Author: profwgibson

The 2017 Annual Wesley Lecture will take place at 5pm on Tuesday 23 May at Lincoln College, Oxford. The Wesley Lecturer for 2017 will be Grayson Ditchfield, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Kent. His title is: JOHN WESLEY, HETERODOXY AND DISSENT.

Professor Ditchfield is a specialist in eighteenth century religious history. He is the author of George III: An Essay in Monarchy (Palgrave Macmillan) and The Evangelical Revival (UCL Press, 1998). He is also the editor of the two volume Letters of Theophilus Lindsey (1723-1808) and is currently working on an edition of the works of Francis Blackburne.

There will be a reception after the lecture.

For directions to Lincoln College see: https://www.lincoln.ox.ac.uk/Contact

On 30 March, Professor William Gibson, Director of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, was elected as a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. The Society was founded in 1707 and granted a royal charter in 1751. It is dedicated to the advancement of the study of history and antiquities. Fellows are distinguished scholars and practitioners in their fields and elected after a rigorous nomination and election process. There are 3,000 FSAs in the UK and across the world. The Society of Antiquaries is based in Burlington House in Piccadilly and also owns and manages Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire, the home of William Morris.

More information on the Society of Antiquaries can be found at: https://www.sal.org.uk/

The conference addresses the forms of significant spiritual networks that have characterised the literatures and cultures from the Enlightenment to the present. The Christian religion and its diverging forms and practices—especially in the aftermath of the Reformation—has been representing a core issue of Western society, shaping the lives of individuals and determining the social, literary, and political climate of any given period. Such forms and practices are testimony to the ongoing (re-)negotiations of spiritual attitudes in context with the historical succession of religious and secular world models. The underlying paradigm shifts, in turn, have affected all ways of social life within cultural communities as well as the intellectual dispositions of their members and agents.

Keynote speakers

Robert DeMaria, Jr. (Vassar College, USA)
William Gibson (Oxford Brookes University, UK)
Hans-Jürgen Grabbe (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)
John Richetti (University of Pennsylvania, USA).

Thomas Frederick Tout was a remarkable medieval historian who forged the distinctive and distinguished history school at Manchester University in the early years of the twentieth century. His own research made extensive use of the national archives (as opposed to the customary use of chronicle sources) and his major contributions were in the field of administrative history. He was, himself, a tireless administrator of many historical enterprises (including the Dictionary of National Biography) and his historical output was extraordinary. He spent the last four years of his life in London and is buried in Hampstead Parish churchyard. The time is ripe to reconsider his historical legacy.

Conference speakers

• Ralph A. Griffiths (Swansea University)
• William Gibson (Oxford Brookes University)
• Stuart Jones (University of Manchester)
• Peter Slee (Leeds Becket University)
• Christopher Godden (University of Manchester)
• Henry Summerson (ODNB)
• Ian d’Alton (Trinity College Dublin)
• Seymour Phillips (University College, Dublin)
• Paul Dryburgh (The National Archives)
• Matthew Raven (University of Hull)
• Jeff Hamilton (Baylor University)
• Vance Smith (Princeton University)
• DeLloyd  Guth (University of Manitoba)
• John McEwan (St. Louis University)
• Elizabeth Biggs (University of York)
• Nick Barratt (University of Nottingham)
• Mark Ormrod (University of York),
• Joel Rosenthal (Stony Brook University)
• Tom Sharp

Further information is available from http://www.history.ac.uk/events/event/7943

The programme for the annual Ecclesiastical History Colloquium at Oxford Brookes University has just been announced. The colloquium will meet on 22 June 2017 at Harcourt Hill. The programme is:

NEW BOOKS ON EIGHTEENTH CENTURY RELIGION

2.00 pm Clive Norris Research Associate, OCMCH: The Financing of John Wesley’s Methodism, c. 1740-1800.

2.30 pm William Gibson, Director of the OCMCH & Joanne Begiato Head of the School of History, Philosophy and Culture, Oxford Brookes University: The Church and Sex in the Eighteenth Century

3.00 Peter Forsaith, Research Fellow, OCMCH:  Image and Identity – John Wesley: A study in portraiture

3.30 pm tea

NEW RESEARCH ON RELIGION in the EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

4.00 Matthew Holland, President, Utah Valley University, Utah, USA: ‘Biblical Charity and Public Virtue in the Making of America’

5.00 Jamie Latham, University of Cambridge: ‘A Statistical Survey of Clerical Publishing in the English Short-Title Catalogue, 1660-1800.’

5.30 Michael Breidenbach, Assistant Professor, Ave Maria University, Florida, USA: ‘Republican Bishops in the Atlantic World’.

6.30 pm Buffet dinner

There is no charge for this event, but please confirm attendance to Janet Acutt, Administrator of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History: email: jacutt@brookes.ac.uk or phone: 01865 488455

Professors Joanne Begiato and William Gibson, co-authors of the forthcoming Sex and the Church in the Long Eighteenth Century (to be published by I.B. Tauris next month) are speaking on the topic at Pusey House, Oxford on 2 February 2017.

The seminar, in the Pusey House Anglicanism Since 1688 series, will be at 4pm at Pusey House in Oxford. For more information see http://www.puseyhouse.org.uk/news–events/anglican-history-research-seminary