Enfilade

Call for Submissions: Historiography in the Enlightenment
Proposals due by 15 December 2009

This work will be an account of Enlightenment historical writing with particular attention to its philosophical and political significance.  The work has been commissioned by Brill (Leiden) for its series on historiography (Historiography in the Middle Ages has already appeared; volumes on historiography in the Renaissance and the Early-modern period are forthcoming). We project a work of around fifteen 20-30-page chapters. Around half the chapters will be devoted to central figures, while the other half will be devoted to themes.

Authors are invited to submit proposals for chapters on any of the following writers: Gibbon, Hume, Robertson, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Herder, and Vico. Authors are equally invited to submit proposals for chapters on the following themes:

• Enlightenment self-understanding as a historical period
• Biblical criticism
• ‘Historicism’ and its relationship to Enlightenment
• The political deployment of the ancients
• Natural law and history
• Stadial theories of history
• History in national contexts (a survey)

Proposals for chapters on themes or authors other than those listed are also welcome. The work will be a survey of some central uses of history during the Enlightenment, with particular attention to the political significance of historiography. Our intention is neither to have a dry, encyclopaedic tome, nor to have a pastiche of unrelated articles, but rather to offer a coherent volume of articles contributing original argument on a sufficiently general level so as to accessible to non-specialists and graduate students but also of sufficient originality to be compelling for specialists.

Chapter proposals should contain an abstract of 200-250 words. Authors are also requested to submit a C.V. The deadline for the submission of proposals is 15 December 2009. Authors will then be selected. The book will be published in English, but submissions in German or French are also welcome (we will provide translations).

Dr. Robert Sparling
School of Political Studies
University of Ottawa
rsparlin@uottawa.ca