The programme for the 2018 IJBS Regional Day Conference is now set. The conference is organised in association with the University of Bedfordshire, Keele University, and Northumbria University. Details are below and a Conference Programme can be downloaded here.

REMEMBRANCE AND RE-APPROPRIATION: SHAPING DISSENTING IDENTITIES

Keele University, Staffordshire, Friday 13 April 2018

10.00–10.20  Registration and coffee

10.20–10.30  Introductory remarks: Rachel Adcock, Bob Owens, David Walker

10.30–11.30   Plenary 1: Johanna Harris, University of Exeter
‘“Heroick vertue”: Joseph Alleine’s letters and Protestant martyrology’

11.30–1.00    First Panel
Ann Hughes, Keele University: ‘“The Churches Cordiall in her fainting fits”: The memorial practices of a Presbyterian activist at the Restoration’
Matthew Bingham, Queen’s University, Belfast: ‘Re-appropriating Ritual and Rethinking Radicalism: General Baptists and the Imposition of Hands’
Joel Halcomb, University of East Anglia: ‘Mystery in the archives: A seventeenth-century journal and its twentieth-century nonconformist historian’

1.00–2.00     Lunch

2.00–3.30     Second Panel
Jenna Townend, Loughborough University: ‘“Not like minded with the Reverd Author”?: Re-appropriations of George Herbert and the formation of dissenting identities’
Andrew Crome, Manchester Metropolitan University: ‘Memories of Münster and Representations of Dissent, 1660-1700’
Robert Daniel, University of Warwick: ‘“To make a second Book of Martyrs”: Re-Appropriating Foxe in the Nonconformist Prison Narratives of Seventeenth-Century England’

3.30–3.40     Tea

3.40–4.40     Plenary 2: John Coffey, University of Leicester
‘Rewriting the History of Dissent’

4.40–4.50     Concluding remarks and departure 

REGISTRATION: Attendance is free of charge, but prior registration by 30 March is essential as numbers are limited. To register, please email r.c.adcock@keele.ac.uk, bob.owens@beds.ac.uk, and david5.walker@northumbria.ac.uk giving details of name; title; affiliation; email address; and any dietary requirements; and they will send you a link to the conference ‘e-store’. Morning and afternoon refreshments and a light lunch will be provided, costing £15 payable through the ‘e-store’.

INAUGURAL MEETING OF ‘BUNYAN ROUND TABLE’ IN BEDFORD

On 23 November 2017, a ‘Bunyan Round Table’ meeting was held at the Swan Hotel in Bedford. Organised and chaired by Ruth Broomhall, it brought together a group of about twenty people with particular interests in Bunyan. Two key issues were discussed. The first was how the profile of Bunyan, and knowledge about him, might be raised and sustained among local people in Bedford and Bedfordshire. The second was how tourist interest in Bunyan might be stimulated, and how visitors to Bedford might be given a richer sense of Bunyan’s importance in the history of the town than is offered at present.

There was general agreement at the meeting that much more could be done to make Bunyan and his Pilgrim’s Progress central to his home town of Bedford in the way that Shakespeare has become central to Stratford-upon-Avon. For example, road signs to Bedford and railway signs could highlight the link with his name and book. Other discussion focussed on ways of enhancing the experience of visitors to Bedford, by, for example, providing a coherent ‘Bunyan Pilgrimage’ package of information and activities, highlighting his literary, historical, and religious significance, taking in sites in Bedford, Elstow and other places. The specific needs of groups of visitors were also discussed. It was suggested that there might be a special ‘Bunyan Bus’ to take such groups to places associated with Bunyan, and that a series of ‘events’, including exhibitions, activities and talks for groups, might be laid on during the main tourist season.

Ruth Broomhall spoke about her own efforts to bring The Pilgrim’s Progress back into school classrooms in Bedford. She has recently published The Pilgrim’s Progress: A Curriculum for Schools, accompanied by a frieze illustrating the story for display on a classroom wall. These materials are designed to help teachers to bring the story to life for primary school children (see her website: palacebeautiful.co.uk.) One idea discussed at the meeting was the possibility of producing a more extensive ‘Bunyan Pack’ for distribution to Bedford schools. This might include a copy of the Curriculum for Schools together with other material such as a children’s version of The Pilgrim’s Progress, and resources such as Peter Morden’s biography of Bunyan, The People’s Pilgrim.

It was agreed that this inaugural meeting had been extremely useful in drawing together people who were already working to promote knowledge of Bunyan to share ideas about more effective coordination of and support for these efforts. It was agreed to explore the possibility of setting up a not-for-profit/charitable organisation, led by representatives of Elstow Abbey and Bunyan Meeting as the two key Bunyan historical sites. This organisation could then seek grants for specific projects and activities of the kinds discussed. A second meeting of the Bunyan Round Table will be held in February 2018. Further information may be obtained by contacting Ruth Broomhall at: ruth.jb@internet.com.

