Invitation to the Networked Events of Romantics Bicentennials
 
The following invitation explains how to apply for funding to generate Romantic bicentennial events in 2016-2018.
 
Scholars in the Romantic period are launching a multi-year series of events to commemorate Romantic Bicentennials. The program will begin with events on the upcoming bicentennials from 2016-2018, to mark events of 1816-1818 and to stimulate new directions in scholarship and teaching. This project, “Romantics200” for short, is co-sponsored by the Keats-Shelley Association and the Byron Society, with foundation-funding and significant resources from private donors to support three annual symposia that commemorate the bicentenary of a significant historical moment: (1) in 2016 at NYPL on the “Geneva Summer” of 1816, co-organized by Andrew Stauffer and Neil Fraistat; (2) in 2017 on Keats’s career and the publication of his Poems, 1817, co-organized by Susan Wolfson and Kate Singer; and (3) in 2018 on the first publication of Frankenstein, co- organized by Jerrold Hogle and Anne Mellor. For further details see http://romantics200.org.
 
We want to tell you now about opportunities to launch new events, with seed-grants from Romantics200, to extend the reach of Romantic Bicentennials.  Along with the three major symposia from 2016-18, Networked Events will be distinguished by their concern for wider, cross-cultural or interdisciplinary, dimensions of the Romantic age. They are intended to draw attention to the kind of complex interactions between literary writing and other forms of knowledge production and dissemination, sometimes, as with climate change, in ways that resonate directly with more contemporary concerns. But they can also, as with various scientific or aesthetic controversies, call attention to what is distinctive (and often unrecognizable to our contemporary eyes) about Romantic ways of knowing, seeing, expressing, and imagining.
 
Networked Events will be seeded, connected, or in some cases originated by Romantics Bicentennials. We anticipate that the forms these events take will range widely, and might include day-long symposia, lectures or lecture series, exhibitions of material held in libraries or special collections (which might then be digitized to allow more widespread public access), courses keyed to events or issues seen to be prominent for the respective years, and even opportunities to reflect more theoretically on the significance and meaning of this bicentennial commemoration more generally. We would also like to encourage and coordinate performances in music and dance, museum exhibitions, and workshops for high school teachers. 
 
Some possible topics include: 
·       Elgin Marbles controversy and British visual arts field 
·       Climate change and the humanities: “Year without a Summer” 
·       Interacting with Print: Blackwood’s Magazine, The Examiner, others 
·       Scientific controversies: vitalism v. materialism, “Romantic life and death” 
·       Developments in quantification and mathematics (“digital humanities”) 
·       New techniques for information visualization 
·       Popular political movements, new radical press 
·       London intellectual culture, Shakespeare lecturing in relation to Shakespeare bicentennial 2016
·       Performance, theater, celebrity, Regency life, urban scene,
·       Jane Austen bicentennial 2017 
·       Global romanticisms 
·       Transatlantic/-oceanic—colonial, slavery/abolition 
 
With this in mind, we would like your help in identifying potential events or projects that can be associated over the next three years with the Romantic Bicentennials project. Ultimately, we expect that we can help generate funds and publicity for these events through modest seed-grants (to be supplemented by your university or department, for instance, or a local funding mechanism) that can be coordinated at major archives, museums, galleries, performing-arts venues, public lectures, or through other means.   In the case of events already organized and underway, Romantics200 can network this event/project to a wide range of others. The outcome, we hope, will be a rich, various, and productive agenda for Romantic literary and cultural scholarship over the next three years and beyond. 
 
So there are two responses you might have to this invitation. One is to apply for a seed-grant to begin financing of a bicentennial event sometime in the coming three years, a grant of up to $1,000 you would match with funds from your institution (or another source). The other is to “affiliate” an event that is already planned and funded. Please find the applications for seed-grants or affiliation at http://romantics200.org/propose-event.  When you’ve downloaded and filled out the form, email to Romantics200 at [log in to unmask]
 
As should be clear, the “Networked Events” portion of the Romantic Bicentennials project is more flexible and multifaceted in nature than the three symposia, and this is what also makes it an especially robust opportunity to help consolidate and expand the public and scholarly presence of Romantic studies. We will be working with a diverse committee that includes Jon Klancher (Carnegie Mellon) and Jonathan Sachs (Concordia) as co-chairs, Adriana Craciun (Riverside), Nigel Leask (Glasgow), Marsha Mann (co-founder of the Byron Society), Leslie Morris (Houghton Library, Harvard), Andrew Piper (McGill), Gillian Russell (Melbourne), and Steve Hindle (Huntington Library). This committee will coordinate with Andrew Stauffer (Virginia) and Neil Fraistat (Maryland), who are directing the Romantics200 initiative on behalf of the Byron Society and the Keats-Shelley Association of America. 
 
Sincerely,
Jon Klancher and Jonathan Sachs
Co-Chairs, Networked Events of Romantics200

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