March Social Media Roundup
We’re back again to collect some of the Keats-Shelley related news that came across our social media feeds in the past month. Although a little different than usual, given the many postponements and cancellations of upcoming events due to Covid19, below you will still find information about new digital initiatives and virtual exhibitions, in addition the usual prize and fellowship announcements, new blog posts, and Romantic-related news items. With more being shared on social media than before, it’s very likely we’ve missed something, so if there’s something to add from the month of March, please do let us know–and please let us know, too, of any newly announced virtual events and digital resources. We will be very happy to share widely!
Upcoming and Ongoing (Digital) Events
Mary Wollstonecraft & Dissent: A Celebration has been postponed; however, the Wollstonecraft Fellowship is still finding ways to celebrate Wollstonecraft’s legacy online:
Event postponed ( https://t.co/GBP2I2wEPQ ) but there are still ways to celebrate Mary Wollstonecraft and get involved! https://t.co/fybnNapiht
— Keats-Shelley Assoc. (@KSAAcomm) March 30, 2020
Even with the postponement of the Keats House event marking Chatterton 250, the K-SAA’s and Thomas Chatterton Society’s poetry contest in honor of Chatterton continues:
Have you seen our poetry competition – in partnership with @Chatterton1752, to mark #Chatterton250? The judges: @Prof_Nick_Groom @drdanielcook @ceyingst @EleanorBryan – think you can impress them and win a year's membership with the K-SAA? Read more here: https://t.co/yG2qVvDkebpic.twitter.com/8Us57N54aw
— Keats-Shelley Assoc. (@KSAAcomm) March 12, 2020
European Romanticisms in Association launched a series of virtual exhibits, “Romantic Europe: The Virtual Exhibition”:
Romantic Europe: The Virtual Exhibition (@Euromanticism) – a message from @aearhodes about the project, now releasing new exhibits every Friday. Go to the BARS Blog for more: https://t.co/VRzoRyOoLW pic.twitter.com/69BfMMF85L
— British Association for Romantic Studies (@BARS_official) March 31, 2020
While the Keats-Shelley House in Rome is closed, they’ve started a weekly synchronized reading group (inspired by a reading experiment described in one of Keats’ letters). Do keep following along on Twitter!:
Keats-Shelley House is starting a weekly synchronised reading group – from an idea by John Keats.
Wednesdays, 12pm GMT, please join us for a few minutes to read the same text at the same time(ish), wherever and whenever you are.
Week 1 text Tweeted soon https://t.co/hYiR5bu86ypic.twitter.com/kGmGEgyTEM
— Keats-Shelley House (@Keats_Shelley) March 27, 2020
‘I shall read a passage of Shakespeare every Sunday at ten oClock – you read one at the same time and we shall be as near each other as blind bodies can be in the same room.'
John Keats invents Keats-Shelley #synchronisedreading group – starting Wednesday, 1 April 12pm GMT. pic.twitter.com/DxRefM7V4w
— Keats-Shelley House (@Keats_Shelley) March 27, 2020
3 minutes to @Keats_Shelley Synchronised Reading Group.
Just enough time to listen to John Gielgud give Shakespeare's Sonnet 44 the full Gielgud: https://t.co/ogOWpXeTtV
Take a few minutes and read with us. Read to your children. Read down the phone to your mum. Please read.
— Keats-Shelley House (@Keats_Shelley) April 1, 2020
Although the upcoming show could not run, you can still read about Wordsworth House and Garden’s exhibition, The Child is Father of the Man, in the Guardian, here:
Wordsworth exhibition explores true nature of William and Dorothy's bond https://t.co/JRnQwhM4vW
— Guardian Books (@GuardianBooks) March 15, 2020
And further on the horizon, the K-SAA’s Stuart Curran Symposium:
K-SAA Symposium to be held at the Harvard’s Houghton Library on Friday 23 Oct 2020: “1820: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Legacies of Romanticism”.
A Stuart Curran Symposium, celebrating the bicentenary of Keats’s and Shelley’s 1820 Volumes. @Romantics_200https://t.co/JEvEBMYfy6 pic.twitter.com/bcA1vxAH2J
— Keats-Shelley Assoc. (@KSAAcomm) March 9, 2020
Prizes and Fellowship Announcements
BARS announced the winners of their First Book Prize:
In the spirit of spreading positive thoughts, we'd like to highlight again the winner and runners-up of the 2019 BARS First Book Prize: @NotThatTomFord, Melissa Bailes, @profchander and Dahlia Porter. The judges' citations are now on the BARS Blog: https://t.co/LD3CBmhVKL.
