Enfilade

2012 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference
San Antonio, Texas, 22-25 March 2012

Proposals due by 15 September 2011

The 2012 ASECS conference takes place in San Antonio, 22-25 March. Along with our annual luncheon and business meeting, HECAA will be represented by two panels chaired by Christopher Johns, Heidi Strobel, and Amber Ludwig and Melissa Hyde and Heidi Kraus. In addition to these, a wide selection of sessions that might be relevant for HECAA members are also included below. A full list of panels is available at the ASECS website.

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Exoticisms: Global Commodity Exchange in the Long Eighteenth Century (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture)

Christopher Johns, Heidi Strobel, and Amber Ludwig, for Strobel: Dept. of Archaeology and Art History, 1800 Lincoln Ave., U. of Evansville, Evansville, IN, 47722; Tel: (812) 746-9711; Fax: (812) 488-2430; E-mail: hs40@evansville.edu

Global commodity exchange radically altered European culture in the long eighteenth century. Exoticisms became fundamental to understanding colonization and routes of international exchange, as well as iconographic and stylistic transformations in the arts. Each paper proposal should define exoticism, its geographical parameters, and its unique and unfamiliar qualities. The role of material culture, decorative arts, and prints in defining and developing the idea(s) of exoticism(s) is of particular interest. Interdisciplinary approaches are welcome and encouraged.

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New Scholar’s Open Session (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture)

Melissa Hyde, University of Florida and Heidi Kraus, University of Iowa; Tel:  (Hyde) (352) 273 3057; E-mail: mhyde@ufl.edu AND heidiekraus@yahoo.com

This panel, sponsored by the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture, seeks papers that deal with any aspect of visual art and culture, or architecture. It is open to graduate students (priority will be given to those who are ABD) or who have received the Ph.D. in the past 5 years.

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Viral Communications and Multimedia of the Eighteenth-Century (Scholarship Panel Proposal of the Graduate Student Caucus)

Katharine Zimolzak; E-mail: zimolzak@usc.edu

This panel seeks to explore and understand the ways in which eighteenth-century media were produced, popularized, and preserved over time. Participants are asked to speculate on how and why certain texts, works, or histories endure in popular memory; such an examination might also clarify how and why certain media were more popular (or why certain texts were received more eagerly) than others. Some questions to consider: In what genres and forms were early viral communications presented? How did eighteenth century media events affect contemporaneous consumer markets? What social conditions of the century allowed the proliferation of multimedia? How was media consumption in the eighteenth century like or unlike that today? To what extent have eighteenth- century media events influenced our present notions of the era’s cultural, literary, political, or social histories? Presenters on this panel might address any number of media crucial to the fields of eighteenth-century studies, in disciplines such as art history, critical race theory, gender studies, history, British or American literature, or theater studies.

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After Exoticism (Roundtable) (Graduate Student Caucus)

Laura J. Rosenthal, English Dept., Tawes Hall, U. of Maryland, College Park 20742; Tel: (301)-405-1408; E-mail: lrosent1@umd.edu

The last twenty years have seen considerable interest in European global ambitions, as expressed in literature, art, history, etc. Scholars have become acutely aware of the ways in which representations of the “other” have helped advance the acceptance of imperial violence through orientalist, exoticism, and racialist expressions.  Is there, however, an even richer story yet to be told? Some very recent work, for example, has suggested that Britain’s own self-representations need to be reconsidered in light of the well-document power of China and the Ottoman Empire. Others have proposed ways in which literature and other forms of artistic production raise questions about, rather than reinforce imperialist impulses. For this panel, proposals should address some aspect of this conflict and engage new ways of thinking about the exotic and exoticism in this period. We welcome proposals from graduate students in any of the multiple disciplines that ASECS encompasses.

