Learning For “Serious Employment”: Reinforcing The Social Hierarchy Through Anna Barbauld And John Aikin’S “Things To Be Learned”,
2026
Gettysburg College
Learning For “Serious Employment”: Reinforcing The Social Hierarchy Through Anna Barbauld And John Aikin’S “Things To Be Learned”, Grace Sewell
CAFE Symposium 2026
This poster will explore the role of class in Anna Barbauld and John Aikin’s short story “Things To Be Learned.” “Things To Be Learned” was published in the early 19th century and follows a dialogue between mother and daughter as the two discuss the importance of education. It will be argued that through their use of practical diction, lack of interesting visual components, and rigid didactic structure, Barbauld and Aikin aim to promote the maintenance of a social hierarchy based on class. Additionally, an exploration of Anna Barbauld's own thoughts on female education will be included to develop this analysis.
A Review Of Books And Borrowing 1750–1830: An Analysis Of Scottish Borrowers' Registers,
2026
University of York
A Review Of Books And Borrowing 1750–1830: An Analysis Of Scottish Borrowers' Registers, Sophie Coulombeau
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
No abstract provided.
Still Scribbling: Reflections On The Grub Street Project At Twenty Years,
2026
University of South Florida
Still Scribbling: Reflections On The Grub Street Project At Twenty Years, Allison Muri
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
This article reflects on twenty years of the Grub Street Project, assessing its sustainability and the design principles and editorial practices that have supported its continuity and coherence from 2005 to 2025.
A Review Of William Hayley: A Biographer’S Influence On Life Writing And Romantic Networks In The Long Eighteenth Century, Edited By Lisa Gee And Mark Crosby,
2026
Oregon State University
A Review Of William Hayley: A Biographer’S Influence On Life Writing And Romantic Networks In The Long Eighteenth Century, Edited By Lisa Gee And Mark Crosby, Risako Nomura
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
A review of William Hayley: A Biographer’s Influence on Life Writing and Romantic Networks in the Long Eighteenth Century, edited by Lisa Gee and Mark Crosby by Risako Nomura
A Review Of Deborah Weiss's Women And Madness In The Early Romantic Novel: Injured Minds, Ruined Lives,
2026
Université de Montréal
A Review Of Deborah Weiss's Women And Madness In The Early Romantic Novel: Injured Minds, Ruined Lives, Jennifer L. Nault Ms
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
A review of Women and Madness in the Early Romantic Novel by Jennifer Nault.
Review Of Female Printmakers, Printsellers, And Print Publishers In The Eighteenth Century: The Imprint Of Women, C. 1700-1830, Edited By Cristina S. Martinez And Cynthia E. Roman,
2026
Simon Fraser University
Review Of Female Printmakers, Printsellers, And Print Publishers In The Eighteenth Century: The Imprint Of Women, C. 1700-1830, Edited By Cristina S. Martinez And Cynthia E. Roman, Michelle Levy
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
Female Printmakers, Printsellers, and Print Publishers in the Eighteenth Century is a far-reaching collection of fifteen essays that addresses three main topics: women artists who made prints, women who were engaged in making prints, and the business of printmaking and printselling as engaged in by women. The collection addresses both known artists (like Angelika Kauffman) and printmakers (like Mary Darly), but also relatively obscure women, like Laura Piranesi, daughter of Giovanni, and Jane Hogarth, William Hogarth’s widow
Teaching Phillis Wheatley Peters’S Morals On Words And Actions In American Literature To 1860,
2026
University of Pittsburgh
Teaching Phillis Wheatley Peters’S Morals On Words And Actions In American Literature To 1860, Don Holmes
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
This article argues that teaching Phillis Wheatley-Peters (c. 1753-1784) as a moral authority during the American Revolution provides a robust historical framework for fostering an empowering humanism in students. When Phillis Wheatley Peters wrote to Indigenous Mohegan Minister Samson Occom (1723-1792) in 1774, she expressed satisfaction with his reasons for recognizing the conditions faced by enslaved Africans in North America. Her didactic perspective aimed to enlighten her readers about the limitations of the human condition: “This I desire not for their Hurt, but to convince them of the strange Absurdity of their Conduct whose Words and Actions are so diametrically …
Introduction: Concise Collection On Teaching The Works Of Phillis Wheatley Peters, Part Ii,
2026
Texas Christian University
Introduction: Concise Collection On Teaching The Works Of Phillis Wheatley Peters, Part Ii, Mona Narain, Sarah Ruffing Robbins
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
This short essay introduces part two of a two-part Concise Collections special issue on teaching Phillis Wheatley Peters. It discusses how the life and works of the poet can be taught in various educational settings.
