Enfilade

Call for Papers: Forms of Life in the Eighteenth Century
Indiana University, Bloomington — Eighteenth-Century Workshop, 12-14 May 2010

Proposals due by 8 January 2010

The Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Indiana University is pleased to announce the ninth Bloomington Eighteenth-Century Workshop, to be held on May 12-14, 2010. The workshop is part of a series of annual interdisciplinary events that has been running since 2002, with 12-15 scholars presenting and discussing papers on a broad topic in a congenial setting. Our topic for 2010 is “The Forms of Life.”  We’d like to consider the implications of the eighteenth-century debate about the nature of life and the turn to vitalist proposals of an animating force, broadening beyond the discourses of physiology and the natural sciences, where many of these ideas originate, to consider their connections elsewhere in the period. Why does the idea of a life force emerge (or re-emerge) at this moment? How are living forms distinguished from each other? What sorts of decisions create the hierarchies of animate forms (and, for instance, what gets called “animal”)? Which lives matter and which don’t? How might we reconsider eighteenth-century answers to these questions in light of twenty-first-century rethinking of life and animality? How is the line drawn distinguishing the living and the non-living, animate being and thing? Participants might also consider the implications of contemporary thinking about life for the discourse of political economy, in its treatment of populations, masses, collective life and the role of hunger in history and also for developments in the religious sphere. One might also turn to the numerous Pygmalionic fantasies of animation in art and criticism, from “tableaux vivants,” illuminated statuary, life-like automata and still lives to critical pronouncements on the living body as the highest achievement of true art. (more…)

Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society
Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ, 24-27 June 2010

Proposals Due by 15 December 2009

The Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society (ECSSS) is seeking proposals for 20-minute papers or complete panels for its annual conference, which will be held at the Princeton Theological Seminary from 24-27 June 2010. This year’s topic is Reid, Cullen and Smith: The Science of Mind and Body in the Scottish Enlightenment; but, as always, the society is happy to receive proposals on all things pertaining to the Scottish eighteenth century, even if they don’t directly address the conference theme. Please send abstracts for papers or complete panels by December 15, 2009 to Richard Sher by email (rbsher6@gmail.com) or by mail to the address following:

Richard B. Sher
Exec. Secretary, ECSSS
New Jersey Institute of Technology
University Heights
Newark, NJ 07102-1982 USA

Please note the following CFP for the Rudé seminar in 2010. As a member of the organising committee, I am interested in increasing the number of art historical and visual culture papers at the conference. There is always some participation from scholars in the field, but it would be good to have more. I encourage colleagues working on French topics to submit proposals. If you would like more information, please write to me.

Julie Plax
jplax@email.arizona.edu

17th George Rudé Seminar in French History and Civilization
University of Sydney, 14-16 July 2010

Proposals due by 1 December 2009

Every two years, the George Rudé Seminar brings together specialists in French history and other areas of French studies from Australia and New Zealand with colleagues from around the world for a major conference.  A selection of papers from the biannual conferences is now published in peer-reviewed format on H-France. The 2010 Rudé Seminar will be held at the University of Sydney. Among the featured guests will be Professor Olivier Wieviorka from the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Cachan), author of numerous works on twentieth-century French history. The general theme of the 2010 Seminar is History and Memory. However, paper proposals are invited on any area of French history, or on subjects in other areas of French studies with an historical perspective.  In general, speakers will have twenty minutes for delivery, and papers may be presented in either English or French. If speakers are interested in their papers being considered for publication, they should be ready to submit a complete version of their texts (of 8000 words maximum) at the time of the conference.

The registration form with payment details and other information can be downloaded here. This is the second call for papers.  Proposals should include a tentative title, a one-paragraph summary of the paper, a one-paragraph biographical note on the speaker and full contact details.  They should be addressed by 1 December 2009 to: rude.2010@usyd.edu.au. Please also send your contact details if you would like to be put on the mailing list. The organising committee for the Rudé Seminar includes Robert Aldrich, Liz Rechniewski, Jennifer Milam, Julie-Anne Plax, Briony Neilson, Margaret Sankey, Glenda Sluga, and Bronwyn Winter.

