Newsletter No. 34 (2009:1)
Sheffield, 28 January 2009
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
The first month of the year has been extremely busy as we are preparing a range of research applications and publications for submission and I want to apologize if it has been more difficult than usual to communicate with the centre. Unfortunately this situation will not improve significantly during February as I am on official paternity leave between February 4-18, in connection with the (hopefully unproblematic) birth of a new member of the Önnerfors family. February will also see the beginning of our public activities.
Best wishes,
Andreas Önnerfors, Director
Dorothe Sommer, Coordinator
Robert Collis, Research Fellow
1) NB! January 29: Free web session on ContentDM Databases
As a matter of urgency we would like to advertise this very interesting event taking place TOMORROW. We hope that there will be a large interest in this fascinating project, as matters of digitisation are on the desk of many Masonic and fraternal organizations.
The George Washington Masonic Memorial Association, in partnership with OCLC, is offering a web session to all interested Freemasons on 29 January to learn about the ContentDM Database. The database currently contains over 100 years of records relating to the Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Washington State', seven years from the Grand Lodge of Oklahoma and 93 years of records from the George Washington Masonic Memorial Association annual reports.
To browse these collection click here:
To register for the Thursday 29 January (2:00 -3:00 pm Eastern) session click here:
The Masonic digitisation project is open to all members of the Memorial Association and to all other Masonic organisations. Any participating Grand Lodge may first periodically determine the number of volumes it wishes to digitise. In response the Memorial and OCLC determines the cost of the volumes, and upon approval, ships the volumes to the OCLC’s processing centre. Within a matter of weeks the digitised proceedings are available to the Grand Lodge through a private and secure website. Once the process is complete, the Grand Lodge will receive a master archive copy of their proceedings in TIFF format. The basic cost for this process will be $0.69 per page, plus $6.95 to unbind each volume. For example a hard-bound proceeding of 1,000 pages would cost $696.50.
With ContentDM the Memorial Association is uniquely placed to coordinate the voluntary and systematic digitisation of American Masonic history. Through this service Freemasons will be better able to communicate among themselves, educate brethren and articulate their history, aims and achievements to the digital world.
2) February 16: launch of our films series
On Monday February 16 we are launching our spring film screenings on movies with a connection to freemasonry, with the public screening of Ingmar Bergman’s The Magic Flute (1975 see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Flute_(1975_film)). The screening will be followed by a panel discussion chaired by Professor Andrew Linn and will also include Professor James Stevens Curl, Professor Malcolm Davies, Dr Claire Thomson and Dr Andrew Pink.
Place: The Showroom Cinema (www.showroom.org.uk/) Paternoster Row, Sheffield S1 2BX (the cinema is located very close to the main railway station in Sheffield).
Time: The Screening starts at 5pm
3) March 5: Launch of the Spring Lecture Series on Freemasonry and Fraternalism in Eastern Europe
The CRFF is pleased to announce details of the forthcoming spring lecture series on Freemasonry and Fraternalism in Eastern Europe. The series will begin on Thursday 5th March, with a talk by Dr. Robert Collis, who is currently an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow here at the centre. His paper is entitled Hewing the Rough Stone: Masonic Influence in Peter the Great’s Russia, 1689-1725. The second lecture will take place on Thursday 19th March and will be given by Professor Tatiana Artemyeva (Herzen State University, St. Petersburg), a leading expert on eighteenth-century Russian history, who will talk on the fascinating subject of Utopian Spaces of Russian Masons.
The third lecture of the series will take place on Thursday 26th March and we are pleased to announce that Dr. Ernest Zitser (Duke University, USA), one of the pre-eminent scholars of Petrine Russia, will deliver his first lecture in England, entitled The Petrine Round Table: Chivalry, Travesty, and Fraternalism at the Court of Peter the Great. We are also pleased to welcome back Robert Cooper, the Curator of the Library of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, who will talk on Scottish Freemasons in St. Petersburg between 1784-1794 on Thursday 30th April.
Mattias Nowak (Lund University) will deliver the fifth lecture on Thursday 14th May, which will be entitled Freemasonry, Catholicism and Polish National Identity- a historical overview. We are honoured that the sixth lecture, on Thursday 21st May, will be given by Professor Anthony Cross (Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge), who is arguably the leading scholar on eighteenth-century Russia in the English-speaking world. Professor Cross will talk on Anglo-Masonic links during the reign of Catherine the Great. The final lecture will be given by Dr. Natalie Bayer (Trinity University,Texas), who recently defended her doctoral thesis, entitled “Spreading the Light”: European Freemasonry and Russia in the Eighteenth Century, under the supervision of Professor Margaret Jacob at Rice University (Texas).
NB: Lectures 1-5 and 7 will begin at 17.15 in the conference room of the Humanities Research Institute, 34 Gell Street, S3 7QY. Light refreshments will follow. Please note, however, that Lecture 6 (by Anthony Cross on 21st May) will take place at 17.15 in the new Jessop West Building, Room G.01A, which is situated directly opposite the Humanities Research Institute.
4) Preliminary Programme and Registration for the Second ICHF Edinburgh 29 May – 31 May
The “Preliminary Programme and Registration for the ICHF” has now been printed and awaits distribution. The pdf-files can be downloaded on our website as well as on the website of the conference organisers
5) Italian donation towards the Centre
In recognition of the centre’s efforts for research pursued in the area of freemasonry, the Regular Grand Lodge of Italy has taken the decision to award a substantial donation towards the centre. On top of that donation it has also confirmed that a grant will be made available in order to support postgraduate research carried out in the field of the history of Italian freemasonry. The donation will be presented officially at the occasion of the Second ICHF in Edinburgh.
6) Publication of Autumn Lecture Series
We are in the process of gathering and editing the papers from our autumn lecture series and by March 2009 we will be able to present our first edited volume in the Working Paper Series titled “Freemasonry and Fraternalism in the Middle East” (Ed. Dorothe Sommer). Details on the price and mode of distribution will follow in our next newsletter.
7) Press coverage
The centre was presented in a large article in the current issue of Freemasonry Today (47) Winter 2008/09, a short version is available online at www.freemasonrytoday.com/47/p14.php.
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