This interdisciplinary one-day conference explores the relationship between letters and bodies in the long eighteenth century, and the information that can be found about ‘embodiment’, or experiences of the body, in letters. What can letters add to our understanding of eighteenth-century bodies? How might letters allow us to ‘embody’ activities such as work, trade, sociability and worship? How did the form and style of letters shape the knowledge about the body that they communicated? As material objects themselves and often carried on the person, what relationship did letters have with the body? Can bodily states, such as illness, be discerned from the mingled intellectual and mechanical act of writing?
Confirmed speakers include:
- Abigail Williams
- Ali Claire Flint
- Annika Raapke
- Frith Taylor
- Helen Bates
- Karen Harvey
- Sheryllynne Haggerty
- Steven King
- Taylin Nelson.
For full details of the conference programme and papers, please visit: https://epistolarybodiesconference.wordpress.com/home/programme/
This conference is organised by Sarah Goldsmith (Leicester), Sheryllynne Haggerty (Nottingham) and Karen Harvey (Birmingham) as part of the Midlands Eighteenth-Century Research Network (MECRN). We are the grateful recipient of funding from the Economic History Society and the Royal Historical Society.
Location: University of Leicester