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

I am putting together a volume of essays devoted to the subject of single-artist, thematic, and single-object exhibitions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, organized and displayed outside of academic jurisdiction. It is tentatively called Alternative Venues. Essays will explore the functions, meanings, organizational and visual structures, and/or successes/failures of artists’ solo shows (e.g., Courbet’s Pavilion of Realism), exhibitions of thematically unified work (e.g., Fuseli’s Milton Gallery), and displays of single art objects (e.g., David’s Intervention of the Sabine Women). It is my hope that the collection as a whole will highlight the innovation and modernity of such exhibitions, while perhaps setting their motivations and functions into relief against similar displays in the contemporary art world. Essays dealing with landmark exhibitions in the first half of the twentieth century will also be considered for inclusion.

Publishing interest has already been expressed by a very reputable press, famed for such volumes of art historical essays. Please send a CV and 3-5 page abstract by October 15, 2009 to Andrew Graciano, Department of Art, University of South Carolina, 1615 Senate Street, Columbia, SC 29208 USA or by email at graciano@sc.edu.

-Andrew Graciano

Raynal’s Histoire philosophique des deux Indes: Colonial Writing, Cultural Exchange and Social Networks in the Age of the Enlightenment
Newnham College, Cambridge, 1-3 July 2010

The year 2009 will see the publication of  the first volumes of the new critical edition of Raynal’s Histoire philosophique des deux Indes by the Centre international d’étude du XVIIIe siècle of Ferney-Voltaire — the first volume of the text and the Tableaux, atlas et cartes.  For eighteenth-century scholars this is a landmark event. After a long period of neglect, there has been a remarkable explosion of interest in Raynal, and the new edition — the first complete one since 1820 — will be welcomed by researchers across a wide range of disciplines working in the fields of colonial history, Enlightenment studies, the history of ideas, literary history and book history.

The nineteen books of the Histoire, which chart a philosophical and political history of European colonial trade and settlements, were hugely influential.  Translated into many other European languages, they helped popularise and shape anti-colonial and abolitionist discourse even while they served to inform colonial administrators and to reflect on intra-European rivalries. Substantially revised and augmented over a period of ten years, Raynal’s project was a vast undertaking in which he drew on multiple resources, placing the Histoire at the centre of a complex and extensive network of writers, politicians, administrators, scientists and other thinkers on the one hand, and, on the other, at the confluence of countless texts concerning the history of European colonies and travel writing, written over several centuries in different times and spaces, and from often very different professional and ideological positions.

Focussing on the twin concepts of exchange and networks, understood from textual, cultural and social perspectives, this conference seeks to explore Raynal’s Histoire within the multiple circuits of communication that simultaneously shape the colonial world, its modes of sociability and its literature. The conference aims to bring current areas of  investigation from various disciplines across the Humanities and Social Sciences into dialogue: historical and sociological approaches to sociability and its role in knowledge formation; recent work in English and Modern Languages on what have variously been described as textual migrations and intercultural transfer; book history and bibliography and the material dimensions of the text’s production and reception; work from literary, musical and art history on collaborative enterprises such as ateliers and editorial and authorial teams and their role in producing hybrid and collective works. The twin concepts of exchange and networks, as well as being central to the concerns of Raynal’s Histoire philosophique des deux Indes, are matters of contemporary interest in all of these disciplines. (more…)

Correspondence: Travel, Writing, and Literatures of Exploration, c. 1750-c. 1850
University of Edinburgh and National Library of Scotland, 7-10 April 2010

Proposals Due by October 1

The University of Edinburgh (Institute of Geography and Centre for the History of the Book), in collaboration with the National Library of Scotland, is pleased to announce Correspondence: travel, writing, and literatures of exploration, c. 1750–c.1850–a four-day, interdisciplinary conference concerned with travel, travel writing, and the associated literatures of exploration. (more…)