Oxford Centre for Life-Writing Inaugural Conference: ‘The Lives of Objects’
20-22 September 2013
Full Programme
Venue: Leonard Wolfson Auditorium (LWA), Wolfson College, Oxford
Thursday 19 September
Delegates who have specially booked Wolfson B&B accommodation for Thursday night can check in from
2pm onwards. Please go to the Porter’s Lodge on arrival, who will provide you with a key and directions to
your accommodation. A luggage store is available at Wolfson for delegates arriving earlier than 2pm (you
will be directed by the Porters).
Friday 20 September
7.30-9am:
Breakfast in Wolfson (in the Hall, main college site) for those who have booked
accommodation on Thursday night.
9-10.15am:
conference registration; coffee and pastries (Leonard Wolfson Auditorium foyer).
If you have booked accommodation, please go to the Porter’s Lodge on arrival. You
can check in from 2pm. They will direct you to the luggage store for delegates
arriving before 2pm. The conference, and the Leonard Wolfson Auditorium, will be
clearly signposted. Please arrive in good time.
10.15-10.30am:
welcome speech by OCLW’s director, Professor Dame Hermione Lee (LWA
Lecture Theatre) *Please note: this session will be recorded*
10.30-11.45am:
The History Faculty Plenary Lecture:
Neil MacGregor (British Museum)
Title: ‘And one thing in its time plays many parts’
Chair: Hermione Lee
(LWA Lecture Theatre) *Please note: this session will be recorded*
11.45-12pm:
short break
12-1.30pm:
PANEL SESSION ONE
Panel title: MUSEUMS I
Chair: Susan Walker (Ashmolean)
Venue: Lecture Theatre (ground
floor)
Panel title: POETICS
Chair: David Bradshaw (University
of Oxford)
Venue: Room 1 (ground floor)
Elizabeth Crooke (University of
Ulster), 'Autobiography and
Contested Histories in Museums'
Mark Blackwell (University of
Hartford), ‘The Poetics of Pulp: the Hannah Williams (University of
Life of the Book in British Object Oxford), 'David's Table: Object,
Tales, 1785-1821’
Prop, Relic'
Kristen Treen (University of
Cambridge), ‘‘Sorry Objects’ and
‘Sad Glass Cases’: Mourning the
Lost Cause at the Museum of the
Confederacy, Richmond, VA.’
Panel title:
FOREGROUND/BACKGROUND
Chair: Julie Curtis (University of
Oxford)
Venue: Room 2 (first floor)
Paddy Bullard (University of Kent), Joanne Bloch (University of Cape
‘Joseph Moxon and the Poetics of Town), ‘“An Ugly Old Thing”: the
Handycraft’
strange tale of the death mask in the
UCT archive’
Louise Tythacott (University of
Christina Lupton (University of
Manchester), ‘The Lives of Objects Warwick), ‘From Textile to Text:
from the Summer Palace in China’ Imagining the Material Lives of
Eighteenth-Century Pages’
Davina Kirkpatrick (University of
West of England), ‘An Enquiry into
Red’
1.30-2.30pm:
lunch at Wolfson (Haldane Room and Buttery; stewards will guide delegates)
2.30-3.15pm:
Special Session One:
Professor Michael Burden (University of Oxford):
‘The Private (and Public) Life of an Opera Aria’
Chair: Hermione Lee
(LWA Lecture Theatre) *Please note: this session will be recorded*
3.15-3.30pm:
short break (water available)
3.30-5pm:
PANEL SESSION TWO
Panel title: BOOK
HISTORY
Chair: Rebecca Roach
(University of Oxford)
Venue: Room 1 (ground
floor)
Panel title: FAMILIES
Panel title: PORTRAITS Panel title: ODDITIES
AND THEIR SPACES
Chair: James Hamilton
Chair: Rachel Hewitt
Chair: Henriette van der (University of
(University of Oxford)
Blom (University of
Birmingham)
Venue: Lecture Theatre
Oxford)
Venue: Room 3 (first floor) (ground floor)
Venue: Room 2 (first floor)
Sabine Wieber (University Rosa Coles, ‘Jane Carlyle’s Erica Moiah James (Yale Elizabeth Abel (University
of Glasgow), ‘Gustav