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Demystifying the Academic Journal (Roundtable) (Professionalization Panel Sponsored by the Graduate Student Caucus)

Nicholas E. Miller, Washington U. in St. Louis, 6109 Waterman Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63112; Tel: (314) 750-8185; E-mail: n.e.miller@wustl.edu

Bringing together scholars, editors, and readers with extensive publishing experience, this roundtable seeks to demystify the process of publishing in academic journals for graduate students and young scholars of the long eighteenth century. Participants will be asked to talk specifically about the nuts and bolts of publication in academic journals: process, timeline, planning, review, etc. Participants will also be asked to offer, more broadly, an assessment of the state of the field regarding publication in academic journals: the future of publication, trends in submissions, online publication, editorial philosophies, etc. Participants are asked to pitch their remarks primarily at graduate students, and are welcome to offer their thoughts on the role that academic journals (and publication) play in the professionalization of young scholars and as a gateway to careers in academia.

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The Cultural Life of Things: Material Culture in the Long Italian Eighteenth-Century (Italian Studies Caucus)

Irene Zanini-Cordi, Modern Languages and Linguistics, 303A Diffenbaugh Building, Florida State U., 625 U. Way, Tallahassee, FL; Tel: (850) 570-9047; Fax: (850) 644-0524; E-mail: izaninicordi@fsu.edu

Letters, books, paintings, fashion items, collections of minerals or archeological artifacts, gardens, buildings, and a myriad of other “things” that we encounter as treasured possessions or objects of desire in different expressions of eighteenth-century life, have a story to tell and, as Bill Brown points out in “Thing Theory,” should be part of a critical discourse. This panel aims at exploring how objects and commodities can be placed in a cultural and/or social perspective. Papers addressing how inanimate objects influenced issues of subjectivity, gender, sexuality, artistic and scientific knowledge, and “nationalism” in eighteenth-century Italy are welcome.

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Directing Light and Adjusting Outlooks: Mirrors, Lenses, Windows, Reflections, Refractions, Translucencies (South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies)

Kevin L. Cope, Dept. of English, Louisiana State U., Baton Rouge, Louisiana   70803; Tel: (225) 578 2864: Fax: (225) 751-3161; E-mail: jovialintelligence@cox.net or encope@lsu.edu

Whether in literature, art, philosophy, or science, long eighteenth-century culture abounds in light-transmitting or light-bending or otherwise light-adjusting technology. Some of this technology is taken for granted (for example, the ordinary window) yet is nevertheless repeatedly highlighted in novels or in genre paintings or even in descriptions of laboratory processes. The highlighting of light-transmitting objects stands in contrast to the objective of these tools, which, purportedly, is the commentary-free transmission of information. Light-transmitting objects also played formidable roles in not only practical science but in the imaginative representation of scientific activity, whether in Wright of Derby’s paintings or popular accounts of the Herschel telescopes. More delicate glass-enabled manipulations of light characterized such entertainment modalities as the eidophusikon or magic lantern. This panel will be the first to address the question of light manipulation directly rather than as a side-issue in miscellaneous arts and sciences. It will welcome papers from any discipline while drawing attention to the pervasiveness of this concern and this trope in a variety of pursuits.

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The Medical Gothic (Western Society for Eighteenth Century Studies)

Lisa Forman Cody, Dept. of History, Claremont McKenna College Claremont CA,  91711; Tel: (909) 621-8117; E-mail: lisa.cody@cmc.edu

This interdisciplinary panel will appeal to scholars in literature, history, history of medicine and science, philosophy, art history and museum studies. Possible topics would include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein of course, but also eighteenth-century anti-masturbatory texts that use gothic and romantic devices to capture the terror and danger of this sexual act. I would hope that historians of medicine and/or museum studies would be particularly interested in presenting work on the presentation and framing of dissection, anatomical displays, and medical practice. I intend to serve as chair of the panel and will urge scholars who use one of the great WSECS resources—the Dibner History of Science and the LACMA Medical materials at the Huntington Library to present a paper that highlights some of the Library’s extraordinary examples of “medical gothic.”

