Discussion Groups

I am working on a history of greed and the social/moral boundaries used to contain it. I am currently focused on the factory acts as a way of containing greed in the early industrial period. The panel could either move into labor history, textile production, social policy, or the role of greed in in the emergent political economy.

Thanks,

Penny (ismay@bc.edu)

I would like to put together a panel that focuses on cultural innovations or practices of sociability that emerged or transformed in the mid 17th century. My own paper will examine how the exercise of new, short-lived liberties in the 1640s and 1650s enabled the resolution of old conceptual tensions regarding sociable religious practices, with far-reaching implications for civil society. Papers on early modern sociability or novel cultural practices (contextually situated) would fit nicely.  If interested, please contact me at jim.honeyford@umanitoba.ca by 20 April 2026.

Hi all! I’m hoping to form a methodologically oriented panel on using letters and correspondence to investigate global and imperial topics. My own work looks at family relationships among middle-class British migrants to Argentina, the U.S., New South Wales, and coastal China over the long nineteenth century, with thematic focuses on family structure, gender, migration, and children/childhood. However potential papers need not overlap with this specific geography or themes. I’m most interested in having a conversation about how other historians are thinking about letters as sources broadly, including the contents, letter as a material object, representations of correspondence in British culture, etc.  I imagine this topic will be most relevant to 19^th-20^th century, but would be happy to hear from early modernists if it sounds relevant.

 I’ll be proposing a paper that explores practices of sharing, lending, and forwarding letters in familial and social circles, and considers how these practices built…

Hi! Looking for panelists or papers for a panel that would explore reading practices within the field of British Studies across historical periods and disciplinary approaches. This call is interested in work that examines how texts are read, circulated, interpreted, and taught in Britain and its imperial and global contexts. Possible topics include historical reading cultures, marginalia and annotation, institutional or classroom reading practices, digital reading environments, community or public reading, and the role of reading in shaping literary, cultural, and political life. Interdisciplinary approaches drawing from literary studies, history, cultural studies, media studies, book history, and the history of education are especially welcome. My own paper examines women’s reading practices in nineteenth-century colonial India.

I am a PhD candidate in the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and my research is on the intersection of education and reading cultures in India. Please email me at mohanty2@uwm.edu.

Hi all,

I would like to propose a panel on the histories of water/fish/acclimatization/South Asia. I am keeping it very broad for the time being.

1) If your paper is related to water, fisheries, angling, acclimatization experiments or anything related to these themes, then there is no geographical restriction, it could be from any part of the world.

2) Or else, it may be related to South Asia, preferably on Environment or Science and Technology Studies.

My Individual Paper:

I am also happy to be part of any panel that you organize. I have a paper on the history of angling and acclimatization of European fishes in India.

Hi all,

I am hoping to organize a panel on the interdependence of texts and textiles in late medieval or early modern English literature. My own paper is focused on how literary and embroidery production techniques inform each other in the late fourteenth-century. I would love to hear about any papers related to the metaphorical and material overlaps between texts and textiles in late medieval or early modern English Literature. If you have a paper you would consider presenting, please contact me at niwaters@ttu.edu or nawaters68@gmail.com.

Hi all, are any folks out there interested in presenting on sex work? My own research is on subcultures of sex work in late-Victorian London but those who work on other time periods/geographic areas are v welcome to get in touch! Feel free to email me at wjr429@usask.ca.

I am intersted in putting together a panel about crime, policing, punishment or related issues in Britain and/or Empire. My paper would be about assaults on police in late-Victorian East London. Chronological and geographic diversity would be great.

If you are interested, please let me know - axa24@psu.edu.

Thanks,

Andy

Colleagues,

I am a professor of History at MSU-Denver and am in the late stages of writing a book focusing on shame and shaming in early modern England. I would like to present some of my research at the NACBS at Pasadena. The last three chapters I wrote explored drunkenness and shame; honor, shame and ministers’ wives; and ministers behaving badly. I would be eager to turn any of them into a conference paper. If anyone wants to be part of a panel that would fit with any of those topics, or on a broader panel on early modern cultural and/or religious history, let me know.

Yours,

Brian

bweiser1@msudenver.edu