Domesticity in Odd Places (EC ASECS October 24-26, 2019, Gettysburg, PA)

The extent to which the culture of domesticity, so legible in the 19th century, pervaded that of the 18th, and whether or not the domestic occupied a discrete “sphere” has been much discussed. Central to emerging ideas of gender difference and the two-sex model, middle class values, cultures of early capitalism, and the paradigm of public vs. private spheres, the domestic names various relations, all of which are apparently tied to a physical space. If, as Marilyn Francus has demonstrated, central figures of domesticity were unnarratable because to give them narrative agency would negate their qualifications as “good” domestic agents (“good mothers”)--how might we understand domestic scenes that take place outside of the “home”? Taking up the term “divergence” from this year’s theme, this panel asks that we find the domestic in odd places. When do we find domestic tropes, or familiar domestic scenes, in decidedly extra-domestic (or anti-domestic) surroundings? When does the logic and affect of domesticity appear out of place? When does it appear in surroundings which seem to exist because of domesticity’s absence? This panel will consider proposals which discuss these ideas in a wide variety of cultural texts from the late 17th to early 19th centuries. 

Please send brief proposals to Emilee Durand (edurand@umd.edu) by June 10, 2019.

The 2019 meeting of the East Central/American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies will take place October 24-26 in Gettysburg, PA. See the conference website for more information.  https://ecasecs2019.wordpress.com/