decorated folding screen’ University), ‘Painting
of California, Berkeley),
Klimt’s Little Red
Oneself into History:
‘The Death of the Object’
Sketchbook, 1897-1899’
Nineteenth-Century Haitian
Portraiture as
Revolutionary Text’
Mary Breen (University
College, Cork), ‘The
Exotic Journeys of Three
Eighteenth-Century Irish
Manuscripts’
Helena Jerman (University
of Helsinki), ‘Perceptions
of belonging and otherness
in the Finnish-Russian
borderland: How pieces of
culture draw memory and
place together’
Katherine Allen
Margaret Patrikeos (Curtin
(University of Oxford),
University), ‘Living
‘‘An Infallible Cure’:
Materiality in Writing the
Recipe Books and Personal Memoir’
Experience with Illness in
Eighteenth-Century
English Households’
5-5.30pm:
afternoon tea (LWA foyer)
Elsje van Kessel
Tracey Potts (University of
(University of St
Nottingham), ‘Gnomes
Andrews), ‘Biography and Behaving Badly: Social
Connoisseurship: The Case Distinction and the
of a Titian Portrait’
Twisting of Taste’
Daniel Vuillermin
Tom Scott-Smith
(University of International (University of Oxford), ‘A
Business & Economics,
Biography of the BP-5:
Beijing; and Australian
Emergency Food,
National University),
Modernist Dream,
‘‘Continuing the Presence Individual Ration’
of the Dead’: The
After/Lives of Sir Joshua
Reynolds’s Portraits of Dr
Johnson’
5.30-7pm:
PANEL SESSION THREE
Panel title: HISTORY OF SCIENCE Panel title: METAPHOR
Chair: Voula Saridakis (Lake Forest Chair: Rick Hauser (International
College)
Institute for Mesopotamian Area
Venue: Room 2 (first floor)
Studies)
Venue: Lecture Theatre (ground)
Panel title: LUXURY
Chair: Alice Dolan (University of
Hertfordshire)
Venue: Room 1 (ground floor)
Alexi Baker (University of
Cambridge), 'The Willdey
Telescope: Reading the Early
Modern Instrument Trade in Gilt
Leather and Glass'
Maria Cristache (University of
Giessen), ‘China Sets and Crystal
Cups: Material Traces of the
Communist Past in Romanian
Homes’
Lisa Kohlmeier (La Sierra
University), ‘A Memorial to a
Friendship’
Seb Falk (University of Cambridge), Lucy Razzall (University of
Alex Belsey (King’s College,
'Chaucer, Price and King Arthur's Cambridge), ‘Curious Statues so
London), ‘Living through Objects in
Table: The Intertwined Lives of an Cunningly Contrived': The Early
the Novels of Joris-Karl Huysmans’
Object, its Designer and its Modern Modern Afterlife of Plato's Silenus'
Recreator'
Ana Finel Honigman (University of
Adam Nicol (University of Western Steven Wingate (South Dakota State Oxford), ‘Let ‘er Rip: the Symbolic
Australia), ‘Nature Read in Truth
University), ‘Electronic Lives of
Significance of Tears in
and Law: Reading Biological
Physical Objects: Weaving
Contemporary Luxury Fashion’
Objects in Philip Henry Gosse’s
daddylabyrinth’
Omphalos’
7-7.45pm:
7.45pm onwards:
Summer Pimm’s reception (Upper Common Room, main college site)
dinner (Hall, main college site)
Accommodation in Wolfson for residential delegates (and those who have separately booked
accommodation for Friday night)
Saturday 21 September
7.30-9am:
9-9.30am:
Cooked breakfast in Wolfson for residential delegates (and those who have
separately purchased accommodation for Friday night) (Hall, main college site)
coffee and biscuits (LWA foyer)
9.30-11am:
John Fell Plenary Lecture:
Edmund De Waal
‘No ideas but in things': making, remembering and story-telling’
Chair: Hermione Lee
(LWA Lecture Theatre) *Please note: this session will be recorded*
11am-1pm:
Museum visits: delegates will attend one of the following options. Coaches will
collect delegates by 11.10am outside Wolfson, to take them to their choice of
museum. The coaches will leave at 11.15am.
