Well, a very quick post to say that I am still alive! It's been a busy semester of lecturing and researching, as well as a couple of trips back to Brisbane after my grandfather died unexpectedly a month ago. It has been good to have time with my family and reminded me of the value of taking time off... something I hope to do a bit more in the next month or so!
This weekend I am speaking about nineteenth-century evangelical women activists, to a meeting of Christians for Biblical Equality. I'm enjoying adding to my rather basic knowledge about a generation or two of women whom I admire enormously but who also left us with a rather problematic heritage.
Then I am off to England in a fortnight for a Charles Wesley extravaganza... it's a small conference celebrating the tercentenary of his birth, but the organisers have attracted some scholarly 'big hitters' as keynote speakers, including Mark Noll and Phyllis Mack. I am speaking about Wesley's hymns 'For Condemned Malefactors', which he wrote for those he visited in prison. I suspect mine will be one of the odder papers!
When I get back I am helping to run a day conference on 'Missions and Colonialism', which should be fantastic (if I say so myself!) - lots of new research and conversation about how missionaries furthered or resisted the British imperial project. To my mind, a very important question.
In the meantime, I have a couple of posts in mind. If I can steer clear of facebook for long enough, I will try to get them written!
2 comments:
I'm really sorry to hear about your grandfather, Jo. Death really sux.
I'm glad you seem really enthused about your work at the moment, though. The Wesley conf sounds great and the 'odd' papers are always the most interesting. Do Wesley's hymns for malefactors shed much light on evangelical attitudes to prison reform? or does he write a bit too early for that?
And no sympathy re the distractions of facebook. I refuse to sign up until my thesis is done! Having fallen for blogger, its the least I can do...
p.s. have you seen Amazing Grace? I'd love to read another one of your wilberforce rants :-)
Thanks, Meredith. It has been sad but also a time to reflect on what a great heritage my grandfather left us. He was an extraordinary man.
I am indeed trying to link Wesley's stuff on execution to penal reform - a long bow, but I think it's relevant! That's one of the posts I was thinking about writing. And I saw the first three quarters of Amazing Grace on a plane... feel like I can't really comment much until I see the last part!
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