Framing Affect: Close Up To Feeling With Women At The Eighteenth-Century Theatre On The Twenty-First Century Screen,
2026
University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Framing Affect: Close Up To Feeling With Women At The Eighteenth-Century Theatre On The Twenty-First Century Screen, Ros M. Ballaster Professor
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
Period films and television dramas of the twenty-first century use scenes of attendance at the theatre by women in the (long) eighteenth century as a test of their capacity to feel. Such scenes provide an opportunity to measure the competing affordances of screen and stage regarding affect in the eighteenth century and our present moment. Explored are scenes of theatrical affect from Dangerous Liaisons (1998) to The Duchess (2008), Harlots (2017), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), Bridgerton (2020). The figure of the liberated, educated, and aesthetically sensitive woman serves in period fiction on stage, screen and page more …
“[B]Oth In Body And Mind”: Gothic, Affect, And Power In Eliza Parsons’S The Mysterious Warning (1796),
2026
Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski
“[B]Oth In Body And Mind”: Gothic, Affect, And Power In Eliza Parsons’S The Mysterious Warning (1796), Rayna Rosenova
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
Drawing on recent enquiries into how affect theory could enhance our understanding of eighteenth-century fiction, this article offers a reading of Eliza Parsons’s Gothic novel The Mysterious Warning (1796) to examine how affective resonances in the text are used to codify relations of power. It therefore argues that the power dynamics between the characters are enacted through encounters with human agents and material objects, such as letters and haunting (dis)embodied voices. The article further suggests that affective intensities in the novel, articulated through the language of sensibility typical of mid- and late eighteenth-century writing, generate an ensuing imbalance of power, …
Association, Affect, And Material Reading Practices Of Anna Laetitia Barbauld,
2026
Lewis-Clark State College
Association, Affect, And Material Reading Practices Of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Renee Harris
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
At the end of the eighteenth century, reading practice was shifting from an embodied, affective exercise to a detached cognitive one. This essay examines how debates about truth and knowledge diverged along disciplinary and gender lines during this critical transition. The essay traces the influence of association psychology—particularly the theories of David Hartley and Joseph Priestley—on Romantic-era poets including Anna Laetitia Barbauld and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Through Feminist Formalist Analysis attuned to affect and cognition, this essay demonstrates how Barbauld's poetic montages challenge the period's scientific discourse. Her "Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestley's Study" and two "Hill of …
The Gendered Duality Of Coldness In The Portrayals Of Eliza Hayley,
2026
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
The Gendered Duality Of Coldness In The Portrayals Of Eliza Hayley, Francesca Blanch-Serrat
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
In the eighteenth century, coldness was defined, on the one hand, in relation to the body and the senses (a body that is lacking in heat) and on the other, to emotion (an individual lacking in passion). It was linked to illness and disability (Turner, 2012), equated to death, seen as both a cause and effect of physical decline and older age, and used as a synonym for low libido and infertility (Toulalan, 2015). In contrast to these negative connotations, coldness was also regarded as a remedy to temper the passions and to ensure longevity (Yallop, 2015), and taking cold …
Curious Objects: Form And Feeling In Mary Leapor's Thing Poems,
2026
The University of Manchester
Curious Objects: Form And Feeling In Mary Leapor's Thing Poems, James Metcalf
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
Mary Leapor (1722–1746) has long been recognized as something of a curiosity: a Northamptonshire kitchen maid with a rudimentary education who died at the age of 24, but who also wrote two volumes of poetry. In this essay I read Leapor’s “thing poems” to show how curiosity is also a supervening affective regime in her poetics. Minor and marginal, fixated by perverse objects which tend more to derail than deepen the production of knowledge, curiosity is an unsettling mode of inquiry because of its imaginative attachment to the strange stuff lurking within the ordinary as a diminished site of aesthetic …
Managerial Forms: Narrative, Information, And Household Government In The Diaries Of Sarah Cowper,
2026
Independent Scholar
Managerial Forms: Narrative, Information, And Household Government In The Diaries Of Sarah Cowper, Robert Stearn
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