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Revisiting the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns  (Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies)

Timothy Erwin, Dept. of English, U. of Nevada, Las Vegas; Tel: (702) 895 3734; Fax: (702) 895-4801; E-mail: timothy.erwin@unlv.edu

Papers are invited on any aspect of the querelle des anciens et des modernes, whether in French or British studies and whether treating of cultural politics, literary criticism, the birth of aesthetics, or culture wars more generally.

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Innovative Course Design

ASECS, PO Box 7867, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC 27109; Tel: (336) 727-4694; E-mail: ASECS@wfu.edu

Proposals should be for a new approach to teaching a unit within a course on the eighteenth century, covering perhaps one to four weeks of instruction, or for an entire new course. For example, participants may offer a new approach to a specific work or theme, a comparison of two related works from different fields (music and history, art and theology), an interdisciplinary approach to a particular social or historical event, new uses of instructional technology (e.g., web sites, internet resources and activities), or a new course that has never been taught or has been taught only very recently for the first time. Participants are encourage to include why books and topics were selected and how they worked. Applicants should submit five (5) copies of a 3-5 page proposal (double-spaced) and should focus sharply on the leading ideas distinguishing the unit to be developed. Where relevant, a syllabus draft of the course should also be provided. Only submissions by ASECS members will be accepted. A $500 award will be presented to each of the participants, and they will be invited to submit a twelve-page account of the unit or course, with a syllabus or other supplementary materials for publication on the website.

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Disciplinary Approaches to Eighteenth-Century Material Culture (Roundtable)

Michael Yonan, U. of Missouri, Dept. of Art History and Archaeology, 09 Pickard Hall, Columbia, MO, 65203; Tel: (573)  884-7141; Fax: (573)  884-5269; E-mail: YonanM@missouri.edu

This round table shall examine disciplinary approaches to eighteenth-century material culture.  Scholars across the academy have turned their attention recently with great avidity to interpreting the social significance of objects, to things, and to the materiality of social life more broadly understood.  This inquiry has taken many forms, including “thing theory” in literature, new approaches to elite decorative arts, a sustained investigation of philosophical materialism, and a renewed interest histories of collecting and patronage, all of which take as their focus the importance of objects to understanding the social world.  Yet the examination of material culture assumes surprisingly different forms in different disciplines.  This round table seeks representatives of the major disciplines involved in eighteenth-century studies—art history, literary studies, history, philosophy, musicology—to discuss the role of objects in their scholarship.  Contributions can take the form of general methodological statements or case studies of specific objects, texts, historical phenomena, or concepts.

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Import/Export: Cultural Exchanges between France and its Neighbors

Heidi Bostic, Dept. of Modern Foreign Languages, Baylor U., One Bear Place #97391, Waco, TX 76798; Tel: (254) 710-4284; Fax (254) 710-3799; E-mail: Heidi_Bostic@baylor.edu

This seminar seeks papers dealing with any aspect of cultural exchange between France and other countries and/or cultures. How did the eighteenth century manifest cross-cultural transfers and interactions? What impact did these transfers and interactions have on French culture and society?

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The Aesthetics of Science and the Science of Aesthetics

Peter Messer, Dept. of History, P.O. Box H., Mississippi State U. Mississippi State, MS, 39762; Tel: (662) 325-7084; Fax: (662) 325-1139; E-mail: PMesser@history.msstate.edu

The long eighteenth-century was a dynamic period in the development of both science and aesthetics.  The two fields are usually seen as distinct—the first as the continuing legacy of the Enlightenment the second and the precursor to nineteenth-century Romanticism.  This distinction, however, has been overdrawn.  In some fields—particularly botany and natural history—authors borrowed freely from both the principles of aesthetics and enlightenment science.  The stakes in such borrowing were not trivial.  Authors used the language of both science and aesthetics to not only argue about those fields but to justify their visions of the appropriate social, political, and economic order.  The ability to successfully manipulate or even redefine these discourses, consequently, brought with it power to shape knowledge and the world that depended on that knowledge.  This panel proposes to examine that process by bringing into focus the ways in which authors combined the discourses of science and aesthetics, both within those fields and in other forms of writing, thinking, and arguing.

