All rooms are equipped with an overhead projector
Rooms C, D, E, F, G and H (H only on Saturday): slide projector (framed slides, carrousel. There are extra carrousels available to set up your presentation in advance)
Rooms C, D, M, N, O, U and Committee Room 2: beamer to connect your laptop. You have to bring you own laptop. (If you want to use your Apple notebook, please contact us, as it may be incompatible.)
Rooms C, T and U: VCR
Programme
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Beyond the Masham-Astell Dialogue: Wit, Enthusiasm, and Anonymity in Mary Astell’s Political Writings
| Mary Astell’s heated exchange with, or at least extended objections to the texts now known to be written by, Damaris Masham has attracted the attention of several feminist scholars. It is striking, then, Masham seems to have taken many paratextual precautions to avoid precisely such clear and gendered identification as Astell’s opponent. Mentioning only John Norris in the preface, and emulating Locke in her writing, Masham alludes to Astell just twice in her anonymous Discourse Concerning the Love of God. Masham’s approach to polemical writing can be read as more typical of the period, as Steven Zwicker has identified ‘indirect address’ as an important mode of engagement in political literatures of restoration England. Also noteworthy is the sense among Astell’s many opponents (not least Shaftesbury) that she wrote in an inappropriate manner, in both her enthusiasm and her aggressive version of wit. With close attention to both print culture and paratextual apparatus, this paper explores several prominent but indirect exchanges with Astell – those of Masham, Shaftesbury, Daniel Defoe and Jonathon Swift, all of whom she pointedly attacks in her various writings and with various degrees of strategically deployed anonymity and pseudonymity. Although Astell’s much touted conversation with Masham may not take the stylized form of a debate or dialogue, and may not fulfill hopes of an early feminist conversation, the forms of engagement available to (and indeed used by) Astell and her contemporaries point towards a more considerable and complex role for women in networks of elite communications.
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