Category Archives: Event

Reading Dissent and Dissenting Readers in the Reformation World, 1500-1800

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The 10th Triennial Conference of the International John Bunyan Society

Northumbria University, Newcastle (UK) 7–9 July 2022

REGISTRATION

Registration for the IJBS Triennial Conference is still open. Using the Conference Portal you can select your registration fee and add any optional extras, including accommodation and the Conference Dinner. Please note that both of these options have a limited number of spaces available and will therefore be allocated on a first come first serve basis.

FINAL PROGRAMME

The Final Conference Programme is also now available to view and download. Alongside the conference’s panels, plenaries and public lecture, a series of exciting excursions and activates has also been planned. If you need any further information, particularly regarding accessibility or travel, or have a question about the programme, please contact Dr Robert W. Daniel at IJBSSecretary@outlook.com.

Reading Dissent and Dissenting Readers in the Reformation World, 1500-1800

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The 10th Triennial Conference of the International John Bunyan Society

Northumbria University, Newcastle (UK) 7–9 July 2022

CALL FOR PAPERS

Plenary Speakers: Marie-Louise Coolahan (NUI Galway), Crawford Gribben (Queen’s University Belfast), Johanna Harris (Exeter), Nicholas Seager (Keele)

‘Reading Dissent’ is a major multi-disciplinary and international conference which seeks to investigate the multifarious ways reading proved vital, or potentially fatal, to the everyday lives of Puritans, Dissenters and/or Nonconformists, both to themselves, their households, wider communities and churches during the Long Reformation, 1500-1800.

POSSIBLE TOPICS INCLUDE:

  • Tracing manuscript readers (marginalia/interlining/erasing/re-copying/editing).
  • The buying, circulating & borrowing of prescribed/proscribed religious texts.
  • Dissenting academies/libraries (their sponsors/users/legacies).
  • Seditious reading (controversies/plots/debates/apologetics).
  • Communal reading (at conventicles/homes/prisons/chapels).
  • Ungodly reading (jestbooks/playbooks/romances/foreign histories/lewd poetry).
  • Reading the ministry (through clerical ‘lives’/diaries/church & court books/parish registers/wills).
  • Cross-confessional readers (of prayers/psalters/meditations/catechisms/devotional manuals).

Modest travel bursaries (on request via e-mail) are available for postgraduate students whose papers are accepted. Selected papers will form a special issue in the Society’s peer-reviewed journal: Bunyan Studies: The Journal of Reformation and Nonconformist Culture.

Please send a biography (100 words), along  with a CV, title and brief abstract (250-words) of a 20-minute paper, or for panels (3 x 20 minute papers) – no later than 15 September 2021 – to Dr Robert W. Daniel: IJBSSecretary@outlook.com.

For a PDF copy of this CFP click here.

Glorious Sounds: Exploring the Soundscapes of British Nonconformity: 1550-1800

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Virtual Conference, 14-15th April 2021

The International John Bunyan Society welcomes you to the Glorious Sounds: Exploring the Soundscapes of British Nonconformity: 1550-1800 – a virtual conference hosted by Northumbria University, Newcastle and organised in association with the University of Bedfordshire, Keele University, Loughborough University and the University of Warwick.

This major two day multi-disciplinary conference seeks to explore the various ways that sound impacted the lives and writings of early modern Nonconformists and, in turn, their spiritual practices. It will consider:

Hymns/sermons/prayers/catechisms.

Sacred/profane songs.

Ambient noise/s (in houses, churches, prisons).

Psychoacoustics.

Oral culture/s and reading aloud.

Early modern deafness.

Sound, suffering and trauma.

How did godly noises/speeches/music compete with and/or complement one another? Did the propinquity of households/meeting houses/churches hinder or help religious worship? How were the same prayers and sermons spoken/heard differently? Did silence, or its lack thereof, effect the delivery/auditory of God’s Word? In short, what sounds defined and defied British Nonconformity? The full conference programme can be accessed here.

Registration is free, but essential, as places are limited. For more information please visit the conference website.

9th Triennial IJBS Conferenc

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NETWORKS OF DISSENT: CONNECTING AND COMMUNICATING ACROSS THE LONG REFORMATION: THE NINTH TRIENNIAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL JOHN BUNYAN SOCIETY

The draft programme for the Ninth Triennial IJBS Conference is now available. Download the conference schedule here.

