Anne Brontë at 200: Exploring her Literary Works and (After)Life in Bonn

Tomorrow, January 17, the Anne Brontë bicentenary will be celebrated in different ways. The most scholar one will be a symposium to be celebrated in Bonn, Germany:

Anne Brontë at 200: Exploring her Literary Works and (After)Life
17-18 January 2020, University of Bonn
Lecture Hall XVII

January 17, 2020 marks the 200th birthday of Anne Brontë, the youngest of the Brontë siblings. While Anne has received increasing scholarly attention in recent decades, she remains overshadowed by her elder sisters in the popular imagination and is still frequently neglected even in studies of 'the Brontës' as a collective. Her life, though brief and quiet, was intensely productive, and her work has much to offer: unflinching realism, feminist politics, structural inventiveness, and a subtle sense of humour, amongst other qualities. To celebrate this fascinating writer, the IAAK (Institut für Anglistik, Amerikanistik und Keltologie) is hosting a two-day symposium on the occasion of her bicentennial. There will be talks by students and lecturers from Bonn as well as international guests. Everyone is welcome to drop in, listen, and discuss Anne Brontë's "works and (after)life"!

Friday, January 17
14.00 Introduction
Marion Gymnich (Bonn)
Panel I The World(s) of Childhood (Chair: Denise Burkhard)14.15 “The Secret Changes of my Soul / From Joy to Bitter Woe” – Anne Brontë’s Juvenilia as Speculative Fiction and an Adult Space for Self-Expression
Marthe-Siobhán Hecke (Bonn)
14.45 Spoilt Brats and Negligent Helicopter Parents in Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey and Joanne Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels
Stefanie Tegeler (Bonn)
15.15 “Is childhood then so all-divine?”: Representations of Childhood, Innocence and Romantic Imagery in the Poems of Anne Brontë
Ciara Glasscott (Galway, Ireland)
15.45 Coffee Break
Panel II Negotiating Space (Chair: Kathrin Zander)16.15 “She goes there to flirt with Mr Weston!” – Walking in Anne Brontë’s Agnes GreyJacqueline Kolditz (Bonn)
16.45 A Walk Through the Past: Anne Brontë’s Representation at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth
Monique Mauel (Bonn)
17.15 Gothicising the Victorian Sanctuary – Boundaries and Space in The Tenant of Wildfell HallPeri Sipahi (Bonn)

Saturday, January 18

Panel III Evils Great and Small (Chair: Marion Gymnich)9.00 “I’m such a brute, I know”: Representing Violence Onscreen – the 1996 Adaptation of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell HallClaire O’Callaghan (Loughborough University, UK)
9.30 “To Call Evil Good, and Good, Evil”: Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and the Idea of the Satanic
Marvin Reimann (Bonn)
10.00 “Provokingly Mindless”: Anne Brontë’s Lesser Girls and Women
Kathrin Zander (Bonn)
10.30 Coffee Break
Panel IV Feminist Interventions (Chair: Jacqueline Kolditz)11.00 “Marriage may change your circumstances for the better, but, in my private opinion, it is far more likely to produce a contrary result.” – The Subversion of Victorian Gender Norms in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell HallVera Bub (Bonn)
11.30 The Concept of “New Woman” in a “New World” of Parity in the Novels of Anne Brontë
Salia Rex (St. Paul’s College Kalamassery, India)
12.00 “Most Tender and Obliging”? – Female Lives and Histories in Anne Brontë's Agnes GreyEleanor Thieser (Bonn)
12.30 Lunch Break
Panel V Strategies for Independence (Chair: Kathrin Zander)14.00 Only Skin-Deep: Negotiations and Manipulations of Tactility in The Tenant of Wildfell HallNatasha Anderson (Mainz)
14.30 Art, Gender, Market: Anne Brontë, Virginia Woolf, and the (Post-)Victorian Künstlerroman
Tim Sommer (Heidelberg)
15.00 The Novels of Anne Brontë: Varieties of Autodiegetic Narrative
Uwe Baumann (Bonn)