Romantic Realignments is one of the longest-running research seminars in Oxford.

Past speakers have included Marilyn Butler, Gerard Carruthers, David Chandler, Heather Glen, Paul Muldoon, Philip Shaw, Fiona Stafford and Peter Swaab, to name but a few.

All are very welcome to submit an abstract — we aim to provide a friendly 'workshop' setting in which speakers can try out new papers as well as more finished pieces, and in which lively discussion can flourish.

Held on Thursdays at 5.15pm, Seminar Room A, St Cross (English Faculty) Building.

If you would like to send us an abstract or suggest a speaker, please contact the current convenors Katherine Fender, Sarah Goode and Honor Rieley at: romantic.realignments@gmail.com

21/10/2008

The Eidophusikon – An Eighteenth-Century Attempt at Virtual Reality

The Eidophusikon – An Eighteenth-Century Attempt at Virtual Reality
Mr Robert Poulter, New Model Theatre (http://www.newmodeltheatre.co.uk/)
2 Dec., 2008, 2nd Floor, LittlegateHouse, St Ebbes (lecture theatre)

02/10/2008

Poetry Reading 11th November 2008

7pm The OCR, Balliol College

Award-winning poets Jamie McKendrick and Michael O'Neill will be reading from
their recent collections of poetry: Crocodiles & Obelisks and Wheel. All are welcome.

Michaelmas Term 2008

Romantic Realignments meets every Thursday of Full Term in the Ferrar Room of Hertford College, from 5:15-6:45pm. All are very welcome.

Week 1 – Thursday 16th October

‘The Cult of the Duke of Wellington: From Romantic Hero to Upright Victorian’
Belinda Beaton (St Peter’s College, Oxford)


Week 2 – Thursday 23rd October

‘Shelley, Said and Secularism’
Professor Colin Jager (Rutgers University)

Week 3 – Thursday 30th October

‘Charles Lamb and the Alchemy of the Streets’
Dr Gregory Dart (University College, London)


Week 4 – Thursday 6th November

'Edmund Burke and the Epicurean Sublime'
Dr Paddy Bullard (St Catherine's College, Oxford)


Week 5 – Thursday 13th November

'Arresting the Peasant: John Clare and satire'
Dr Simon Kövesi (Oxford Brookes University)

Week 6 – Thursday 20th November

‘"With us, the two sexes associate together": philosophical history, the Gothic, and British Orientalisms’
Dr James Watt (University of York)

Week 7 – Thursday 27th November

‘The Byron that People Saw’
William St Clair (Trinity College, Cambridge)


Week 8 – Thursday 4th December

‘"Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth": Byron's Poetics of Conflict’
Maddy Callaghan (Durham University)


‘Byron, Auden and "the infinite I AM"’
Anna Camilleri (Balliol College, Oxford)

12/06/2008

Week 8: Hazlitt and Coleridge

Week 8 - Thursday 12 June

William Hazlitt's Gendered Distinction between Gusto and Enthusiasm and its application to Coleridge's Pulpit Rhetoric

Helen Boyles, The Open University

We meet 5.15-6.45 p.m. in Room 10, English Faculty St Cross Building on Manor Road, Oxford. All are welcome to join us for discussion and refreshments.


04/06/2008

Double Bill: Heroine Chic in Byron and Austen

Week 7 - Thursday 5th June 2008

Exceptions to the General Rule: The Heroism of Byron's Heroines

Anna Camilleri
Balliol College, Oxford

AND

Miss Giddy, Miss Graveairs, and Miss Austen's Delightful Creatures: Heroines, Politics, and the Novel

Olivia Murphy
Worcester College, Oxford

The seminar meets in Room 10 of the English Faculty St Cross Building, at 5.15pm. Everyone is welcome to join us for discussion and refreshments.

28/05/2008

Jon Mee on Mary Wollstonecraft

Week 6 -- Thursday 29th May

Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

Prof Jon Mee

University of Warwick

Romantic Realignments meets from 5.15pm-6.45pm in Room 10, English Faculty St Cross Building, Manor Rd, Oxford. Please join us for discussion and refreshments.

20/05/2008

Double Bill: Werther's Women and Antebellum Writing

Week 5 - Thursday 22 May

Werther's Women: Helen Maria Williams, Charlotte Smith, and Goethe's 'The Sorrows of Young Werther'

Mike Levy, University of Oxford

AND

Oothoon and the Octoroon: Reading Visions through Antebellum Literature

Misty Gonzales, University of Glasgow


Romantic Realignments meets in Room 10, English Faculty St Cross Building, Manor Road Oxford, from 5.15 pm-6.45 pm.
All are welcome to join us for discussion and refreshments.

14/05/2008

Week 4: The Lady of Shalott before Tennyson

Week 4, Thursday 15th May

>>PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW MEETING LOCATION<<

Before Tennyson: Romantic Women Poets and the Lady of Shalott

Dr Clare Broome Saunders, University of Oxford

The seminar meets from 5.15-6.45 in Room 10, English Faculty St Cross Building on Manor Road. All are welcome to join us for discussion and refreshments.

07/05/2008

Trinity Term 2008

Week Three - Thursday 8th May

>>PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW MEETING LOCATION<<

Edmund Burke: Reflectyons on the Revolution yn Typography

Prof Gavin Edwards, University of Glamorgan

The seminar meets from 5.15-6.45 in Room 10, English Faculty St Cross Building on Manor Road. All are welcome to join us for discussion and refreshments.

