The Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies offers two graduate fellowships annually (stipend, plus tuition for 24 credit hours, if necessary). The competition for the fellowships is open to any IUB graduate student in any discipline who has completed the Ph.D. qualifying exams and is working on a dissertation on an eighteenth-century topic.
We are pleased to announce that Celia Barnes Rasmussen (English) and Celestina Savonius-Wroth (History) are the recipients of the 2008-09 Graduate Fellowhips.
Celia Barnes Rasmussen: "Recreational Subjects: Authorship,
Familiar
Conversation, and
the 'Interested' Reader"
My dissertation attempts to rethink the category of the professional
author—to consider, that is, the ways in which authorship in the
eighteenth century wasn’t always or only conceived of in terms of
models of production and publication. In chapters on Alexander Pope,
Laurence Sterne, Hester Thrale Piozzi, and Elizabeth Carter, I posit
that professional authors responded to changing conceptions of literary
fame by imagining conversational, recreational reader-writer encounters
not wholly created in or reliant upon the conditions of the literary
marketplace. This form of authorship, I argue, defines the
author-subject as an interactive project between readers and writers—a
kind of “foul copy” that continually advances toward but never achieves
the fair. In other words, in the dialogical back-and-forth that
characterizes recreational writing, these authors envision selves
always subject to revision at the hands of another.
Celestina Savonius-Wroth: "'Ceremonies of the People': Religious Culture
and Ethnography
in Eighteenth-century Britain"
My dissertation examines a project of documenting the customs and beliefs
of the ordinary people of Britain, carried out largely by the clergy.
I argue that the rise of ethnographic interest in the people must be
situated in the context of religious culture, and of contemporary concerns
about the nature of human societies. In the seventeenth century, popular
customs drew the attention of Puritans in their attempt to purge
Protestantism of all forms of ritualized behavior, as well as of their
high church Royalist opponents who sought to uphold tradition. While it
has generally been assumed that the religious dimension of these debates
disappeared by the early eighteenth century, later eighteenth-century
descriptions of local customs reveal deeply-rooted concerns about the role
of the established churches and the duties of the clergy in the face of
rapid societal change. The theological issues discussed were not mere
reflexive gestures to earlier debates but instead indicate attempts on the
part of the clergy at understanding, accommodation or intervention in
world felt to be fraught with new challenges.
Applications for the 2009-10 Fellowship will be solicited during the Fall Semester, 2008. Applicants will submit a CV, a description of the project to be supported, of up to 600 words, and two letters (including one from the applicant's advisor). Please send these materials, marked as "Eighteenth-Century Graduate Competition," to Dr. Barbara Truesdell, (email voltaire@indiana.edu).