This session aims to focus attention on a segment of the English population that is often ignored or treated simplistically in scholarship on our period: the English Catholic community. Recent research by Gabriel Glickman, Alison Shell, and several other scholars has demonstrated that the Catholic community was active politically, socially, and artistically throughout the eighteenth century. This panel seeks papers from historians, art historians, literature scholars, and religion scholars on any subject related to the political or social activities or cultural productions of eighteenth-century English Catholics. Papers exploring anti-Catholicism that are carefully contextualized within the historical circumstances of the English Catholic community will also be considered.

This session will take place at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA, March 31-April 3. Proposals must be received by Sept. 15, 2015.