1. tour of the Ashmolean Museum, and a talk about an object from the museum’s
collections by Susan Walker (Keeper of Antiquities)
2. visit to the Pitt-Rivers Museum, and a talk about the museum’s collections by
the museum’s director, Michael O’Hanlon
3. tour of the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, and a talk about objects
from the museum’s collections by the acting director, Stephen Johnston
1-2pm:
2pm:
delegates to arrange own lunch in central Oxford
Return coaches will collect delegates outside the Taylorian Institute, St Giles (for
those who attended the Ashmolean and Pitt-Rivers trips) or outside Blackwells on
Broad Street (for those who attended the Museum of History of Science trip).
2.30-4pm:
PANEL SESSION FOUR
Panel title: MEMORIALS
Chair: Margaret Patrikeos
(Curtin University)
Venue: Room 3 (first
floor)
Panel title: BODY PARTS Panel title: ARCHIVES
Chair: Elizabeth Abel
Chair: Laura Marcus
(University of California, (University of Oxford)
Berkeley)
Venue: Lecture theatre
Venue: Room 2 (1st floor) (ground floor)
Panel title: TEXTILES
Chair: Ana Finel
Honigman (University of
Oxford)
Venue: Room 1 (ground)
Fredrik Thomasson
Mairin Odle (New York
(Uppsala University), 'The University), 'Scalps:
Sigeion Stele: A Tale of Subject as Uncanny
Shifting Uses and Values' Object’
Daisy Hay (University of Janice Helland (Queen's
Exeter), 'Locks of Hair
University, Canada),
and Other Stories'
'Queen Mary's Court
Train: Irish Lace and the
Pamela Clemit (Durham Last Durbar'
Angela Maddock
University), 'Objects of
(University of Wales
Lee-Von Kim (University Value: The Afterlives of Amy de la Haye (London
Trinity St. David:
of Oxford), 'Objects and Letters'
College of Fashion),
Swansea’s Metropolitan Subjects in Claude
'Cinderellas of the Soil: A
University), ‘Lost and
Cahun's Disavowals'
Béatrice Mousli
Biography of Breeches'
Found: Narratives of the
(University of Southern
Hand-Knitted Sweater’
California), ''Into the
Claire Canavan
Writing Zone': Writing
(University of York),
Lucie Ryzova (University Emily Ridge (Durham
Susan Sontag's Biography' ''[T]hynges that the
of Oxford), 'Love in a
University), 'Biographical
yembrother wyndes hys
Box'
Beginnings: The Anatomy *Please note: this panel
golde on': Male and
of the Woman's Bag'
will be recorded*
Female Textile Work in
the Hardwick Hangings'
4-4.30pm:
afternoon tea (LWA foyer)
4.30-6pm:
PANEL SESSION FIVE
Panel title: ANTHROPOLOGY
Panel title: BIOGRAPHY
Chair: Ulrike Roesler (University of Chair: Béatrice Mousli (University
Oxford)
of Southern California)
Venue: Room 1 (ground floor)
Venue: Room 2 (first floor)
Sandeep Parmar (University of
Liverpool), ''The Trinity in Unity':
Jane Harrison and Hope Mirrlees's
Bear'
Panel title: PHOTOGRAPHY
Chair: Alexi Baker (University of
Cambridge)
Venue: Lecture theatre (ground)
Seraphima Kennedy (Goldsmiths Becky Roach (University of
College), ''I'm Calling about my
Oxford), ‘‘Writers’ Rooms’:
Mother...You Got Some of Her
Auto/biography through Objects’
Alive in There': Invisible Objects
and Narrative Methodologies in
Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life
of Henrietta Lacks'
David Zeitlyn (University of
Oxford), 'The Short, Uncertain
Petra Tjitske Kalshoven (University Siân Smith (University of Oxford), Lives of Photographs in Cameroon'
of Manchester), 'Emulation of
'Berlin Rock: Fragmentation,
Material Culture: Object Biography Synecdoche and the Power of
in extenso?'
