Writing group

All meetings of the Eighteenth-Century Writing Group will take place in a hybrid format this semester. Rooms on campus are noted below, and will be notified by email before each meeting, but please feel free to join on Teams if you can’t make it to campus. All meetings are Wednesdays from 13:00 to 14:00.

Previous topics discussed include:

• Colin Nicolson on John Adams.
• Susan Manly (University of St Andrews) on writing an intellectual biography of Maria Edgeworth.
• Julia Pohlmann (University of Aberdeen) on Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.
• Bill Zachs (Blackie House Library and Museum) on the Blackie House collections
• Jim Caudle on the persistence of ideas of Renaissance and Reformation Scotland in Boswell's and Johnson's Tours of the Hebrides.
• Katie Maclean and Gema Silva Ferrandez on their PhD projects on the stage adaptation of Austen’s works, and the reception of Byron and Scott respectively.
• Jacqueline Kennard, Larissa Schulder, Duncan Armstrong on their MRes dissertation projects.
• Roundtable on turning conference papers into journal articles.
• Gema Silva Ferrandez on the reception of Sir Walter Scott and George Gordon, Lord Byron.
• Kelsey Jackson Williams on ‘(Not) Making Moral and Ethical Judgments in Historical Research: Books, Monks, and Collectors in the Early Nineteenth Century’ Pathfoot C21.
• Michael Brown (Aberdeen): 'Domestic Tongues and Dark Corners: The Literary Origins of British Identity' Pathfoot A7.
• Cleo O’Callaghan Yeoman on Joanna Baillie, Mary Brunton and Adam Smith, and their theories.
• Tom Marsden on Russian Law and Secularisation, 1824-46.
• Brianna Robertson Kirkland (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) on rediscovering the musician Francesca Corri.
• Noelle Gallagher (University of Manchester) on scrofula and moral panic.
• Claire Loughlin on religious identities and their implications in the late C17th.
• Ali Cathcart on what to do when you can't write.
• Jonathan Brown on 'William Forbes and the crime/delict of "rape"'.
• Cleo O'Callaghan Yeoman and Katie Halsey on co-writing an article.
• Charley Matthews on Anne Lister’s reading habits.
• Kelsey Jackson Williams on narrative in academic writing.
• Katie Halsey on Jane Austen and the North.
• Andrew Bricker (University of Ghent) on libel laws and eighteenth-century satire.
• James Caudle on the Mystery of Mavisgrove – a discussion of revising the Robert Burns canon.
• Workshop on ‘Dealing with Revise and Resubmit’.
• Jennifer Robertson on Jane Austen and History.
• Josh Smith on political reading at the Bristol Subscription Library.
• Gerry McKeever on the literary geographies of the Solway Firth.
• Nicola Martin on warfare, pacification, and the coming of the American Revolution.
• Alex Deans on the Miners’ library of Westerkirk.
• Isla Macfarlane on the Visitors’ Books of Innerpeffray Library.
• Robbie Tree and Josh Smith on their PhD topics.
• Phil Miller, Abbey Thornton and Jason on their MRes projects.
• Kelsey Jackson Williams on the Scottish antiquaries.
• Dr Ryan Hanley, University College, London, on slavery and anti-slavery rhetoric.
• Colin Nicolson and Emma Macleod, on the friendship of John Adams and Jonathan Sewell.
• James McKean, on abbeys, priories and ruins.
• Jim Caudle, on Boswell’s conflicting positions on the slavery debate.
• Maxine Branagh-Miscampbell, on the records of the Royal High School of Edinburgh.
• Katie Halsey on Jane Austen’s Nineteenth-Century Readers.
• Diego Palacios Cerezales on Napoleonic propaganda moves.
• Shaun Wallace on runaway slave advertisements in America.
• Lorna Clark (Carleton University) on the Burney family’s juvenilia.
• Colin Nicolson: 'Reading Friendship: A Case Study in Decoding and Contextualising Correspondence'
• Shaun Wallace: Dealing with problems of structure.
• Kelsey Jackson Williams: ‘The Origins of Line Engraving in Scotland: Tracing an Art across Borders’.
• Miranda Reading (King’s College, London): 'Old Friends and New Allies: Evangelical Networks in the Membership of the Society for the Suppression of Vice'.
• Nicola Martin: ‘The Cultural Paradigms of British Imperialism in the Militarisation of Scotland and North America, c. 1745-75’.
• Katie Halsey: ‘Metaphors of Reading, 1790-1830’.
• Julian Bates: the 'Commercialization of Legislation: Power and Politics between the East India Company and the Parliaments of Britain, 1770 - 1795' and Paul Gardiner: 'Contemporary opinion and military discipline during the wars against France, 1793-1815'.
• Sheena Bedborough: 'Scottish MPs at Westminster, 1750-1780 - the introduction and conclusion to a nearly finished PhD'.
• Nicola Martin: Literature review for her doctoral project on the British army in the Scottish Highlands and the American colonies in the eighteenth century.
• Fiona Duncan: Revising and refining a drafted piece of writing.
• Katie Halsey: Early stages of a grant application.
• Colin Nicolson: Writing Biography.
• Katie Halsey: ‘Jane Austen and the Picturesque’.
• Fiona Duncan: Discussion of summary of PhD on Tory identity and ideology, c. 1760-1832 in preparation for viva.
• Nicola Martin: 'Army, Assimilation and Empire: the ’45 and British imperialism in North America.'
• Jamie Macpherson: 'John Adams and Eighteenth Century Friendship'.
• Maxine Branagh: 'From the Classic to the Vernacular: Languages of Childhood Reading and Education at the Royal High School of Edinburgh in the Long Eighteenth Century'.
• Jill Dye: Beginning the PhD – Early stages of writing a PhD on Innerpeffray Library.
• James McKean: Thesis proposal: how Gothic ideology in literature and art has come to shape the perception of ruins on the landscape in Britain.
• Kelsey Jackson Williams: 'The First Scottish Enlightenment'.
• Emma Macleod: ‘Mr Dundas will find strong precedents in the Case’: Border crossings in the English and Scottish state trials, 1793-1794'.
• Simon Quinn (PhD student, University of York), 'The British military in the Levantine environment: Representations of landscape, climate and disease, 1798-1801'.
• Jennifer Robertson and Katie Halsey, on Jane Austen, Mary Brunton, Hannah More and Jane West.
• Emma Macleod, on the 1820s Treason Acts.
• Stuart Salmon, on Revolutionary War memoirs.
• Group discussion on using online resources.
• Nicola Martin: Writing a postdoctoral research grant application.