— British Association for Romantic Studies (@BARS_official) March 26, 2020
And the Byron Society is inviting applications for their 2020-2021 PhD Bursary. Applications close on June 1st, 2020. For more information, see below:
The @byron_society PhD bursary is available to any PhD student enrolled in a UK university doing research on any aspect of the life, work & influence of Byron, & can cover any year of the PhD. The bursary is £3,000 per year. https://t.co/ZpGg2c3MOG
— Keats-Shelley Assoc. (@KSAAcomm) April 1, 2020
Books, Blogs, Videos, and Other Resources
With the help of many followers on social media, BARS shared a blog collecting resources for teaching Romanticism online:
And, continuing in the same spirit, why not share with BARS other online resources you think would be useful for colleagues during this difficult, isolating period? Requesting ideas for what to share with our members and friends here: https://t.co/ltyWdEzCQg
— British Association for Romantic Studies (@BARS_official) March 17, 2020
Thank you so much to everyone who suggested links for our Romanticism online resources list. The list is now on the BARS Blog (but will be updated and reviewed over time, do send more things to include – let us know what we've missed) https://t.co/80e91u6C8p pic.twitter.com/XNpkB0yH8T
— British Association for Romantic Studies (@BARS_official) March 20, 2020
Not try to make all new resources yourself! Here’s one great place for quality assistance. https://t.co/amkYx6EBHl
— Stephanie Insley Hershinow (@S_Insley_H) March 21, 2020
On our blog, the K-SAA reflected on Keats’s final months in 1821:
New post on the K-SAA Blog. 'In late winter 2020, the year of the Corona pandemic, Keats’s last place in Rome is as eerie, as posthumous, as Keats felt his own life to be, a strange and haunting sympathy across the centuries.' @Keats_Shelleyhttps://t.co/d3qvxP7t1S pic.twitter.com/n5gX3FFCoX
— Keats-Shelley Assoc. (@KSAAcomm) April 1, 2020
A video of Western University’s performance of The Cenci is now available:
Video: P B Shelley’s The Cenci, as performed on Dec. 4, 2019 in London, Ontario – new on the K-SAA Blog! #Romantics200https://t.co/8Fs256KGYZ pic.twitter.com/Jc0GdVBY2n
— Keats-Shelley Assoc. (@KSAAcomm) March 9, 2020
A rare opportunity to see Cenci performed. https://t.co/dW4hDJj7rG
— Neil Fraistat (@fraistat) March 9, 2020
Romantic Circles released a collection on “Teaching Global Romanticism”:
Check out this really awesome collection, "Teaching Global Romanticism"!!! @Bigger6Romantix https://t.co/MtGM1SNXcq
— Chris Washington (@ChrisWa49417818) March 9, 2020
A video of Monika Lee’s lecture, “The Discourse of Sexual Violence in Shelley’s The Cenci” is now available:
To be seen:
Monika Lee’s "The Discourse of Sexual Violence in Shelley's The Cenci”https://t.co/bZKG3YOQHZ
— Neil Fraistat (@fraistat) March 12, 2020
New on the Blog: a public lecture by Dr. Monika Lee – a @Romantics_200 event. The lecture was delivered on the opening night of Shelley’s 1819 play, The Cenci, staged at TAP: Centre for Creativity in London, Ontario, Canada on Dec. 4, 2019. https://t.co/qD8GSyJYT5 #Romantics200pic.twitter.com/HhaMeyDSq8
— Keats-Shelley Assoc. (@KSAAcomm) March 18, 2020
And on The Real Percy Bysshe Shelley, Graham Henderson writes on Eleanor Marx and the Shelley Society:
In 1888 Eleanor Marx took on the Victorian establishment to reclaim Shelley and rescue the "hero of the freethinkers". Why? Go behind the scenes with me as Marx battles the patriarchal Victorian literary establishment.@wsws_updates @KSAAcomm@paulbondwsws
https://t.co/6ZB7N7dyGR— Percy Bysshe Shelley (@Shelley_at_224) March 6, 2020
Miscellaneous, or, Romanticism in the News
Many commentators—Eileen Hunt Botting, Jill Lepore, the K-SAA’s comms team, and others—turned to Mary Shelley, and especially The Last Man, to help think through the COVID-19 crisis:
‘As we heed scientists’ warnings that we are entering “the age of pandemics,” we can benefit from reading [Mary Shelley’s] “The Last Man” as the first major post-apocalyptic novel.‘ https://t.co/JPnFMOIAzS
— Keats-Shelley Assoc. (@KSAAcomm) March 14, 2020
It is truly remarkable how Mary Shelley’s work continues to speak so powerfully to our present moment. https://t.co/9WAJOgzOl3
— Neil Fraistat (@fraistat) March 14, 2020
"Shelley’s novel dwells on the value of friendship, and concludes with Verney accompanied on his wanderings by a sheep dog […]. The novel is particularly scathing on the topic of institutional responses to the plague."https://t.co/2WLN8Wfr0Q
— Keats-Shelley Assoc. (@KSAAcomm) March 17, 2020
https://twitter.com/annamercer_/status/1240671880320876546?s=20
"There are plagues here and plagues there, from Thebes to New York, horrible and ghastly, but never one plague everywhere, until Mary Shelley decided to write a follow-up to 'Frankenstein.'" – Jill Lepore in @NewYorkerhttps://t.co/Jfje2Rchaq
— Keats-Shelley Assoc. (@KSAAcomm) March 23, 2020
"but my motto must now be 'Alla Giornata'—each day be must be 'in itself complete'— depending, neither with hope or fear, upon the future: thus I may make something of my time" – mary shelley
— Carly Yingst (@ceyingst) March 11, 2020
Meanwhile, The Keats Letters project shared some quarantine advice from Keats:
In the Times, a comment on Percy Shelley and revolutionary ballooning:
The Guardian‘s poem of the month for March was “Nightingale” by Deryn Rees-Jones, featured in the Keats-Shelley Foundation‘s Odes for John Keats, an anthology to mark the bicentenary of Keats’s great odes:
And, also in the Guardian, an article on Bristol’s celebration of Thomas Chatterton