'BEFORE DEPRESSION' CONFERENCE

Thursday 19th June

2.00-3.45 Session 1 at St. Peter's Campus, Sunderland University

Panel A: Theory Chair: Fritz Wefelmeyer (Sunderland)

Jeremy Schmidt (Victoria) 'Before Depression, the very idea: does an archaeological view help?'

Heather Wilson (Calgary) 'Metaphoric Use of Medical Language.'

Nigel Wood (Loughborough) 'The Spleen: Official and Unofficial Definitions.'

Melinda Rabb (Brown) 'Is "Before Depression" also "Before Paranoia"?'

3.45-4.15 Break

4.15 Welcome address by Professor Flavia Swann (Dean of the School of Arts, Culture & Media, Sunderland)

4.15-5.30

Plenary 1: Elaine Hobby (Loughborough)

'"As melancholy as a sick Parrot": Depressed(?) Women at the Beginning of the Long Eighteenth Century'

Chair: Richard Terry (Sunderland)

6.00-8.00 Reception and Buffet at Sunderland Glass Centre

Coach pick up and transport back to Northumbria

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Friday 20th June: City Centre Campus, Northumbria University

9.00-9.30 Registration

9.30-11.15 Session 2

Panel A: Female
Chair: Hélène Dachez (Toulouse)

Redfern Barret (Swansea) '"On Lasting Tablets Write Thy Name": Anna Seward and the Depths of Mourning.'

Heather Meek (Sainte Anne) 'Creative Hysteria and the Intellectual Woman of Feeling: Works on Hysteria by Anne Finch, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Elizabeth Carter, Hester Thrale Piozzi and Charlotte Smith.'

Steve Chambers (Northumbria) 'Wollstonecraft and Depression.'

Ramona Wray (Queen's, Belfast) 'Depressive Patterns and Textual Solutions in Seventeenth-Century Women's Autobiography.'

Panel B: Re-Location
Chair: Michelle Faubert (Manitoba)

Alexey Taube (Latvia) 'Experiences of Melancholia in Rose Tremain's Music and Silence (1999) and Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor.'

Fritz Wefelmeyer (Sunderland) 'Importing and Exporting Melancholy and Suicide: Goethe, Britain and the Werther Effect.'

Sarah Meacham (Virginia) 'The Declining Value of the Feeling of Melancholy and the Simultaneous Invention of the Feeling of "Cheerfulness" in the Eighteenth-Century American South.'

Junko Kitanaka (Keio) 'Depression in Japan'

11.15 -11.30 Break (coffee/tea)

11.30 Welcome address by Professor Peter Strike (Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research and Enterprise, Northumbria)

11.30-12.45

Plenary 2: Madeleine Descargues-Grant (Valenciennes)

'Burton & Sons: The Masks of Melancholy'

Chair: Allan Ingram (Northumbria)

12.45 - 2.00 Lunch, Lipman Coffee Bar

2.00-3.45 Session 3

Panel A: Novel
Chair: Elisabeth Detis (Montpellier)

Hélène Dachez (Toulouse) 'Love Suicide Revisited in Pamela, Clarissa and The Wanderer.'

Valérie Maffre (Montpellier) 'Melancholy and Seduction in a Few Eighteenth-Century Novels.'

Sarah Skoronski (McGill) 'Wollstonecraft's Maria and Postpartum Depression in the Eighteenth Century.'

Pauline Morris (Northumbria) '"Few People Can Bear the Unhappy": Sarah Scott and the Social Context of Depression.'

Panel B: Male
Chair: Adam Hansen (Northumbria)

Diane Buie (Sunderland) 'Johnson's "Unhappy Valley": Melancholy in Rasselas.'

Jane Darcy (King's College, London) 'The Politics of Melancholy and Madness: Boswell's Johnson and Hayley's Cowper.'

Sabine Wendel (Münster) 'A "Stranger to the Spleen": Jonathan Swift and Depression.'

David Cross (Independent) '"The Admiral of the Blues": Romney, Depression and Creativity.'

3.45-4.00 Break (coffee/tea)

4.00 -5.30 Session 4

Panel A: Court
Chair: Valérie Maffre (Montpellier)

Mascha Gemmeke (Griefswald) '"A lassitude of Existence Creeps Sensibly Upon Me": Gloominess, Melancholy, and Low Spirits at the Court of George III.'

Joanne Holland (McGill) 'Diagnosing Regicide: Margaret Nicholson and Bipolar Disorder in the Eighteenth Century.'

Gillian Skinner (Leeds) '"Depression of Spirits and Extreme Alteration of Person": the Court Diaries of Frances Burney.'

Panel B: Cure
Chair: John Baker (Paris 1)

Charlotte Holden (Northumbria) '"Contraries Often Prove Remedies": Laughter as a Cure for Melancholy in the Eighteenth Century.'

William Roberts (Independent) 'Dr Brown's Patent Remedy: Religious Depression and Music.'

Sophie Vasset (Paris 7) 'Medicina Musica: Music as a Remedy for Melancholy.'

5.30 Coach pick up

6.00-7.45 Reception at the Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead.

Welcome Address by Alec Cole, Head of Tyne & Wear Museums, and by Professor Cheryl Buckley, Associate Dean for Research, School of Arts and Social Sciences, Northumbria

Viewing of the project exhibition, 18th-Century Blues: Exploring the Melancholy Mind

7.45 Coach pick up

8.00 Conference dinner at the Mansion House, Newcastle

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Saturday 21st June City Centre Campus, Northumbria University

9.00-9.30 Registration

9.30 - 11.15 Session 5

Panel A: Poetry
Chair: Nigel Wood (Loughborough)

John Baker (Paris 1) '"A Vapour'd Muse": Figures and Voices of Melancholy in Some Eighteenth-Century Poems.'

Michelle Faubert (Manitoba) 'Nathaniel Cotton and James Beattie: Graveyard Verse as Psychological Therapy for Melancholy.'

Ginny Sampson (Durham) 'Public and Private Meditations on Depression and Its Impact Upon the Mind in Selected Poems and Letters of James Beattie.'

Gavin Budge (Hertfordshire) 'Romanticism, Caricature and the "blue Devils": Art. Soceity and the Depressive Imagination.'

Panel B: Thought
Chair: Gillian Skinner (Leeds)

Vera Camden (Kent State) 'Depression and Dissent in an Early Modern Diary.'

Nadien Jammet (Perpignan) 'Magical Thoughts and Depression in Eighteenth-Century England.'

Matthew Bell (King's College, London) 'Forms of Melancholy Discursivity After Burton.'

11.15-11.30 Break (coffee/tea)

11.30-1.00

Plenary 3: Peter Sabor (McGill)

'Frances Burney and Alexander d'Arblay: Creative and Uncreative Gloom'

Chair: Stuart Sim (Sunderland)

General discussion

1.00 Conference ends

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