Wednesday August 14

12:00-6:00 Registration Table: Business Atrium

1:00-2:00 Salter Room HC 3-95: Reception for graduate student delegates.

Plenary Panel 1: 2:15-3:45: Writing and Reading Among Dissenting Clergy
Chair: Roger Pooley
Helen Wilcox (Bangor University): “The Dissenter’s Journal as a Textual Network: the Case of Oliver Heywood”
Tim Cooper (University of Otago): “The Correspondence of Richard Baxter”
Robert Daniel (University of Warwick): “’Read their lives in Mr. Clarke’s collection’: Writing and Reading Networks amongst Dissenting English Clergymen, 1650-1700”

4:00-6:00 Bruce Peel Special Collections
The official opening of the Bunyan Exhibition in Bruce Peel Special Collections (curated by Sylvia Brown). The Bruce Peel is one of the four largest repositories in the world for rare Bunyan editions.

6:15-7:30 Plenary Address 1: Kathleen Lynch (Folger Institute): “‘We Protestants in masquerade’: Burning the Pope in London.” Chair: Sylvia Brown

Thursday August 15

8:45-10:00 Plenary Address 2: Ariel Hessayon (Goldsmith’s. University of London): “Social networks and the publication of continental European writings during the English Revolution” Chair: David Walker

Concurrent Session 1: 10:30-12:00
Bunyan’s Contemporaries
Chair: Helen Wilcox
Jameela Lares (University of Southern Mississippi): “There Is No Way but Or:  Method in Bunyan and Milton”
Gary Kuchar (University of Victoria): “The Sounds of Appleton House: Andrew Marvell’s Poetic Audioscapes”
Paul Dyck (Canadian Mennonite University): “Dissenting and Conforming Herbert: tracing the uses of The Temple in the later 17th century”

Towards the Modern and Contemporary
Chair: Rachel Adcock
Andy Draycott (Talbot School of Theology): “Bunyan and Bonhoeffer: honoring prison writers among evangelical inheritors of dissent”
Devin Fairchild (Kent State University): “Anarchy in the UK and Terror in the Garden: a Postcolonial Reading of Paradise Lost and V for Vendetta”
Margaret Breen (University of Connecticut): “Toni Morrison, Temporality, and Networks of Dissent”

12:00-1:00 Lunch

Concurrent Session 3:  1:00-2:30
Travel and Translation
Chair: Kathleen Lynch
Rev. Susanne Gregerson (Independent Scholar): “The first translation of “Pilgrim’s Progress” into Danish”
Shitsuyo Masui (Sophia University, Tokyo): “Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative and the 18th-century Transatlantic Evangelical Protestantism”
Roger Pooley (Keele University): “Dissenting Itinerancy”

Memory and Meditation
Chair: Tim Cooper
Rachel Adcock (Keele University): “Memorable Acts and Restoration Dissenting Networks”
Tom Schwanda (Wheaton College): “Remembering John Bunyan through the Writings of George Whitefield”
David Walker (University of Northumbria): “Defoe’s Meditations”

Plenary Panel 2: 3:00-4:45: Women, Print Networks, and Publishing 
Moderator: Sylvia Brown

Part 1: Jenna Townend (Loughborough): “Print and literary cultures of dissenting poetry and its readers, 1642-89:
Gary Kelly (University of Alberta): “Sixpenny Print Networks: Bunyan, the Number-trade and Dissent in the Onset of Modernity”

Part 2: Adrea Johnson (University of Alberta): “’I send thee forth’: Bunyan’s Language of Agency in the Work of Susannah Spurgeon”
Vera J. Camden (Kent State University): “Earthly House and Earthly Testimony: Mary Franklin’s Experience” (read in absentia)

7:00-9:00 Anglican Parish of Christ Church, Oliver Neighbourhood
The Appeal of John Bunyan

Friday August 16

8:45-10:00 Plenary Address 3: Alison Chapman (University of Alabama) “Tithes of War. The Early Modern Law of Tithing and Milton’s War in Heaven”  Chair: Arlette Zinck

