Event

An event co-sponsored by the Byron Society of America and the Keats-Shelley Association of America in the Trustees Room of the New York Public Library

The summer of 1816 witnessed one of the great collaborative convergences of English literary history, as Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin, and Lord Byron met at the Villa Diodati near Geneva and produced some of the most enduring work of the Romantic era, including Frankenstein.

Speakers (including Gillen D’Arcy Wood, Jonathan Sachs, Madeleine Callaghan, Jerrold Hogle, and Anne Mellor) will discuss the Shelley-Byron relationship, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the global contexts for the Geneva Summer, including the importance of the volcanic eruption in Indonesia that produced the punctuated climate change of the “year without a summer.” The symposium will conclude with a moderated roundtable discussion of the still vital and ongoing cultural reception of the 1816 summer and its literary productions.

For more details about the program and to register (free but required), please visit the Romantic Bicentennials website: http://romantics200.org/event/k-saabyron-society-symposium-the-geneva-summer/.

Kevin Stevens, Graduate Coordinator of the Fordham Romanticism Group, provides an account of the Marchand Lecture by Julia Markus in Manhattan last Friday. Read it here!

The Byron Society of America Presents

The Eleventh Leslie A. Marchand Memorial Lecture

In Partnership with the Fordham Romanticism Group

Julia Markus

Author of Lady Byron and Her Daughters

http://www.juliamarkuswrites.com/

Director of Creative Writing at Hofstra University

will speak on

Celebrating Lady Byron’s Life and Ada Lovelace’s Day 

Friday, October 16, 2015

5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus

South Lounge

Event Details:

Wine and Cheese Reception: 5:00 – 6:00 P.M.

Lecture:  6:00 – 7:00 P.M.

Book Signing:  7:00 – 7:30 P.M.

 

RSVP by October 12, 2015, to John Bugg, bugg@fordham.edu

Please indicate whether you will be attending:

Reception Only

Lecture Only

Lecture and Reception

Directions to the South Lounge: Enter Fordham by the main entrance at 60^th and Columbus.  The South Lounge is on the Plaza Level, up one flight of escalators just beyond the cafeteria.

The Leslie Marchand Lecture Series

“Byron and Hazlitt: Inclining Their Ears Towards Each Other”

Charles E. Robinson
University of Delaware

March 13, 2015
5:00 pm
CUNY Graduate Center
365 5th Avenue
New York, NY
Room 5318

Byron and Hazlitt never met, but they certainly heard and read what the one said or wrote about the other. This talk will explore the two writers’ literary relationships, including their participation in the short-lived The Liberal (1822-1823) and the connections between Hazlitt’s Liber Amoris and Byron’s Don Juan.

⌘⌘⌘

Charles E. Robinson is an Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Delaware, and has served as the Executive Director of The Byron Society of America and as co-chair of the Byron Society Collection. During his career, he has published primarily on Byron and Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley and William Hazlitt. His books include Shelley and Byron (1976), Mary Shelley: Collected Tales and Stories (1976), Byron and His Contemporaries (1982), William Hazlitt: Twenty-Seven New Letters (1987), The Mary Shelley Reader (1990), The Frankenstein Notebooks (1996), and The Original Frankenstein (2008; 2009). He is currently editing The Complete Letters of William Hazlitt—and still hopes to return to his Charles Ollier book.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Byron Society of America session at the 2015 NASSR Conference:

Alexander Grammatikos, organizer:

“Lord Byron and Rights”
Description: Special Session Sponsored by The Byron Society of America
Lord Byron was a passionate and life-long defender of people’s rights. In the House of Lords he argued for the right of Catholics to be represented in parliament; in his personal correspondence he supported writers’ claims to copyright over their own works; and in a decision that led to his death, he travelled to Greece to help the Greeks realize their right to become an independent nation. His preoccupation with rights extended to his poetic works, too. For example, in Sardanapalus, the misguided but well-meaning titular leader laments “To me war is no glory—conquest no / Renown. To be forced thus to uphold my right / Sits heavier on my heart than all the wrongs / These men would bow me down with” (4.1.5.505-8). Here, in but just one example from Byron’s oeuvre, the poet demonstrates his keen understanding of the often relative nature of “rights” (for a king to retain his, he required war and conquest) and the personal price one had to pay to uphold them.

