NEASECS (Northeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies) 2006; Nov. 9-12, 2006; Salem, Massachusetts.
CFP deadline: Apr. 15, 2006

Panel title: "Colonialism and Knowledge-Making in Eighteenth-Century Europe"

Eighteenth-century colonial expansion gave birth to, enabled, and systematized several European bodies of knowledge: encounters with non-European populations gave rise to large-scale classifications of race in European scientific discourse; a vast and growing body of travel writing produced ethnographies and encyclopedic treatises on peoples and cultures of the globe; scientific exploration abroad aided the development of European natural science.

This panel will explore the workings of these knowledge systems, their intersections with European cultural, literary and artistic production, and their relationship to the larger project of European colonialism. Possible paper topics may include, but are not limited to:

-- the influence of travel writing, colonial ethnography, and natural science on Enlightenment and Romantic aesthetic and cultural production
-- connections between scientific and literary/artistic discourses of colonialism
-- tensions between European epistemologies and indigenous forms of knowledge
-- representations of race and race relations in eighteenth-century writings
-- the complicities and conflicts between knowledge-seekers (philologists, anthropologists, scientists, etc.) and the architects of European colonial expansion (merchants, religious missionaries, colonial administrators, etc.)
-- the influence of the pursuit of knowledge overseas on political thought and practices in the metropole
Please send one-page paper proposals by April 15, 2006 to Pratima Prasad at pratima.prasad_at_umb.edu

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Received on Wed Mar 15 2006 - 08:29:54 EST