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Reading Eighteenth-Century Landscapes

Judith Broome, Dept. of English, William Paterson U. of New Jersey, 300 Pompton Rd., Wayne NJ 07470; Tel: (201) 253-9616; Fax: (201) 553 2312; E-mail: BROOMEJ1@WPUNJ.EDU

This panel will focus on “reading” eighteenth-century landscapes, both real and imagined, as they are represented in literature, art, travel narratives, or landscape theories.  Interpretation of these landscapes may take into consideration class and gender; European lenses through which colonial landscapes are written and imagined; the enjoyment of landscapes through a “Claude glass”; theories of the picturesque; the work of prominent landscape gardeners such as Capability Brown and others; literary landscapes, such as Julie’s Elysée in Rousseau’s La nouvelle Héloïse, the arrangement of space in Sarah Scott’s Milennium Hall, and Gothic landscapes; as well as the landscape paintings of Constable, Gainsborough, Canaletto, Fragonard, and others.

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Home Away from Home: Transient Artists in the Eighteenth Century

Christina K. Lindeman, 2509 W. Calle Genova, Tucson, AZ 85745; E-mail: clindeman@pima.edu

The thought of traveling long distances in the eighteenth century was considered dangerous and arduous; yet, so many artists did so to make a living.  This session seeks papers that explore the experiences and works produced by transient artists in courts, cities, and countries not their home and birthplace.  Topics to be explored could include but is not limited to: artists who worked outside their countries of origin but who otherwise didn’t move around much; artists that traveled for inspiration and erudition; and artists seeking employment and/ or academic appointment in countries not their birthplace.

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Cognitive Cultural Studies and the Long Eighteenth Century

Lisa Zunshine, Dept. of English, U. of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0027; Fax: (859) 323-1072; E-mail: lisa.zunshine@gmail.com

Continuing the series of ASECS panels on “cognitive approaches” (2005-2010) and exploring ways of integrating the new interdisciplinary field of cognitive cultural studies into eighteenth-century studies, this panel will feature specific applications of research in cognitive, evolutionary, and developmental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience to eighteenth-century literature and visual art. Of particular interest are papers that combine cognitive literary theory with other theoretical approaches, including but not limited to cultural historicism, narratology, aesthetics, and postcolonial studies. Please email as attachments an abstract (500 words) and curriculum vitae. For more information on the field of cognitive cultural studies, visit
http://www.as.uky.edu/academics/departments_programs/English/English/Faculty/Faculty/LisaZunshine/Pages/default.aspx and click the tab on the right.

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Queen Anne and the Arts

Cedric Reverand, Dept. of English, U. of Wyoming, Laramie, WY  82071; Tel: (307) 766-1121 (English Dept.); (307) 766-6298 (office); E-mail: reverand@uwyo.edu

Queen Anne has not attracted attention as a great patron of the arts. Yet during her reign, the arts flourished, often under her patronage. London’s musical scene was enriched by the influx of immigrant composers—Handel, Pepusch, and Galliard—who influenced and were influenced by native composers, such as Croft, Eccles, and Weldon. Italian opera found a home in London. Art and architecture flourished in the works of Kneller, Wren, Hawksmoor, and Vanbrugh. Kneller and Jervas painted portraits. Defoe and Swift produced political journalism; Addison and Steele launched their periodical essays; Pope published his early poems;Jane Barker subverted the genre of amatory fiction in Love Intrigues; and Anne Finch published her Miscellany Poems.   Papers and proposals should probe the condition of the arts during Anne’s reign and address artists’ connections with Queen Anne.

