cfp.english.upenn.edu

The Eighteenth Century in Criticism and Theory
A panel to be held at the BSECS annual conference, St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, January 3-5, 2013.

Proposals are invited for papers making up a panel to be held at the annual British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies conference in January 2013. The panel aims to address the relationship between the eighteenth century and the ways in which it has been represented in literary criticism and continental critical theory from the nineteenth century to the present time. Less an exercise in “applying” theoretical texts to eighteenth century ones, the panel seeks to examine what is at stake in how the period has been represented, analyzed, and otherwise deployed in those later writings.
Representative topics might include the analysis of the ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’ made by the Frankfurt School, the use of Rousseau in deconstruction, the eighteenth century as both ideal reading public and moment of irreparable “dissociation of sensibility” in F.R. and Q.D. Leavis, and the significant passing references to eighteenth-century texts by Mozart, Diderot, Buffon and others in Lacan.

Short proposals should be made to james.smith-2@manchester.ac.uk by September 23rd 2012, with decisions about inclusion in the panel to be made in good time ahead of the general conference deadline of September 30th.