Concurrent Session 5: 10:30-12:00

Allegory and Hermeneutics
Chair: Paul Dyck
Michael Arbino (Kent State University): “Predestination and Divinely Appointed Companionship in The Pilgrim’s Progress and The Life and Death of Mr. Badman”
Richard Bergen (University of British Columbia): “The Word and the World”
Noam Flinker (University of Haifa): “Psalm 51: From Christian Silencing to Judaic Messianism in Mid-17th-Century England”

Bunyan Texts and Contexts
Chair: Jenna Townend
Donovan Tann (Hesston College) “Early Modern Brewing Discourse and Networks of Culpability in John Bunyan’s Life and Death of Mr. Badman” (1680)
Maxine Hancock (Emerita, Regent College) “Mercie’s Mirrors: Reflections and Deflections in the Pilgrim’s Progress, part 2”
Robert Wiznura (MacEwan University), “Anxiety About Complacency: The Holy War”

12:00-1:00 Lunch

1:00-2:15 Plenary Address 4: Feisal Mohamed (Graduate Centre CUNY): “Bunyan and the Annus mirabilis of English Law.” Chair: David Gay

AFTERNOON EXCURSIONS: 2:30-5:30

IJBS Business Meeting: 6:15-7:00 Place TBA all are welcome

7:00-10:00 Conference Banquet Papaschase Room: University of Alberta Faculty Club 

Announcement of the Fifth Richard L. Greaves Award / Adjournment

2019 IJBS Day Conference Programme

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HONEST LABOUR:
EXPLORING THE INTERFACE BETWEEN WORK AND NONCONFORMITY

A Regional Day Conference of the International John Bunyan Society, organized in association with the University of Bedfordshire, Keele University, Loughborough University and Northumbria University.

 

Martin Hall, Loughborough University, Friday 5 April 2019

PROGRAMME

9.30-10.15 Registration

10.15-10.30 Welcome: Catie Gill

10.30-11.45 Plenary: John Rees (Goldsmiths): ‘The Levellers, Wage Labourers, and the Poor’

11.45-12.00 Coffee

12-1.00 First Panel

Edward Legon (QMUL): ‘Godly Weavers? – Cloth-work and Nonconformity in Seventeenth-century Britain’

Robert Daniel (Warwick): ‘“Work enough to do”: the Labour of Nonconformist Ministers and the Cost of their Ministries’

1.00–2.00 Lunch

2.00–3.00 Second Panel

Alison McNaught (QMUL): ‘Labour and Faith: the Work of Women Printers and Booksellers of Nonconformist Texts during the Long Eighteenth Century’

David Hitchcock (Canterbury Christ Church University): ‘Spiritual Vagrants? – The Troubled Relationship between Work, Mobility, and Nonconformity in England, c. 1650–1700’

3.00–3.25 Coffee

3.25–4.40 Plenary: Thomas N. Corns (Bangor): ‘“In the sweat of thy face”: the Status of Work in the Writing of Bunyan, Milton, and Winstanley’

4.40–4.45 Closing remarks (Rachel Adcock)

REGISTRATION: Attendance is free of charge, but prior registration by 3rd April 2019 is essential. Morning and afternoon refreshments and a light lunch will be provided, costing £15 payable on the day. To register, please access:

https://store.lboro.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/school-of-the-arts-english-and-drama/upcoming-eventssymposiums/the-international-john-bunyan-society

 

 

 

Call for Papers: 9th Triennial IJBS Conference

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CALL FOR PAPERS

NETWORKS OF DISSENT: THE 9th TRIENNIAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL JOHN BUNYAN SOCIETY 14-17 AUGUST 2019, Edmonton, Canada

Founded at the University of Alberta, the IJBS returns to Edmonton for its 9th Triennial Meeting in 2019. Our conference theme is Networks of Dissent: Connecting and Communicating Across the Long Reformation. We invite proposals for 20-minute individual papers and full-session panels on our theme or any topic relating to the literature, culture and history of the Long Reformation, especially touching on the life, works, and legacy of John Bunyan and other dissenting voices of the seventeenth century. Papers in all disciplines are welcome.