Stories'
Christine Fouirnaies (University of
Oxford), 'The Life of a Family
Louise Bergstrom (European
Voula Saridakis (Lake Forest
Album: Private Photographs in
University Institute, Florence), 'The College), “‘World History in the
Literary Memoirs'
Benin Bronzes'
Windy City’: Applying the
Methodology of ‘Object
*Please note: this panel will be
Biography’ to College-Level
recorded*
History Courses”
6-6.15pm:
short break
6.15-7pm:
Special Session Two:
Professor Hugh Haughton (University of York):
‘Letters as Objects: letters and objects’
Chair: Hermione Lee
(LWA Lecture Theatre)
7-7.45pm:
7.45pm onwards:
‘Champagne’ reception (Upper Common Room, main college site)
Conference gala dinner (Hall, main college site)
Accommodation in Wolfson for residential delegates ( and those who have separately purchased
accommodation for Saturday night)
Sunday 22 September
Breakfast in Wolfson for residential delegates ( and those who have separately purchased accommodation for
Friday night). Delegates who have not booked accommodation for Sunday night must check out by 10am,but
can leave their luggage in the luggage store.
9.30-10am:
coffee (LWA foyer)
10-11.15am:
The English Faculty Plenary Lecture:
Jenny Uglow
‘Pinecone and Church: What Kind of Objects, What Sort of Lives?’
Chair: Hermione Lee
(LWA Lecture Theatre)
11.15-11.45am:
morning coffee and pastries (LWA foyer)
11.45-1.15pm:
PANEL SESSION SIX
Panel title: ART(EFACTS)
Chair: Emma Hagström Molin
(University of York)
Venue: Room 1 (ground floor)
Panel title: MUSEUMS II
Chair: Seb Falk (University of
Cambridge)
Venue: Lecture theatre (ground)
Ruth Horry (University of
Sara Chong-Kwan (London College Cambridge), ‘Doctors, Divination
of Fashion), ‘Making Sense of
and Sheep’s Livers: the Modern
Everyday Dress’
‘Scientific’ Life of an Ancient
Babylonian Model’
Barbara Burman, ‘“If they could
speak, would read you lessons”:
retrieving the social lives of
women’s pockets in the long
eighteenth century’
Xiumin Tang (Shanghai Jiaotong
University), ‘The Cultural
Biography of the Tracings on the
Stone Drum, a Type of Chinese
Calligraphy’
1.15-2.15pm:
Panel title: SYMBOLS
Chair: Elleke Boehmer (University
of Oxford)
Venue: Room 2 (first floor)
Mary Henes, ‘Byron’s Slippers:
Paddy Leigh Fermor, Travel and
Identity’
Nicholas Perkins (University of
Oxford), ''That Swerde Shall be
Susan Faine, 'The Life Lived: Nina Youre Destruccion': Objects,
Zyk and the Detritus of a Life'
Stories and Gifts in Thomas
Malory's Sworded Romance'
Deborah Smith (Kennesaw State
University),
'Shapeshifter/Sensemaker: The
Multiple Meanings of One
Memento'
seated buffet lunch (Hall, main college site)
Hedley Twidle (University of Cape
Town), 'Obscure White Messenger:
Tsafendas, the Tapeworm and the
Unusable Past in South African
Literature'
*Please note: this panel will be
recorded*
2.15-3.15pm:

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


WORKSHOP SESSION (each delegate will speak for 5 minutes) (LWA lecture
theatre)
Chair: Georgina Ferry
Maria Salaru (University of Oxford), ''Souvenirs from the Other Side': A Social Biography of
Photographic Postcards in the Tropenmuseum'
Valeria De Lucca (University of Southampton and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York),
‘Resonating Objects, Powerful Voices: Keyboard Instruments and the Early Modern Aristocracy’
Alice Dolan (University of Hertfordshire), 'Temporal Textiles: Reconstructing the Time Cycles of
the Production and Care of an Eighteenth-Century Bed Sheet'
Alex Woodall (University of Leicester), 'Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary: Rummaging through
Forgotten Lives'
Froukje Pitstra (University of Groningen). ‘A World Discovered: About an Eccentric House and a
European Network of Scientists’
3.30-4.30pm:
closing round table discussion (LWA lecture theatre)
Panellists: Elleke Boehmer, Michael Burden, Seb Falk, Georgina Ferry,
Rebecca Roach
Chair: Rachel Hewitt
Afternoon tea as the conference ends (LWA foyer)
Accommodation is available on Sunday night for delegates who book it separately (ie. it is not
included in the residential conference package).