What: 13th Annual Historic Houses of Ireland Conference 15-16 May 2015

‘Indoors and Outdoors, Public and Private: Women and the Country House’

Call for Papers

This international conference will focus on the role of women in country houses and on landed estates in Ireland, the UK, and beyond.  Chatelaines, daughters, widows, housekeepers, maids, farmers’ and labourers’ wives, and others were ever-present figures in the microcosm of the country house and estate.  In the past decade research has begun to reveal the extent of their involvement in managing households and estates, adopting public roles, championing causes, as well as raising families, and committing their thoughts to paper.

Papers are invited from academics and independent scholars on any aspect of this topic, which might include but are not restricted to:

• Motherhood and Families

• Material Culture and Patronage of the Arts

• Politics, Piety, and Philanthropy

• Servants, Tenants, and Ordinary Lives

• Life Writing

• Gentry and Elite Women

• Gardens, Land, and Estates

• Courtship and Marriage

• Divorce, Inheritance, Law, and Money

• Dynasties and Clans

• The Reach of Empire and Women Overseas

Abstracts of no more than 400 words should be sent before 30 November 2014, to:

Professor Terence Dooley, terence.a.dooley@nuim.ie and Professor Christopher Ridgway,cridgway@castlehoward.co.uk

Held in collaboration with the Office of Public Works, the Yorkshire Country House Partnership, and the Institute for the Study of Welsh Estates, Bangor University.