ALS Fourth Meeting, 2025
PLEASE JOIN US FOR THE FOURTH ANNE LISTER SOCIETY MEETING, spring 2025!
Following on our inaugural sessions in April 2022 and our second and third meetings in 2023 and 2024, the Anne Lister Society will reconvene for its fourth conference, on 4-5 April, 2025, in Halifax, U.K. (Registration details and precise timetable to follow soon and will be announced here and on our social media.)
Launched in the summer of 2020, the Society aims to foster knowledge of Lister’s extraordinary life and writings and to interpret her legacy. It seeks to nourish conversation among scholars and to build conversations between scholars and Lister’s wider readership and expanding network of invested enthusiasts. By encouraging research and greater understanding of her way of inhabiting the world, the Society aims to establish and sustain Anne Lister’s place — both in the cultural tradition and for the future.
CONFERENCE PROGRAM, 2025
DAY ONE / Friday 4 April (9:45am-5:00pm)
Welcome
Laurie Shannon (Northwestern University, US, WYAS transcriber, and co-founder/convener of ALS)
Chris Roulston (Western University, CA, and 2025 ALS conference co-chair)
Stephen Turton (Oxford University, UK, and 2025 ALS conference co-chair)
Panel 1: Anne Lister and Medicine
“Anne Lister and Debates in 19th Century Medicine: The Shocking Case of Sibbella Maclean and the Quack Doctor John St. John Long”
Anna Clark (University of Minnesota, US)
“Disguise, medical networks and selective conversation in Anne Lister’s Paris”
Imogen Cook (University of Kent, UK)
Panel 2: Anne Lister and Self-Fashioning
“Anne Lister’s literary indexes: a quantitative approach”
Charley Matthews (University of Edinburgh, UK)
“Gender and Sartorial Identity: Exploring Anne Lister’s Wardrobe Through Reconstruction and Reenactment”
Elizabeth Dawson (independent researcher, UK) and Verity Joy (Arts University Bournemouth, UK)
Panel 3: Anne Lister and Travel
“Going to Italy: Anne Lister’s Grand Tour and her Italian connections”
Lucia Falzari, Francesca Raia, and Irene Trotta (independent researchers, IT)
“‘Left Ann in the ladies room’: Negotiating the Public Sphere and Anne Lister’s (and Ann Walker’s) Train Travel”
Sarah Wingrove (University of Surrey, UK)
Friday Keynote
“Langton: Gothic Anne”
Anne Choma (independent researcher, author, and consultant, UK) and Jennifer van Gessel (screenwriter and director, AU)
DAY TWO / Saturday 5 April (9:45am-4:00pm)
Panel 4: Lister's Signifying Strategies
“Blood and Ink: How menstruation shaped Anne Lister’s juvenile journal 1806-1810”
Constance Halstead (University of York, UK)
“Anne Lister’s style of feeling: letters and diaries”
Caroline Gonda (University of Cambridge, UK)
“'Queer Jingles': Wordcraft, Virginia Woolf, and Anne Lister"
Laurie Shannon (Northwestern University, US)
Panel 5: Lister’s Background Characters
“'He makes rugs, John Abbott does' and the Abbott Ladies Homes in Halifax”
Joan Burda (independent researcher and WYAS transcriber, US)
“Lister’s ‘Other’ Women”
Chris Roulston (Western University, CA)
“Familial Oddities: Shibden as a Queer-Headed Household”
Jann Kraus (University of Fribourg, CH)
Saturday Keynote
“Music and Identity: Anne Lister as amateur and connoisseur”
Alison Deadman (East Tennessee State University, US)
* Program details are inevitably subject to change due to unforeseen circumstances (strikes, the weather, public health incidents, or other international and travel issues!)