This peer-reviewed volume will discuss the focus on displacement, both external and internal, in texts of the long eighteenth century (1660-1815). 

External displacement can be considered as an individual’s or a population’s forced/coerced transfer from a particular location due to war or political conflicts, land development, natural disaster, economic opportunities/exploitations, or the redrawing of national boundaries. Such displacement might include

• the enslavement of African peoples,
• the movement of agricultural laborers from rural to urban areas,
• the transportation of convicts,
• migrations to and from colonial territories,
• and the flight of refugees from Continental wars.

Representations of displacement might also include individuals’ experience of absence from a place of origin and the portrayal of a place in the absence of the people or things that give it meaning, value, or significance. 

Internal displacement might include the social and psychological processes by which identity and selfhood are forced and coerced. 

We welcome papers examining the experience of displacement in literary texts, the cultural discourses that create and sustain displacement, and portrayals of displacement in visual materials.

If this invitation interests you, please send us a brief proposal (about 350 words) and a current curriculum vitae; final essays should run about 6,000-8,000 words in length. Please also contact us if you have any questions about the collection (zionkows@ohio.edu; cynthia.klekar@wmich.edu). We thank you in advance for your consideration; please submit proposals by September 1, 2019.  We will respond to contributors on or before December 1 and will expect the first draft of essays by June 1, 2020.