Enfilade

The Eighteenth-Century Seminar at the Newberry Library is designed to foster research and inquiry across the scholarly disciplines. It aims to provide a methodologically diverse forum for work that engages our ongoing discussions and debates along this historical and critical terrain. The spring program includes the following presentations:

Saturday, 6 March 2010, 2-4 pm
Bernadette Fort (Northwestern University)
“Female Royalty and Women Painters in the Late Ancien Régime”

Focusing on reviews of the exhibitions of the Royal Academy in the late 1780s and in particular on portraits of female royal figures by E. Vigée Le Brun and A. Labille-Guiard, this talk examines the intersection of gender, aesthetics, and politics in the cultural realm on the eve of the French Revolution. It argues that art criticism of the period represents an important discursive site in which the issue of female representation in the political and visual fields was fiercely debated.

Saturday, 17 April 2010, 2-4 pm
Misty Anderson (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
“Methodistical Sisters and The New Man: Fielding Among the Methodists”

The tabloid-ready tale of “Mrs. Mary, otherwise Mr. George Hamilton,” who married several women while passing as a man, appeared in Boddley’s Bath Journal of November 8, 1746, and in a slew of London and regional newspapers shortly thereafter. This work-in-progress paper examines Henry Fielding’s use of Methodism in The Female Husband to explain the origin of Hamilton’s same sex desire. Instead of standing in the place of religious law, Methodism (to its critics) functioned as a sexuality, a set of practices that excited and transformed the individual into the “new man” through an experience of divine intimacy. Focusing on the Hamilton case, this talk considers the relationship between evangelicalism and gender scripts as they were written into mid-eighteenth century discourses of sex and spirituality.

Attendance at all events is free and open to the public, but participants are asked to register in advance by contacting the Center for Renaissance Studies at: renaissance@newberry.org. A reception will follow each presentation.