Please join the Religious Studies Program for our first brownbag event of the 2025-2026 academic year, “Women’s Piety and Coded Writing: The Case of Anne Halkett (c. 1623 – 1699)”! In this talk, Professor Karen Britland (RS Core Faculty) will present material from her most recent book Women Writing in a Time of War, 1642-1689, published earlier this year by Oxford University Press.
Abstract: Anne Halkett (née Murray) worked as a royalist agent during the British civil wars and their aftermath (1642-60). Most notably, she was instrumental in helping the young Prince James escape from prison in England and flee to France. She later wrote a memoir of her life in which she deployed secret writing techniques (influenced by Catholic equivocation and strategies of verbal obfuscation) to represent her political activities during the wars. Paying attention to the way Halkett trained her readers to read between the lines of her narrative allows us to see, not only how her activities as an agent influenced her literary writing, but also how her religious beliefs conditioned the way she behaved and presented herself.
Date: Friday, September 26th, 2025
Time: 12:15pm
Location: Room 202/204 (2nd Floor Conference Room), Bradley Memorial Building
Street Address: 1225 Linden Drive, Madison, Wisconsin 53706
This event is open to all! Please share widely with any interested students, faculty, staff, or community members. Save the date for our other brown-bag talks happening on October 24th and November 7th!