The diary of Sarah Cowper (written 1700-16) is characterized by elaborate techniques of information management and a sustained attention to the fractious emotional dynamics of her household. Bringing together historical scholarship on domestic service and literary analyses of organizing practices in print and manuscript, the article argues that the finding devices in Cowper’s seven-volume diary disclose a practical knowledge both textual and social—one which took the affective dynamics of the household as its object, but which was also shaped by and afloat in those dynamics. The article is in two parts. The first explores how Cowper’s information management practices were …
Epic Anger And Shame In Lucy Hutchinson’S Order And Disorder,
2026
St Olaf College
Epic Anger And Shame In Lucy Hutchinson’S Order And Disorder, Mary Trull
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
In his didactic epic, De rerum natura, the Roman poet Lucretius rejects the unity of affect and genre in Homeric epic. Instead, in Lucretius anger is anti-heroic: the human race is demeaned by fear, cowering before a fabricated vision of vengeful gods. The gods are not angry, and human fear is therefore absurd, even shameful, since it leads to outrageous acts of appeasement that violate basic human decency. When Lucy Hutchinson, the first English translator of the full De rerum natura, approached the task of writing an epic version of the book of Genesis, affect was already a central, …
Queer Excess And Hybrid History In Elizabeth Cary’S Edward Ii,
2026
Boston College
Queer Excess And Hybrid History In Elizabeth Cary’S Edward Ii, Kelley K. Glasgow
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
Elizabeth Cary’s prose history The History of the Life, Reign, and Death of Edward II (1627) follows the fourteenth-century king of England, whose love affairs with his favorite courtiers ultimately resulted in his overthrow and execution. She identifies Edward’s queerness, and his resulting lack of emotional control, as central to his inability to govern England, and as an example of the dangers of excessive emotions for her readers. Because of Edward II’s complicated publishing and attribution history, much of the scholarly effort around this text has been spent attempting to interpret it through Cary’s personal life and political aims. …
True To Form: Genre And Critical Affect In The Study Of Early Modern Women’S Writing,
2026
University of Alabama
True To Form: Genre And Critical Affect In The Study Of Early Modern Women’S Writing, Michelle M. Dowd
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
This essay considers how incorporating the critical study of affect into feminist formalist analyses can help move the field of early modern women’s writing forward in new and productive ways. After a brief historical and theoretical overview of the relationship between formalism and feminism in the study of early modern women’s writing, the essay turns to the specific topic of genre and affect. Reading the affective registers of literary genre, which often requires reading across traditional period divides, can productively enable us to deepen our understanding of early modern women’s forms. However, turning our critical eye to our own affective …
Introduction: Affective And Emotional Encounters In/With British Women's Writing, 1600–1800,
2026
University of Freiburg
Introduction: Affective And Emotional Encounters In/With British Women's Writing, 1600–1800, Anna-Rose Shack, Zoë Van Cauwenberg, Fauve Vandenberghe
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
This special issue explores the methodological affordances of the fields of affect theory and the history of emotions in the study of women’s writing from the early modern period, the long eighteenth century and the Romantic period. It posits that the vocabularies of affect theory and the history of emotions offer a productive critical framework to approach historical women’s writing. In reading women’s writing through this lens, this special issue aims to model a theoretically flexible and historically informed approach to affect and emotions that may be taken up across and beyond traditional literary periodizations and in different forms of …
Tolkien And The Mystery Of Literary Creation (2025), By Giuseppe Pezzini,
2026
Villanova University
Tolkien And The Mystery Of Literary Creation (2025), By Giuseppe Pezzini, Mitchell Kooh
Journal of Tolkien Research
Book review, by Mitchell Kooh, of Tolkien and the Mystery of Literary Creation (2025) by Giuseppe Pezzini
"Uruk ... We Prefer 'Uruk'": The Representation Of The Orc In The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power,
2026
Texas State University
"Uruk ... We Prefer 'Uruk'": The Representation Of The Orc In The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power, Robert T. Tally Jr.
Journal of Tolkien Research
In Tolkien’s legendarium, there are many complicated characters, vexed figures who combine aspects of what readers might think of as good and evil, but Orcs are, it seems, always and only evil. This despite the fact that Tolkien’s own writings provide ample evidence that Orcs, however loathsome they may appear, are nevertheless people, a “race” that like Elves, Dwarves, Men, and Hobbits maintains social orders and belongs to Middle-earth. The Amazon Prime show The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power offers a glimpse of Orc culture from within, as the audience is introduced to a mysterious new character, …