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Art and Life: Cultural Practices of Animation in the Eighteenth Century

Amelia Rauser, Dept. of Art and Art History, Franklin & Marshall College, PO Box 3003 Lancaster, PA 17604 3003; Tel: (717) 358-4659; Fax: (717) 358-4599; E-mail: amelia.rauser@fandm.edu

Attitudes, tableaux vivants, automatons, viewing sculptures by flickering candlelight—many cultural practices in the eighteenth century explored the boundary between static or illusionistic art and “life.”  Drawing on theories of vitalism, animation, and the persistent use of the myth of Pygmalion, such practices betrayed a hunger for passionate engagement with nature, art, and golden ages of the past, and a fascination with the substance of matter and the mysteries of life’s animating spark. This panel encourages proposals that describe and analyze such practices, as well as those that explore the philosophical, scientific, and aesthetic theories that contributed to such explorations, including those by thinkers such as Goethe, La Mettrie, Hegel, and Erasmus Darwin.

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Aesthetic Reception, Sensibility, and Social Engineering: Interrogating the Effects of the Work of Art in the Long Eighteenth Century

Julia Simon, Dept. of French and Italian, U. of California, Davis, One Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616; Tel: (530) 752-8573; Fax: (530) 752-8630;
E-mail:  jsimon@ucdavis.edu

What is the role of the work of art—painting, sculpture, music, novel, poetry, theatre—in the context of the Enlightenment desire for social change and progress?  How is aesthetic reception understood (before, up to and including Kant)? What is the role of sensibility? The passions? Rationality?  What possible effects can be expected, manipulated, engineered? In what respects can the aesthetic sphere be seen as an agent of social, political, ethical, or other types of change?  To what extent is the work of art conceived as rationalized (to borrow Max Weber’s term) in the eighteenth-century context?  Proposals from all disciplines welcome.

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The Culture of Dress and Ornament

William W. Clark, Queens College and Graduate Center, City U. of New York; 19 Edgehill Road, New Haven, Ct. 06511; Tel: (203) 773-1354; E-mail:
wwclark@comcast.net

Since Roche’s classic The Culture of Clothing, studies in the field of dress in the eighteenth century have moved from the general to the specific, including Styles’ Dress of the People and Pointon’s Brilliant Effects.  This session aims to explore problems revolving around the cultural significance of dress and adornment (both European and non-European) over the long eighteenth century from everyday life to court rituals and royal ceremonies, as well as in literature, in the theater,  and in the visual arts.  Topics might address issues of class, nationality, gender, occupation, and age.  Papers exploring the production, economics, social distribution of textiles, clothing, and all manner of accessories will also be welcome.

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Deep in the Art of Texas

Amy Freund, Texas Christian U., School of Art,  TCU Box 29800, Fort Worth, TX 76129; Tel: (817) 542-5862; E-mail: a.freund@tcu.edu

Texas is rich – and its riches include important collections of eighteenth-century art. This panel will bring together academics, curators, and conservators engaged in research on works of art in public and private Texas collections. The goals of the seminar are: 1) to introduce ASECS members to recent scholarship on often-understudied objects in Texas collections; and  2) to foster dialogue between academics and museum professionals, both in Texas and in the Americas more largely considered. The panel will thus build on recent art historical scholarship that bridges the divide between academic and museum practice to develop new ways of thinking about the materiality of the art object. It will also, because of the diversity of Texas’s collections, encourage participants and audience members to make connections between European, American, and Latin American objects, and to think concretely about the “global eighteenth century.” Participants will be asked to develop brief (8-10 minute) presentations on a single object or collection of objects. More and shorter papers will, I hope, create the conditions for lively discussion. Collections of interest include (but are certainly not limited to): the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Meadows Museum at SMU in Dallas, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, and the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin.

