of Female Husbands: A Trans History, By Jen Manion, Jeremy Chow

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This review evaluates Jen Manion's Female Husbands: A Trans History.

Review Of The Novel Stage: Narrative Form From The Restoration To Jane Austen, By Marcie Frank, Kathleen E. Urda

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

A review of Marcie Frank's The Novel Stage: Narrative Form from the Restoration to Jane Austen by Kathleen E. Urda

Negotiating Gender, Representing Landscape: Teaching Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard’S Letters, Journals And Watercolours From The Cape Colony (1797–1801), Lenka Filipova

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

The article focuses on Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard’s letters, journals and watercolours that she produced during her stay at the Cape Colony (1797–1801). Combining a series of tasks focused on close reading of Barnard’s work and a critical discussion of the historical context, the article provides a teaching strategy to examine her work with respect to the gendered discourse of the eighteenth century, and her approach to the Cape landscape and its inhabitants which both employs and, significantly, subverts contemporaneous conventions. More specifically, the tasks draw attention to Barnard’s use of ‘the modesty topos’ and the way she uses rhetorical …

Teaching Mary Wollstonecraft's Travelogue Of Historical Trauma, Annette Hulbert

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

Abstract: I teach Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796) in an undergraduate English literature course on “Survival Narratives of the Eighteenth Century” at the University of California, Davis. The aim of this course is to show how significant perilous voyages were to the ways in which writers in eighteenth-century Britain imagined and interpreted their world. The course draws from the burst of new scholarship on rethinking the traditional “rise of the novel” narrative in imperial, oceanic, and global contexts and develops interpretive frameworks for the eighteenth century’s changing relationship to commerce and …

Teaching Eliza Fay's Original Letters From India (1817) Through Classroom Editing, Lacy Marschalk

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

Travel writing is an ever-growing area of interest in eighteenth-century studies, but it can be difficult to teach. Students often find the writing dry and unrelatable, and faculty who have had little experience with travel writing in their own educations may not know which texts would prove useful to their courses. In this article, I discuss the travel narrative with which I've found the most pedagogical success, Eliza Fay's Original Letters from India (1817). Fay's initial journey to India includes a range of captivating adventures, including encounters with Marie Antoinette in Paris, bandits in Egypt, and Hyder Ali in Calicut, …

Concise Collections: Teaching British Women Travelers, Tiffany Potter

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

No abstract provided.

Cooking Up Knowledge: Materiality, Recipes, And Jane Barker’S A Patch-Work Screen For The Ladies, Carolin Boettcher

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

The recipes included in Jane Barker’s A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies (1723) appear to be some of the most jarring and out-of-context inclusions in the narrative. This article explores the relationship between Barker’s novel and the form of the recipe collection in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries on both a material and an epistemological level. The entanglements between recipes and the patchwork screen not only point to the processes of constructing and conveying knowledge, but also to the materiality of these processes as Galesia and the Lady build the patchwork screen. Her focus on the materiality of …

Postures After The Antique In Eighteenth-Century Portraits Of Women, Lauren K. Disalvo

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This paper re-examines the relationship between eighteenth-century portraiture and the antique where women adopt the postures of floating female figures from Pompeiian wall paintings in eighteenth-century portraiture. I argue that eighteenth-century floating portraits afforded their female sitters an opportunity to assert classical knowledge while adhering to typical conventions of femininity.

Review Of Relative Races: Genealogies Of Interracial Kinship In Nineteenth-Century America, By Brigitte Fielder, Shelby Johnson

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

No abstract provided.

The Lady’S Museum Project: A Digital Critical Edition In Phase 1 Of Its Development, Now Available For Teachers And Students To Learn Collaboratively Through Charlotte Lennox’S Lady’S Museum (1761-62), Kelly Plante

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This announcement informs readers on how they can use, and participate in, the Lady's Museum Project (ladysmuseum.com). It discusses the work completed and the forthcoming updates planned for teachers', scholars', and students' use of this first critical edition of Charlotte Lennox's the Lady's Museum, as of spring 2022.

Arabella In The Salon: Teaching Charlotte Lennox’S Female Quixote With Madeleine De Scudéry’S “Carte De Tendre,” Clélie, And Conversations, Nicole Horejsi

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

No abstract provided.

Teaching The Lady’S Museum And Sophia: Imperialism, Early Feminism, And Beyond, Karenza Sutton-Bennett, Susan Carlile

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This essay argues for the value of teaching Charlotte Lennox’s periodical The Lady’s Museum (1760-61) in undergraduate literature, history, media studies, postcolonial, and gender studies classrooms. Lennox’s magazine, which includes one of the first serialized novels “Harriot and Sophia” (later published as the stand-alone novel Sophia (1762)) encouraged debate of the proto-discipline topics of history, geography, literary criticism, astronomy, botany, and zoology. This essay offers a flexible teaching module, which can be taught in one to five days, that focuses on the themes of early female education and imperialism using full or excerpted portions of essays from the eidolon, “Of …

Mapping The Geographic Imagination In Harriot Stuart And Euphemia At An Hbcu, Leah M. Thomas

