Calendar


ASTENE Calendar 2011 - 2013 ASTENE Events Organiser Dr Patricia Usick: events@astene.org.uk Overseas Events Organiser Elisabeth Woodthorpe: 020 7622 3694 As usual we ask members to suggest future activities that they would be interested in attending and / or helping to organise. At present we try to have a Study Day each year, plus one or two 'behind the scenes' visits related to ASTENE's areas of interest. Recent Study Days included in Oxford in July 2010, on the subject 'Travellers to the Monasteries of the Levant'. In the past we have been 'behind the scenes' in the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the library at All Souls College and the Griffith Institute, both in Oxford, and to the Royal Geographical Society. We have also looked at Orientalist art in Birmingham, at Nile travel in Manchester, and at a range of subjects and travellers (including Irby and Mangles) in Exeter. Biennial conferences have been held in Durham, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Manchester and Southampton. ASTENE also organises a tour abroad every two years. So far we have travelled to Islamic and early Christian Cairo; to Cyprus, both north and south; through Syria; in 2009 up the Nile on a dahabeeyah and last year a tour of Greece and Albania following in the footsteps of Byron and Leake. On each tour we hold a short conference of some half-dozen papers by the ASTENE participants and local members. One idea for the future is a tour to Alexandria, with a visit to Siwa and the Eastern Desert. We would like to consider proposals for activities in other areas and welcome all ideas. Please send suggestions to the Bulletin Editor who will pass them on appropriately. Study days are open to non-members and our Biennial Conference is open to everyone, but our participants will be expected to join the Association.
2013 Tenth Biennial ASTENE Conference The Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENEE) will hold its next biennial conference in 2013 at Aston University Birmingham, UK. The Conference registration and bursary application forms will be posted nearer to the time. Conference Bursaries There are normally four bursaries available to members of ASTENE (and students joining ASTENE). A bursary covers full conference costs, but not travel. Recipients should offer a paper and will have roles in the conference organisation (registration, technical support to papers, etc).
2012 ASTENE Annual General Meeting The next Annual General Meeting will take place in the Summer of 2012. Members will all be advised in good time. 2012 ASTENE Annual Study Day The next ASTENE Study Day will be in April 2012 at Rewley House in Oxford, UK. It will be organised by ASTENE Honorary Vice-President Malcolm J Wagstaff on Sunday 29 April 2012. The subject covered during the day will be 'Travellers on Pilgramage'. Further information will be published nearer the time on how to book. 2012 ASTENE Summer Visit to Ireland An ASTENE Summer visit has been suggested for late July / early August to Ireland. For planning purposes it would be useful to have some level of interest from Members. Possible visits will be to The Chester Beatty Library, Castle Coole and Borris House. Please let us know by emailing the Bulletin Editor if you would be interested in attending, or have any ideas or suggestions for visits. 2013 ASTENE Spring Tour of Jordan Jordan has been suggested as the destination for the next ASTENE tour in Spring 2013. We would fly to Amman and visit, amongst others, the key sites of Jerash, the fortress of Kerak and the Dead Sea, with a two day visit to Petra. Please let us know by emailing the Bulletin Editor if you would be interested in attending. Past ASTENE Events Astene Spring Event - 8 February 2011 Travellers' drawings from the Eastern Mediterranean This was a unique opportunity for ASTENE members to see highlights of the British Museum's extensive collection of drawings recording objects and sites of Classical antiquity. The drawings are mostly by British artists – or foreign artists working for British patrons. The topographical drawings, part of a collection of some 6000 works on paper, range in date from the sixteenth century to the present day. Curators Ian Jenkins and Thomas Kiely kindly agreed to talk about the significance of the collection in itself and for their work. The Mellon Curator of the British Museum's Greek and Roman drawings, Celest Farge, currently cataloguing the drawings for the Museum's online database, also demonstrated this new and valuable research resource. 2010 Astene Study Days In 2010 Study days were held at the University of Oxford's Department of Continuing Education, Rewley House, Oxford. The first Study Day - Near Eastern Monasteries and Western Travellers - was on Saturday, 3 July 2010, at Rewley House, 1 Wellington Square, Oxford. Travellers from Western Europe to the Near East frequently visited monasteries. Many simply found them convenient places to stay. Others hoped they would discover manuscripts of both Biblical and Classical texts. What did they actually find? How were they received? What were the monks like and what was the state of the spiritual life? How did the travellers react to forms of Christian worship and theology different from their own? Director of Studies: Professor Malcolm J Wagstaff Contributors: Lucy Pollard, Dr Emma Loosley, Nicholas al-Jeloo, Dr Sebastian Brock, Dr Anthony O'Mahony The second Study Day - Byron's journeys to Greece - was held on Saturday, 27 November 2010, at Rewley House, 1 Wellington Square, Oxford. Past ASTENE Biennial Conferences The Association holds a full conference once every two years and a day conference combined with the Annual General Meeting in alternate years. The conferences provide an excellent forum for the exchange of research ideas and information. Subject groups can arrange, in consultation with the conference organiser, their own sessions within the conference period. 2011 Ninth Biennial ASTENE Conference St. Anne's College, Oxford 15 to 18 July 2011 Astene's last biennial conference was held at St. Anne's College, Oxford. The Conference continued to explore the impact of travellers – of Egypt and the Near East, Turkey, the Ottoman Balkans and Greece, from earliest times to the middle of the twentieth century. Please view a downloadable PDF of the final programme. 2009 Eighth Biennial ASTENE Conference Durham University 10 to 13 July 2009 Please view the final conference programme giving a full list of Papers and Events, as a downloadable PDF. 2007 Seventh Biennial ASTENE Conference Southampton 2007 2005 Sixth Biennial ASTENE Conference Manchester 14 to 8 July 2005 Please view full details of the Conference; as well as the papers presented. 2003 Fifth Biennial ASTENE Conference Worcester College, Oxford 11 to 14 July 2003 Please view full details of the Conference and the list of papers presented. 2001 Fourth Biennial ASTENE Conference Pollock halls, University of Edinburgh 11 to 15 July 2001 Please view full details of the Conference and the list of papers presented. 1999 Third Biennial ASTENE Conference Newnham College, Cambridge 15 to 18 July 1999 Details of the Conference programme are published in Bulletin No.8. 1997 Second Biennial ASTENE Conference St Catherine's College, Oxford Summer 1997 In July, 1997 the decision to formalise ASTENE was taken at the Second Biennial Conference on Travellers in Egypt and the Near East, held at St Catherine' s College, Oxford. The programme introduced the 'Descendants' Evening', to which descendants of the travellers are invited to meet people who are doing research on their forebears. On that occasion the descendants included those of Charles Irby, Joseph Bonomi, Linant de Bellefonds, Nathaniel Pearce and Mohammed Ali. 1995 First ASTENE Conference The Oriental Museum, Durham Summer 1995
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