Location
Bath Royal Literary Institution
Call for Papers, deadline – 31 March 2024
Proposals are invited from anyone wishing to take part in a workshop exploring the role of local and regional knowledge-making communities in Britain. Proposed papers might focus on, for example:
- literary and philosophical societies
- mechanics’ institutes
- publishing clubs
- literary, artistic, or dramatic associations
- field clubs
- reading rooms
- subscription libraries
- book clubs
- antiquarian, archaeological, or historical societies.
This workshop is aimed at historians, archivists, curators, librarians, and local researchers. It aims to explore the role played by informal, sociable, and community-centred organisations in the development of humanistic and social knowledge in modern Britain (c.1750-1950).
If your proposal is chosen you will be invited to a one-day workshop to be held at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution on 25 June. Together participants will explore the idea that provincial societies, which combined sociability with intellectual cultivation of various kinds, are a key way in which the history of ideas in Britain can be opened up and re-evaluated. At the same time, the workshop is an opportunity to reflect on the future of community-based knowledge work, and to seek new, more inclusive ways forward for knowledge-making beyond the academy.
Proposals should be no more than 250 words for papers no longer than 30 minutes. Please send to Dr Martha Vandrei at m.vandrei@exeter.ac.uk no later than 31 March 2024.