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Gendered Objects in the Long Eighteenth Century

Jennifer Germann AND Heidi Strobel, Germann, Dept. of Art History, Ithaca College, 953 Danby Road, Ithaca, NY 14850; Strobel, Dept. of Archaeology & Art History, U. of Evansville, 1800 Lincoln Avenue, Evansville, Indiana 47722; Tel: Germann: (607 274-1527; Strobel: (812) 746-9711; Fax: Germann: (607) 274-1774; Strobel: (812) 488-2430; E-mail: jgermann@ithaca.edu; hs40@evansville.edu

The study of material objects provides a significant entryway to understanding formations of gender in eighteenth-century Europe. Material goods and aesthetic objects, while at the center of lived experience, are often marginalized in academic inquiry. This panel will focus on the investigation of early modern conceptions of gender and identity in relation to those objects. Paper proposals should address some of the following questions: how does material culture contribute to the formation of gendered identity? How do objects, practices, and people become feminine or masculine, and what are the consequences of this type of gendering? How are relationships constructed and reinforced through objects? What role does the gendered object play in cultural exchange? Can gender itself be an object of a material cultural study? We particularly encourage interdisciplinary papers that address global objects and topics.

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Visualization and Eighteenth-Century Print Culture

Robin Valenza AND Mark Vareschi, 510 George St. New Brunswick, NJ 08901; Tel: (908) 420-1396 (Vareschi); (608) 233-1737 (Valenza); E-mail: valenza@wisc.edu AND vareschi@rci.rutgers.edu

We have tended to think of the study of print culture as synonymous with the study of the printed word. How, then, can we begin to think beyond, or in addition to, the printed word and to the entire realm of the visual within print culture? This panel seeks contributions that take up visualization and the visual, broadly conceived, within and across the printed texts of the eighteenth century. This could include period illustrations, ekphrastic writing, or digital approaches to analyzing the print explosion of the eighteenth century. We encourage submissions that focus on a broad sweep of eighteenth-century materials, that speak to the strengths and possibilities of incorporating visual information into our our study of printed matter.

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Life and Luxury: Material Culture and Decorative Arts

Denise Amy Baxter, Dept. of Art Education and Art History, College of Visual Arts and Design, 1155 Union Circle, #305100, Denton, TX 76203-5017; Tel: (805) 708-5275; Fax: (940) 565-4717; Email: denise.baxter@unt.edu

Given the opportunity of the Paris: Life and Luxury exhibition, originating at the Getty and on view at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston during the time of this annual meeting, what issues remain to be explored concerning life and luxury or, material culture and decorative arts? Recent scholarly concern has been paid to embodied practice and the use to which clothing and other forms of material cultural production have been put in what Mimi Hellman, for example, has termed the “work of leisure,” and how these objects themselves shaped eighteenth-century bodies and minds alike. This session seeks both to reflect and expand upon this discourse. Papers that consider the circulation and use of objects, that consider relationships between representation as and of objects, and those that reflect on the current trajectory of scholarly analysis and methodological approaches are especially sought.

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The British Grand Tour

Alison O’Byrne and Jim Watt, Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, U. of York, King’s Manor, Exhibition Square, York YO1 7EP, Great Britain; Tel: (+44) 01904 324992; Fax: (+44) 01904 324989; E-mail: alison.obyrne@york.ac.uk; jim.watt@york.ac.uk

These two panels will examine the development of tourism within Britain in the long eighteenth century from an interdisciplinary perspective.  Papers are invited that address any aspect of tourism in Britain in the period, including but not limited to the construction of tourist itineraries, aesthetic responses to the landscape, the relationship between tourism and literary and artistic production (both the traveler’s own, as well as topographical texts and prints aimed at tourists), and the role of domestic tourism in the foundation of the identity of modern Britain.

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Pompeii and Herculaneum in the Eighteenth Century

Julie-Anne Plax, 5610 E  7th Street, Tucson AZ 85711; Tel: (520) 745-9124; Fax: (520) 621-2955; E-mail: jplax@email.arizona.edu

This session invites papers that explore any aspect of the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum in the eighteenth century. This could include the excavations themselves and the growth of a scientific archaeology, new attitudes towards the classical past, influence on the arts, fashions and furnishing, an examination the objects that were found during excavations and their role in the antiquities market and the establishment of scientific societies, and literature inspired by Pompeii.