Gearing up to talk elite schooling, Classics and young people's enculturation in the Nineteenth Century via a case study of the Headlam family

This week is my final one as a Barker Fellow at Durham. I started off wondering what I'd find, if much, if anything even. As it is, I've found quite a lot, but I'm not sure quite how much as I've not had time - it's all been quite intensive - to process and reflect. I will, however, have an opportunity - on my penultimate day of the Fellowship - to share what I've been doing in a paper at the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies at Durham.

Today, once this posting goes live, I am going to be preparing that talk, initially by revisiting my posts to this blog: both those already published, and two I've not published yet (they're very much in draft form) and so which exist currently only for me.

Here, below, is the abstract for my talk, and its title, along with a bio I wrote for the Centre. I plan to share my talk here: this is one task for me before I finish my time at Durham. This week, I'll also be finalising the postings currently in draft from. And I'll also be spending as much time as I can manage with the Special Collections. It looks set to be a full-on week...

The talk is on Thursday - for details on where and when and how to join remotely, this link gives all the information as does the first of the screenshots in this posting. 

'Meek innocence', 'ancient divines' and 'talk of Demosthenes': Elite schooling, Classics and young people's enculturation in the Nineteenth Century - a case study of the Headlam family

This paper shares the outcomes of my time as a Barker Fellow at Durham investigating the place of Classics in nineteenth-century young people's lives. It will set out how far what I have found matches what I anticipated potentially discovering based on my initial consultations of the Archives and Special Collections Catalogue while developing my application for a project then titled 'Elite schooling and young men's enculturation in the Long Nineteenth Century: a case study of the Headlam family'. It will share my research journey into the childhood experiences of Headlam young people - girls, it turns out, as well as boys - as conveyed in letters, poems and art works. Moreover, it will divulge how far the worldviews of the Headlam children are shaped by their experiences learning about anything classical.

Biography: Susan Deacy is a classicist especially interested in ancient Greek mythology, gender and religion and in the reception of Classics, particularly in children's culture and above all in autistic young people's culture. For her work seeking to diversify Classics, she is a National Reaching Fellow and a Principal Fellow of the HEA and among her other roles she is Professor Emerita of Roehampton University, Honorary Professor at Bristol University, Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians of London, Editor-in-Chief of the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, and co-founder of the network ACCLAIM: Autism Connecting CLAssicaly-Inspired Mythology.

Here's a screenshot of the Centre's page advertising the talk - it contains the info about plus a photo of my during my time as a Fellow discovering the Northumbria Coast.