29/02/2008

Week 8: A.C. Grayling on Hazlitt

Week 8, Thursday 6th March

Hazlitt and 'disinterestedness'

Professor A.C. Grayling, Birkbeck College

Meetings will be held from 5.15-6.45 p.m. in the Ferrar room, Hertford college, Oxford. All are welcome to join us for discussion and refreshments.

27/02/2008

Week 7:How to be Irish in the 1790s




Week Seven -Thursday 28th February

How to be Irish in the 1790s: Rewriting Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Reading The History of Ned Evans
Helena Kelly, University of Oxford



18/02/2008



Week Six -Thursday 21st February

Coleridge and the 'sentient brain'
Dr Huw Price

Dr Price began his academic studies in the sciences, studying Human Sciences at UCL and then gaining an MSc in Neuroscience at Oxford. His work then shifted to history, in which he gained his doctorate entitled "The Emergence of the Doctrine of the "Sentient Brain" in Britain, 1650-1850". At this week’s seminar Dr Price will be focusing on Coleridge’s concept of the “Sentient Brain”, a phrase which appeared in his 1794 poem ‘Religious Musings’. He has published both scientific and historical articles and a chapter on "Priestley and Theories of the Brain" in J. S. Birch and J.Lee (eds). Joseph Priestley: A Celebration of His Life and Legacy (2007), pp. 206-213.

5.15, Ferrar room, Hertford College, Oxford.
All welcome.



09/02/2008

week 5: Identifying Coleridge: The Detection of Authorial Style


Week 5: Thursday 14th February. Ferrar room, Hertford college, 5.15.

Identifying Coleridge: The Detection of Authorial Style


Dr Peter Millican, Hertford College

Last term OUP published a new edition of Goethe's Faustus, in an impressive but anonymous 1821 translation that had previously been attributed to George Soane. The editors, Fred Burwick of UCLA and Jim McKusick of Montana, had long suspected that the real author might be Coleridge, based on the translation's magnificent style and some circumstantial evidence. Objective proof, however, eluded them until McKusick hit upon the idea of using computer-aided "stylometry" in the form of Signature, a software package published in 2003 by Peter Millican (Director of the Electronic Text Centre at Leeds, now Philosophy Fellow at Hertford, and an eighteenth-century scholar). McKusick's subsequent analysis provided solid statistical support for what has been described as " the biggest breakthrough in Coleridge scholarship in a hundred years".

In this talk, Peter Millican will be explaining McKusick's methods, whilst unveiling the new version of the Signature system and illustrating its potential for illuminating literary mysteries, from Aristotle and the Bible to Shakespeare and the eighteenth-century novel. Version 2.0 has been greatly enhanced, with a range of new user-friendly tools for exploring both authorship and the development of literary style. The main aim is to persuade scholars that stylometry is a worthy and fascinating addition to their repertoire of research methods, but also to offer assistance in future projects.

Publicity on Burwick and McKusick's work can be found at: http://www.umt.edu/urelations/rview/spring07/literature.htm

Article in The Independent about McKusick's edition: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/sex-and-drugs-and-english-literature-coleridge-and-a-faustian-pact-432577.html


06/02/2008

Week 4: Caricatures of Sheridan



Week Four -Thursday 7th February

The Theatricality of Politics: Caricaturing Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1783-1816
David Francis Taylor, University of Cambridge

Seminars start at 5.15 in the Ferrar room, Hertford college.
All welcome

30/01/2008

Week 3: Coleridge in 1798


Week 3: Thursday 31st January

Coleridge in 1798: Public Voices, Private Codes
Dr Benjamin Brice, University of Oxford

Dr Brice's recent book with the Oxford Monograph series Coleridge and Scepticism (2007) discussed Coleridge's theory of poetic symbolism and "the book of nature" in relation to natural philosophy and protestant theology.

The seminar starts at 5.15 on Thursday in the Ferrar room, Hertford college.

All welcome .

18/01/2008

Week Two -Dr Philip Shaw

Week Two – Thursday 24th January

'twxit life and death': Byron and the Sublime

Dr Philip Shaw, University of Leicester



Dr Philip Shaw is author of
Waterloo and the Romantic Imagination (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002) and The Sublime (London & New York: Routledge, 2006). A further art-historical book, Suffering and Sentiment in Romantic Military Art, 1783-1856 is scheduled for publication in 2010.

Hilary term 2008

Hilary Term 2008

Week Two – Thursday 24th January

'twxit life and death': Byron and the Sublime

Dr Philip Shaw, University of Leicester

Week Three – Thursday 31st January

Coleridge in 1798: Public Voices, Private Codes

Dr Benjamin Brice, University of Oxford  

Week Four – Thursday 7th February

The Theatricality of Politics: Caricaturing Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1783-1816

David Francis Taylor, University of Cambridge

Week Five – Thursday 14th February
Coleridge and 'stylometric' software

Dr Peter Millican, University of Oxford

Week Six – Thursday 21st February

Coleridge and the ‘sentient brain’
Dr Huw Price

Week Seven – Thursday 28th February

How to be Irish in the 1790s:
Rewriting Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Reading The History of Ned Evans
Helena Kelly, University of Oxford 

Week Eight – Thursday 6th March

Hazlitt and 'disinterestedness'

Professor A.C. Grayling, Birkbeck College, University of London

Meetings will be held from 5:15-6:45pm in the Ferrar Room, Hertford College, Oxford. All are welcome to join us for discussion and refreshments

If you are interested in presenting a 30-40 minute paper at the seminar please email: michael.farrell@ccc.ox.ac.uk, georgina.green@hertford.ox.ac.uk, or olivia.murphy@worc.ox.ac.uk