POSSIBLE TOPICS MIGHT INCLUDE:

  • Social, economic, political, and ecumenical networks
  • Dissenting Academies and educational networks
  • Networks of book production and distribution; news networks
  • Epistolary networks; the circulation of dissenting culture; dissenting readers
  • Transhistorical networks (the long 18th century, the Victorians, and beyond)
  • Travel and trade related to dissent; itinerant preaching
  • Transnational networks of dissent; global Bunyan

OUR PLENARY SPEAKERS WILL BE:
Alison Chapman (University of Alabama at Birmingham), author of The Legal Epic: Paradise Lost and the Early Modern Law and Patrons and Patron Saints in Early Modern Literature
Ariel Hessayon (University of London), author of ‘Gold Tried in the Fire’: The Prophet TheaurauJohn Tany and the English Revolution
Kathleen Lynch (Folger Shakespeare Library), author of Protestant Autobiography in the Seventeenth-Century Anglophone World, winner of our society’s 2013 Richard L. Greaves award
Feisal Mohamed (Graduate Center CUNY), author of Milton and the Post-Secular Present: Ethics, Politics, Terrorism and In the Anteroom of Divinity: The Reformation of the Angels from Colet to Milton.

PLEASE EMAIL YOUR QUERIES AS WELL AS PROPOSALS FOR INDIVIDUAL PAPERS OR PANELS (UP TO THREE PAPERS) TO THE ORGANIZERS at IJBS9@ualberta.ca. Please include a 300-word summary, a title, and a 1-page c.v. Our closing date is March 1, 2019

Organizing Committee: Sylvia Brown (University of Alberta, IJBS General Secretary), David Gay (University of Alberta, IJBS President), and Arlette Zinck (The King’s University, IJBS Founding Member).

Download our Call for Papers flier here: Call For Papers IJBS9

We look forward to your proposals and to welcoming you to Edmonton in 2019!

Save the date!

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NINTH TRIENNIAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL JOHN BUNYAN SOCIETY 
14-17 August 2019 
University of Alberta, Edmonton Canada 

Networks of Dissent: Connecting and Communicating Across the Long Reformation

 

SAVE THE DATE!

This is an early preview of the next IJBS triennial conference in 2019. We warmly invite you to join us. Information on events, keynote speakers and registration information will become available as the next conference approaches.

Our theme can be broadly and flexibly imagined. We welcome your ideas on relevant topics, examples and areas. We will also welcome proposals for special panels.

Our theme is not exclusive. We will welcome papers on all aspects of Bunyan’s writings and early modern dissent. Papers from a variety of disciplines are welcome.

The University of Alberta’s Bruce Peel Special Collections Library has one of the largest rare Bunyan collections in the world, ranking with the British Library and the New York Public Library. An exhibition of rare books curated by Sylvia Brown will be a main feature of the conference. Your conference visit could include research time in our special collections library.

We plan to add cultural and recreational opportunities to our conference schedule. Edmonton is a great summertime city, featuring theatre and music festivals. Edmonton is also a gateway to Canada’s spectacular Rocky Mountains, making it an ideal prospect for combining conference and holiday time.

Download a copy of our preview flyer here.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.

Organizing Committee: David Gay (University of Alberta david.gay@ualberta.ca); Sylvia Brown (University of Alberta sb9@ualberta.ca); Arlette Zinck (The King’s University Arlette Zinck Arlette.Zinck@kingsu.ca)

Cromwell’s Religion: A Study Day, 3rd October 2015

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Religious division was one of the key factors that dominated the 17th century and the driving force behind Oliver Cromwell’s extraordinary ascent to his role as Lord Protector. The subject is huge and has many different aspects – and the potential to be a subject worthy of a life-times study.

The Cromwell Association exists to further study of Cromwell and to promote a wider understanding of ‘God’s Englishman’ and his legacy. It is an educational charity and publishes an annual journal as well as promoting events and activities that further the overall aims.

The Association, in partnership with the Dissenting Experience Project, has organised a study day to look at different aspects of Cromwell’s religion. The programme, aimed at a non-academic audience, will comprise four papers by specialists in the field. They range from an examination of Cromwell’s relationship with the Presbyterians to the role of Quakers in the Protectorate. The day will be chaired by Professor John Morrill.

The study day is open to all and will take place at The City Temple, Holborn Viaduct, London, on Saturday 3rd October. The fee for the day, including a light buffet lunch, is £45.00.

