Edward Rushton and
Romantic Liverpool:
A Bicentennial Conference
14-15 November 2014
The School of the Arts, University of Liverpool, 19-23 Abercromby Square, L69 7ZG
Friday 14th November
From 10.00 – Registration / Coffee (Library, first floor, 19 Abercromby Square)
10.30 – Welcome (Library)
Conference committee and Steve Binns
10.45-12.15(Library)
Rushton’s legacy, and remembering and translating slavery (Chair: Alex Robinson)
Laurence Westgaph, ‘The legacy of slavery in the Liverpool built environment’
Jessica Moody, ‘The debate is the memorial: remembering slavery in Liverpool through contested history’
Alessandra Ficarra, ‘(Un)translatable slavery: the case of the International Slavery Museum, Liverpool’
12.15-13.00 – Lunch (including optional visit to‘Rushton and Romantic Liverpool’ exhibition, Special Collections & Archives, Sydney Jones Library)
13.00-14.10 (Library)
Recovering/Uncovering Rushton for Twenty-First Century Romantic Studies(Chair: Alex Robinson)
Franca Dellarosa, ‘“Ever plain is the mantle, the hues ever deep”. Edward Rushton: Poetics and Politics’
Paul Baines, ‘Editing Rushton’
14.10-15.40 (Library)
Literature, philanthropy and social consciousness (Chair: Franca Dellarosa)
Lilla Maria Crisafulli, ‘Women in Liverpool: Gender and Philanthropy’
Serena Baiesi, ‘Felicia Hemans and the social coalition in Liverpool’
Chris Mounsey, ‘Edward Rushton and the First British Blind School’
15.40-16.00 – Tea
16.00-17.30 (Library)
Material and Theatrical Cultures in Liverpool (Chair: Mark Towsey)
Pauline Rushton, ‘Print culture in the Liverpool ceramic industry, 1756-1840’
Xanthe Brooke, ‘Pots, prints, poems, plants and publishers in Roscoe’s Liverpool’
Cristina Consiglio, ‘“Bless’d if we please you, whom to please we live!”: Managers, actors and actresses in Romantic Liverpool’
[Short comfort break]
17.30-18.30 (Library)
Roscoe and Liverpool Intellectualism (Chair: Paul Baines)
Emma Clery, ‘William Roscoe: Aesthetics and Politics’
David Brazendale, ‘The Athenaeum and the intellectual culture of Liverpool, 1790-1810’
19.00 – Dinner at Everyman Bistro
Saturday 15th November
9.30-10.30 (Library)
Forms, spaces and environments (Chair: Lilla Maria Crisafulli)
Brycchan Carey, ‘Slavery and the beginnings of environmental consciousness in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world’
Raphael Hoermann, ‘Edward Rushton’s Poem “Toussaint to his Troops” and the Radical Haitian Gothic’
10.30-10.50– Coffee
10.50-11.50 (Library)
Empire, slavery and abolitionism (Chair: Alex Robinson)
Ryan Hanley, ‘“I believed in my heart, that God had a people there”: An African Methodist Abolitionist and Liverpool’s Sailors, 1801-1804’
Christa Dierksheide, ‘John Gladstone’s Empire’
11.50-12.45 – Visit to ‘Edward Rushton: Rebellious Poetics’ exhibition, Victoria Gallery & Museum
12.45-13.30 – Lunch
13.30-14.30 (Library)
John Graham Davies and others, ‘Staging Unsung’ (Chair: Alex Robinson)
14.30-14.50 – Tea
14.50-15.50(Library)
John Oldfield, ‘From Liverpool to Mount Vernon: Edward Rushton in Transatlantic Perspective’ (Chair: Richard Huzzey)
15.50 – End of conference/ wine reception
The organizers acknowledge the generous support of the following organizations:
[Portrait reproduced with kind permission of the Royal School for the Blind, Liverpool]