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

Teaching Charlotte Lennox’s Harriot Stuart (London, 1750) and Euphemia (London, 1790) offers a transatlantic perspective of the New York region and its diverse population of African Americans, Native Americans, and European Americans as understood from a British woman novelist who lived in New York in the 1740s during the time in which both novels are set. In addition to this diversity, her novels demonstrate the conflicts and networks within this part of America, all of which can be explored through historical and geographical contexts of contemporaneous maps. These maps not only engage the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) focus …

Teaching Charlotte Lennox’S Harriot Stuart: Romance, The Eighteenth-Century Novel, And Transatlantic Fictions, Marta Kvande

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

Harriot Stuart is well worth teaching because it offers rich possibilities both for discussing literary forms such as heroic romance, epistolary form, and women’s narrative voices, and for investigating topics such the transatlantic experience, colonialism, and representations of Native Americans. Whether in a course focused specifically on Charlotte Lennox’s works or in a more broadly focused course in eighteenth-century fiction, Harriot Stuart can help students learn about the possibilities for women’s empowerment and about transatlantic and racial ideas during the period.

Concise Collections: Teaching Charlotte Lennox, Tiffany Potter

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

The Spring 2022 issue of ABO inaugurates our new Pedagogies feature: the Concise Collections on Teaching Eighteenth-Century Women series. Each issue of ABO will include a Concise Collection on a different female writer or artist, with three to five articles offering critically-informed and practice-based strategies for teaching in survey or theme-based courses for different student audiences. This series seeks to facilitate the innovative and effective teaching of female creatives whose excellence and insight demand inclusion in our classrooms, but who have not yet received the attention they deserve in pedagogy publications, or who might not yet have been encountered by …

Succubus Matters, Jeremy Chow

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This essay argues that the Gothic succubus pioneers new frameworks for examining female sexuality, sexual violation, and consent in the eighteenth century. M. G. Lewis’s The Monk (1796) reveals the Bleeding Nun as a demonic female ghost that is both sadistic and hypersexualized, especially in her tryst with Don Raymond. The spectrality of the succubus reimagines the displacement of the female body as something both material and ethereal, and in so doing, renders consequent displacements of consent, agency, and sexuality, which may characterize queer Gothic tropes. I interweave discussions of consent alongside representations and theories of ghosts throughout the eighteenth …

Wwa Reflection: Continuing To #Writewithaphra: A Year Of Collegiality And Compassion, Ashley Bender, Daniella Berman, Jenny Factor, Elizabeth Giardina, Catherine Keohane, Bénédicte Miyamoto, Kelly J. Plante, Elizabeth Porter, Bethany E. Qualls, Susannah B. Sanford, Karenza Sutton-Bennett

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

Last summer, a group of participants in ABO’s #WriteWithAphra program joined a co-writing group that continues to meet each weekday. When presented with ABO’s call for reflections in early 2020, we wanted to reflect as we have worked this past year: together. We share here our conversation from June 4, 2021 (edited for clarity) that addresses why we joined the writing group, as well as what we have gained, the challenges we have encountered, and why we are still here. We frame the conversation with a brief introduction that explores the feminist nature of co-writing.

Wwa Reflection: Losing Sight, Making Scholarship, Sabrina M. Durso

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

No abstract provided.

Wwa Reflection: Building Writing Momentum: A Year Of Digital Conferences, Brianna E. Robertson-Kirkland

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This reflection, which considers the positive impact of attending online conferences on building writing momentum is in response to the ABO Call for Short Reflections (500-750 words) on Writing and Research during the Pandemic.

Race And Racism In Austen Spaces: National Trust In Jane Austen’S Empires Of Sugar, Tré Ventour-Griffiths

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

No abstract provided.

Race And Racism In Austen Spaces: Notes On A Scandal: Sanditon Fandom’S Ongoing Racism And The Danger Of Ignoring Austen Discourse On Social Media, Amanda-Rae Prescott

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

Sanditon fans have used social media more than many other past Jane Austen adaptations to discuss the series and to share news developments about the series. This was partially due to the COVID-19 pandemic preventing in-person marketing and fandom gatherings, but also due to some traditional Austen discussion platforms ignoring or banning pro-Sanditon discussions. White women from the UK and Europe dominated these online communities and set the tone for discussions of the plot as well as news about the series. BIPOC fans repeatedly clashed with white fans because the promises of an “inclusive” community were frequently dashed as soon …

Race And Racism In Austen Spaces: Eroticizing Men Of Empire In Austen, Kerry Sinanan

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

No abstract provided.

Grasses, Groves, And Gardens: Aphra Behn Goes Green, Heidi Laudien

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

Laudien argues in “Grasses, Groves and Gardens: Aphra Behn Goes Green” that Behn moves beyond the stylized and artificial backdrops of most pastoral to explore the unique ways the landscape can be manipulated to investigate gender difference and the dynamics of desire and representation. Laudien suggests that in prioritizing the pastoral as political allegory in Behn, we overlook the descriptions of nature and the importance she places on the natural environments she creates. Through close readings of several of her pastoral poems, Laudien reveals that Behn’s landscapes destabilize existing notions of the pastoral space as an idealized and organized place …