‘Bunyan Round Table’ group on the staircase from Houghton House, Ampthill (often thought to have inspired ‘Palace Beautiful’) now at The Bedford Swan Hotel.

REMEMBRANCE AND RE-APPROPRIATION: SHAPING DISSENTING IDENTITIES

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

Keele University, Staffordshire, Friday 13 April 2018
CALL FOR PAPERS

The purpose of this interdisciplinary conference is to explore seventeenth- and long-eighteenth-century practices of memorialisation and re-appropriation and the ways in which these might be put to work in shaping various dissenting identities. Papers may focus on, for example, the remembrance or re-appropriation of rituals or practices, experiences of persecution, anniversaries, memories, and events (personal or public); conservative vs subversive practices of memorialisation/re-appropriation; the collection and/or re-appropriation of particular texts, authors, or genres (devotional writing, history, biography); the contexts and/or methods for memorialisation/re-appropriation; the use of memorialisation/re-appropriation in the formation and survival of particular dissenting communities. Please send a title and brief (200-word) summary of a 20-minute paper – no later than 1 February 2018 – to: Rachel Adcock (r.c.adcock@keele.ac.uk), Bob Owens (bob.owens@beds.ac.uk), and David Walker (david5.walker@northumbria.ac.uk).

PLENARY SPEAKERS
Professor John Coffey (University of Leicester) – ‘Rewriting the History of Dissent’
Dr Johanna Harris (University of Exeter) – Title tba

REGISTRATION
Attendance is free of charge, but prior registration by 5 March 2018 is essential as numbers are limited. The conference opens at 10.00am, and ends at 5.00pm. Morning and afternoon refreshments and a light lunch will be provided, costing £15 payable on the day.

To register, please email r.c.adcock@keele.ac.uk, david5.walker@northumbria.ac.uk, and bob.owens@beds.ac.uk giving details of name; title; affiliation; postal and email addresses; and any dietary requirements. We may be able to offer modest financial assistance with travel costs of postgraduate students whose papers are accepted. If you wish to be considered for assistance, in addition to sending the title and outline of your proposed paper, please explain briefly why you would need help with travel costs.

‘Religion and the Life-Cycle, 1500-1800‘

The Queen Mary Centre for Religion and Literature in English has announced that its first conference, ‘Religion and the Life-Cycle, 1500-1800‘ will take place on Friday 6 July 2018 at QMUL Mile End Campus with keynote lectures from Prof. Elaine Hobby and Dr. Adam Sutcliffe.

The Call for Papers is now open:

The Queen Mary Centre for Religion and Literature in English (QMCRLE) welcomes proposals for twenty minute papers on the theme ‘Religion and the Life Cycle, 1500-1800’ for a one-day interdisciplinary conference. They interpret the term ‘Life Cycle’ broadly, to include biological transition points such as birth and death, social transition points such as coming of age ritual, marital and employment status, life-stages such as childhood or adolescence, and indeed the passage of time and the process of aging. This conference seeks to explore institutional religious ceremonies and prescriptions relating to the life cycle, as well as more personal and informal religious beliefs and responses.

Suggested topics for papers include, but are not limited to:

• ‘Rites of passage’ ceremonies such as baptism, circumcision, confirmation
• Spiritual writing / personal writing / prayer which reflects upon Life-Cycle events
• Religious prescriptive literature relating to Life-Cycle events
• Representations of religious Life-Cycle processes within literature, art, or material culture

Keynotes
Professor Elaine Hobby (Loughborough): “We have an example in Scripture” (Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book): Women, Religion, and the Early Modern Life-Cycle

Dr Adam Sutcliffe (King’s College London): The Children of Israel and the Passage to Adulthood in Early Modern Europe

Please do consider submitting a paper. See this link for further information: https://religionandthelifecycleconference.wordpress.com/

The International John Bunyan Society is pleased to announce that on 9 July Alec Ryrie received the Richard L Greaves Award for his monograph Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford University press, 2013). The award was presented to Prof. Ryrie by the president of the selection committee, Neil Keeble, and committee members Cynthia Wall and Ann Hughes, at IJBS’s Triennial Conference in Aix-en-Provence.

The Richard L. Greaves Award is presented triennially by the International John Bunyan Society for an outstanding book on the history, literature, thought, practices, and legacy of English Protestantism to 1700.

An Honourable Mention went to Meredith Marie Neuman for her monograph, Jeremiah’s Scribes, Creating Sermon Literature in Puritan New England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).

The organizing committee is pleased to release the definitive programme of the Triennial Conference that will take place 6-9 July 2016 in Aix-en-Provence.

To view the programme, click here.

The organizing committee of the 8th Triennial Conference, ‘Voicing Dissent in the Long Reformation’ has just released the 2016 programme.

To view the programme, click here.

To know more about the conference, visit the conference page here.

A note about the day conference in Bedford was included in the Times Higher Education Supplement.

Please, follow the link (scroll down to campus reports): http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/campus-close-up-queen-mary-university-of-london/2020013.article