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Queens Consort and their Cultural Opportunities and Achievements

Exeter College, Oxford

15-18 April 2015, Oxford

UPDATE: This event has already happened. Click here to read the Conference Report.

Aims: The focus here will be on the impact which consorts had on their new courts and the extent to which they were active agents of cultural transfer or mere instruments or catalysts. A major aim of the workshop will be to consider if any common patterns and trends can be discerned between the experiences of different consorts and to outline what this tells us about political culture and gender relations at court more broadly.

Exeter College
Turl Street
Oxford
OX1 3DP
United Kingdom
Phone: 
+44 (0)1865 279600
Fax: 
+44 (0)1865 279645

Workshop Programme

Wednesday 15th April 2015

17.00Public Lecture: Taylor Institution Room 2
Maureen Cassidy-Geiger (Dora Maar/Brown Foundation Fellow, Menerbes, France):
Gender, Dynasty and the Politics of Porcelain: the Fact and Impact of Meissen Gifts to Sweden, Naples, Vienna and Paris, 1732-50

Buffet supper and drinks in the Rector’s Lodgings, Exeter College

Thursday 16th April 2015: Cultural Opportunities

9.00-10.30Constructing an Image
Anna-Marie Linnell (Exeter University) - The Construction of British Queenship in Succession Texts
Adam Morton (Newcastle University) – Majesty through Bad Images: Catherine of Braganza and the Withdrawal of the Restoration Monarchy
10.30-11.00Coffee break
11.00-12.30Marriages Good and Bad
Britta Kägler (LMU Munich) - Brides, consorts and their foreign households in Munich: cultural transfer between success and tension
Tracey Sowerby (Oxford University) – The Cultural Agency of Henry VIII’s Foreign Queens
12.30-14.00Lunch break
14.00-15.30Marital Cultural Partnerships
Katrin Keller (Vienna University) - Princess and prince as working couple: Court culture in Dresden in the second half of the sixteenth century
Andrew Barclay (History of Parliament) - Mary of Modena: the Queen in the Shadows?
15.30-16.00Coffee break
16.30-17.30Widowhood
Almut Bues (DHI, Warsaw) - Cultural Opportunities for Widows - The Example of Zofia Jagiellonska
David Parrott (Oxford University) - Anne of Austria: changing fortunes of a Queen Regent and Queen Mother, 1643-1666

Friday 17th April 2015: Cultural Achievements

9.00-10.30Art and Architecture
Catharine MacLeod (National Portrait Gallery) – Facing Europe: the portraiture of Anne of Denmark
Jacqueline van Gent (UWA, Australia) - Orange-Nassau women and their collections and displays of exotic objects as forms of dynastic power
10.30-11.00Coffee break
11.00-12.30Science and Learning
Margherita Palumbo - The Book Collection of the Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover
Emma Jay (National Archives, UK) – Philosopher-queens: the libraries of Caroline of Ansbach (1683-1737) and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744-1818)
12.30-14.00Lunch break
14.00-15.30Dance and Music
Sara Smart (Exeter University, UK) – Sophie Charlotte of Brandenburg-Preussen: Monarchic Design and Cultural Opportunity
Barbara Przybyszewska-Jarminska (Institute of Arts and Sciences, Warsaw) – Habsburg Queens of Poland and music at the Polish royal court at the end of 16th and in the 17th century
15.30-16.00Coffee break
16.00-17.30Meeting of scholars of Poland with members of the Oxford Jagiellonian Project
17.30-18.00Music for Consorts, Exeter College Chapel
Maria Skiba (soprano), David Allen (organ)
18.00Drinks and supper in Exeter College Dining Hall

Saturday 18th April 2015

09.00-12.00Team Meeting Marrying Cultures Project
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