Complementing NASSR’s broader theme of “Romanticism and Rights,” we invite proposals that consider Byron’s engagement with “rights.” Submissions may include, but are not limited to:

Byron and the right to freedom of religion
Byron and the right to national independence
Byron and animal rights
Byron and authorial rights
Byron and the right to sexual and gender expression
Byron and the right to freedom of speech
Byron and the rights of the disenfranchised and poor
Byron and Eastern rights
Byron and female rights

Deadline for all submissions: January 17, 2015.

Please send all proposals, including those to be considered by the leaders of special sessions, a brief CV, and direct questions to the NASSR 2015 conference organizers, Peter Melville (The University of Winnipeg) and Michelle Faubert (University of Manitoba) at nassr15@umanitoba.ca.

The 2015 International Byron Conference will be held in Gdansk, Poland on July 1-6. This year’s theme is “Reality, Fiction, and Madness,” and paper proposals are being accepted now until January 1, 2015.

Professor Mirka Modrzewska has sent this information:

http://fil.ug.edu.pl/dzialalnosc_naukowa/konferencje/konferencja_byronowska

Our team are currently working on the provisional price list and we are considering the conference fee of 150 euro which will cover:

• opening banquet (July 1st, 2015)
• 5 lunches
• 8 coffee breakes
• 2 concerts

Other costs, optional, would be:

1. A trip to Malbork, Teutonic Castle plus dinner 40 euro (July 3rd, after lunch)
2. Old City of Gdansk sightseeing tour plus Solidarity Museum 12 euro (July 5th, after lunch)
3. Gala Dinner in Sopot Grand Hotel 35 euro (July 6th)
4. A choice of 3 optional trips on July 7th after the conference: Kashubian Lake District, Elblag Canal ship voyage along a system of unique locks powered by water placed at different levels – an engeneering wonder unique in the world ( see  https://www.google.pl/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=bJeIU_6uF4Sa_wbC94CgCg#q=kana%C5%82+elbl%C4%85ski ), or Stuthoff Concentration Camp Museum if people wish to see it – costs still need to be calculated).

If you wish to participate in the optional trip on July 7th, please book your hotel till the next day (July 8th).

Prof. UG, dr hab. Mirosława Modrzewska
Uniwersytet Gdański
Instytut Anglistyki i Amerykanistyki
ul. Wita Stwosza 55
80-952 Gdańsk Oliwa
Poland

The BSA is sponsoring the follow panel at the annual South Atlantic Modern Language Association convention in Atlanta Georgia (with thanks to Lindsey Eckert at Georgia State University for organizing!):

“CREATING AND SUSTAINING BYRON”

Saturday, November 8th  – 8:00 AM
Chair: Lindsey Eckert, Georgia State University

1. From the Ashes: Byron’s Memoirs and Moore’s Reconstruction of Byron – Jeffery Vail, Boston University

2. Evolving Attitudes Toward the Byronic Hero: From Childe Harold to Rochester – Samantha Crain, San Jose State University

3. Creating Modern Adventure: The Byronic Hero in the Romance Revival of the 1880s – Michael Jones, University of Connecticut

Call for papers

 ‘Byron and Italy’

The Byron Centre

University of Manchester

Thursday 4 – Friday 5 December 2014 

The Byron Centre at the University of Manchester, in collaboration with the Centro Interuniversitario per lo Studio del Romanticismo at the University of Parma, invites paper proposals for an interdisciplinary conference on the topic of ‘Byron and Italy’, to be held at the University of Manchester, 4-5 December 2014. Papers are welcome from any disciplinary perspective that opens up new approaches to, or offers new insights into, any aspect of the conference theme, including, for example:

• Byron and the Italian poets (Dante, Tasso, Ariosto, Pulci, Casti …);
• Byron and Alfieri;
• Byron and Rome / Venice / Ravenna / Pisa / Milan …;
• Byron and the idea of Italy;
• Byron and Italian landscapes/cityscapes;
• Byron’s (self-)Italianisation;
• Byron’s relationships with Italians;
• Byron and Catholicism;
• Byron and the Carbonari / the Risorgimento / Italy as a nation;
• Byron and the Austrians in Italy;
• Byron and Italian art;
• Byron and Italian history;
• Byron and the dialectics of Italian antiquity and modernity;
• Byron’s relation to other British/continental writers on Italy;
• Byron’s Italianised relations with Britain;
• Byron and the Italian language;
• Byron’s influence on Italian culture.

Please email abstracts of 250 words maximum to The Byron Centre’s Director, Dr Alan Rawes (alan.rawes@manchester.ac.uk), by 15 September 2014.