For further details, and on-line booking, see www.olivercromwell.org/whats_new.htm

  • The full programme for the day is available on-line at the link above
  • The Association organises an annual study day, recent previous subjects have been Cromwell and the Army, Cromwell’s early life, Richard Cromwell. Papers are normally published in the annual journal Cromwelliana. Sample copies available on request.
  • The Association was established in 1937. It also organises an annual service of commemoration by the statue of Cromwell at Westminster on 3rd September, the anniversary of Cromwell’s death.
  • Images available on request
  • For further details of the event and, or, the Association, please contact John Goldsmith, jrgoldsmith@talktalk.net

IJBS Regional Day Conference, Bedford

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Over forty people attended a highly successful Regional Day Conference of the International John Bunyan Society held on 10 April 2015 in the new Gateway building at the Bedford Campus of the University of Bedfordshire.

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The subject of the conference was ‘Representing Dissent in the Long Eighteenth Century’, and it was organised by Professor Bob Owens (University of Bedfordshire) in collaboration with Professor David Walker (Northumbria University). Speakers included (in the order in which they spoke): Professor Anne Dunan-Page (Aix-Marseille Université), Jenna Townend (PhD student, Loughborough University), Ed Legon (PhD student, University College London), Professor David Walker (Northumbria University), Dr Alan Argent (Dr Williams’s Library), Dr Nicholas Seager (Keele University), Professor Jeffrey Hopes (Université d’Orleans), and Dr Tessa Whitehouse (Queen Mary University of London). Among the audience were academics from over a dozen universities in the UK and France, together with students and members of the public from the local area.

IJBS BED CONF 3 IMGP0809 wroThis event was the first in what David and Bob hope will become a regular series of Regional Day Conferences, to be held alternately in Bedford and Newcastle. As Bob remarked in his introduction, it was appropriate that the inaugural conference should be held in Bedford, since it is the Mecca for all scholars of Bunyan and the Dissenting tradition! The theme of the conference was how Dissenters in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries represented themselves and were represented by others during a long period in which they suffered oppression and discrimination because of their refusal to accept that the state had the right to dictate how and where they should worship God.

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Protestant Dissenters were of course a small minority in English society, making up less than ten per cent of the population. They were eventually granted a measure of religious liberty under the Toleration Act of 1689, but it was not until well into the nineteenth century that they were granted equal rights with members of the Church of England in civil matters.

IJBS BED CONF 7 IMGP7860 wroTopics discussed by speakers included how Dissenting congregations kept ‘church books’ where they recorded details of the life and activities of the community; the ways in which Dissenters attempted to defend themselves against accusations of ‘disloyalty’ to the state, given their participation in the upheavals of the English Revolution; how, following the granting of toleration they began to establish organisations and libraries to support the work of Dissenting ministers; how leading Dissenters like Daniel Defoe took part in public debates on matters of national political concern and sought to influence opinion; and how Dissenting women used poetry and other forms of writing as a means of self-representation.

IJBS BED CONF 1 IMGP0780 wroIt was evident from the enthusiasm of participants and the high level of discussion throughout the day that delegates found the papers lively, accessible and interesting. At a time when the rights and freedoms of different religious minorities are under threat in many countries, the topic of this conference could hardly have been more pressing or relevant.

IJBS day-conference: Representing Dissent in the Long Eighteenth Century

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“Representing Dissent in the Long Eighteenth Century”

A Regional Day Conference of the IJBS organized by Bob Owens and David Walker in association with the University of Bedfordshire and Northumbria University will take place at the University of Bedfordshire, Bedford Campus, on Friday 10 April 2015.

This conference is open to anyone interested in Bunyan and in the ways in which Dissent and Dissenters were represented during the period from about 1660 through to the early nineteenth century. The term ‘represented’ may be taken to include self-representation and representation by others in various forms of expression and communication, including, for example, literature, art, the theatre, news media, high and popular culture, sermons, and political discourse and propaganda. Please send a title and very brief summary of a 20-minute paper – no later than 1 February 2015 – to: Bob Owens (bob.owens@beds.ac.uk) and David Walker (david5.walker@northumbria.ac.uk).

You can download the flier and the registration details here.