Enfilade

Joint Meeting of CSECS, NEASECS, and the Aphra Behn Society
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, 27–29 October 2011

‘The Immaterial Eighteenth Century’

Proposals due by 31 January 2011

In response to the sustained scholarly focus on the material aspects of eighteenth-century culture, the core concern of this interdisciplinary, bilingual (English and French) conference will be reactions to instability in the material realm, including but not limited to the emergence of an affective public sphere, a revaluation of labour, cosmopolitanism, sensibility, the new spiritualism, political radicalism and rights discourse, supernaturalism and the rise of the gothic, and anti-slavery and anti-imperial movements.  Papers on these and any topics related to the material and the immaterial in the period will be welcomed.  Panels dedicated to new theoretical models are particularly encouraged: looking beyond “thing theory” and “interiority,” enquiries that have dominated the field for the last decade, what approaches can raise the ethical and political stakes in the study of eighteenth-century literature and culture? Session and paper proposals should be emailed directly to Peter Walmsley (walmsley@mcmaster.ca) or Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins (zjenkin@mcmaster.ca).