This week I took a brief break from my Visiting Scholarship in St Andrews to attend the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference, which was being held in Edinburgh. Apart from being in Edinburgh (meaning that I could actually stay at home all week (!)), I heard loads of exciting research, caught up with old friends and met new ones, and I left with renewed enthusiasm for my own projects, and especially my book, which I am nearing the end of! As the conference theme was ‘enlightenment identities’, there was much food for thought around a term [identity] that I consider to be at the heart of several of my intellectual projects. I heard interesting work around the intersections between amateur and professional writers and artists; on how identities were materially inscribed; on the concept of material literacy; on women and their homes; on queer identities and their contested legacies; on Scottish identities and their visual and material cultures; and on the material body; and I gave a paper on the historiographical gendering collage, and participated in a roundtable thinking about the relationship between material culture and identity more broadly. Also, there was a lot of coffee. Next week, I’ll be back for a final week in St Andrews, so I’ll keep you posted re my findings. I’ve now finished with the McIntosh collection, so it’ll be interesting to work through the remaining scrapbooks, albums and commonplace books in the collections.
Beyond ISECS, here’s what else caught my eye this week:
This great short documentary and accompanying written piece on Where Are All the Bob Ross Paintings?
The National Galleries of Scotland’s forthcoming Research Conference on Women Collectors
This article on the politics of citation practices.
The new grants scheme from the Association for Art History.
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