Encounters, Affinities, Legacies: The Eighteenth Century in the Present Day
28th – 29th June 2013
Call for Papers
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As the field of eighteenth century studies continues to boom within the academy, the eighteenth century
– invoked around names like Rousseau, Voltaire, and Adam Smith – is becoming an increasingly
frequent interlocutor in contemporary debates in the international media about society, democracy,
human rights, and the economy. Whilst social and political commentators are reading our present in
dialogue with our eighteenth-century past, cultural appetites for the eighteenth century on page, stage,
and screen continue to grow: powerful suggestions that intertwined discourses like (E)nlightenment
and modernity, central to so much eighteenth- and twentieth-century thought, remain vital to the social,
political and cultural construction of our contemporary moment. This interdisciplinary conference
seeks to explore the complex webs of interconnection between the long eighteenth century and the
‘long’ twentieth century, from 1900 to the present.
Keynote Speakers:
Professor Donna Landry, University of Kent
Professor Markman Ellis, Queen Mary, University of London
Festival of Public Engagement:
The conference will take place at the heart of a festival of public engagement events including public
lectures, fashion, music, performance, and photography. Any proposals for involvement in the festival
would also be received with interest, and should be emailed to Adam Perchard at agkp500@york.ac.uk
by the end of January 2013.
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The conference organisers welcome submissions for presentations in the following formats:
- Pre-formed panels, approximately one-hour in length. Panels can contain two, three or exceptionally
four speakers, and should identify an appropriate panel chair. We particularly encourage
interdisciplinary panels.
- Individual papers, approximately 20 minutes in length.
We welcome presentations in original and innovative formats, such as interactive demonstrations,
Q&A/debating sessions, or exhibitions. These should be no longer than 30 minutes per contributor.
Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- intertexts/intersects: engagements between eighteenth- and twentieth-century texts, images,
and performances
- the eighteenth century on the twentieth-century stage, page and screen
- nostalgia and rejection: twentieth-century historiographies of the eighteenth century
- global centuries: (post-)empire, race, and cosmopolitanisms
- legacies and disconnects: constructing and reforming society
- print culture and satire: resistance, radicalism, and freedom of speech
- ‘the rise of the novel’: literary grand narratives
- place and space: architecture between centuries
- Romantic Modernisms/Modern Romanticisms
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Panel submissions: Please send a 250-300 word abstract for each paper in the panel, along with a
panel overview of 300 words, explaining how the individual papers relate to one another. Include the
name and contact details for your chair, as well as each of the contributors.
Individual paper submissions: Please send a 250-300 word abstract outlining your paper. Include
your name and contact details.
Alternative format submissions: Please send a 300-350 word outline of your presentation, outlining
the content and format. Where presentations are made by more than one contributor, longer proposals
will be considered. Include the names and contact details of all contributors.
Please send abstracts to encounters.2013@gmail.com by no later than 1st March 2013