CFP: Naming and Classifying

in the Long Eighteenth Century

Whereas “the nineteenth century can be seen as the century of counting and measuring,” the eighteenth century can be seen as the century of naming and classifying. Between 1550 and 1750, “Europe experienced an ‘information explosion,’” with “a typical scholarly library growing “by a factor of fifty.” Organizing all this new information became an impetus for classification and re-classification. As Enlightenment philosophers and explorers sought to expand their knowledge both at home and abroad, they uncovered abundant pluralities of worlds, many of which did not fit neatly into prior philosophical or moral understanding. New discoveries regularly challenged presumptions about the material world and humanity’s place within it. Naming and classifying were means by which Enlightenment era pioneers could manage new knowledge, accommodating it to and organizing it within broadly accepted organizational systems and structures of understanding. Moreover, they allowed philosophers and explorers to order nature (both human and nonhuman) and, in many cases, to assert a kind of ownership of and even mastery over the pluralities of worlds they encountered.

As international exploration fueled by the Transatlantic slave trade and commercial bioprospecting brought increasing numbers of new specimens back to Europe, these systems of naming and classifying were regularly put to the test. Naturalists and philosophers needed to reconcile exotic specimens with systems of understanding built on domestic flora and fauna. European ways of naming nature conflicted with Black, Indigenous, and even traditional or “folk” or “vulgar” ways of understanding the relationship between humans and the natural world. Naming and classifying, in this way, were tools of empire.

In addition to naming and classifying “natural knowledge,” the historical Enlightenment witnessed large-scale attempts to systematize all knowledge in pursuit of grand ideas of complete knowledge. In turn, virtually every type of writing—from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society to the political pamphlet and the novel—was up for re-organization and re-classification. The broad categories of literature, culture, and natural philosophy themselves underwent radical generic change. Even when names remained stable, re-classification provoked definitional and epistemological shifts, affecting how knowledge was transmitted and perceived. 

We are searching for contributions that tackle this thorny issue of naming and classifying in the long eighteenth century. Potential themes might include:

• Expressions of naming and classifying in literature

• Intersections between naming/classifying and race and/or nationality

• Intersections between naming/classifying and gender and/or sexuality

• Intersections between naming/classifying and and empire/nation-building

• Naming/classifying and the exotic (plant, animal, human)

• Conflicts between different philosophical or technical approaches to naming and classifying (e.g., Linnaeus vs Lamarck)

• Social dimensions of naming and classifying

• Naming through metaphor and analogy

• Encyclopedism 

• Knowledge organization

• Methodological disputes within and beyond the Royal Society

• Satirical treatment of naming or classifying conventions

Please send a 500-word abstract via email to Kristin Girten (Kgirten@unomaha.edu), Aaron Hanlon (arhanlon@colby.edu), and Katie Sagal (asagal@cornellcollege.edu). The accepted essays will be part of a volume that has been solicited by Routledge. 

Deadline for Submission: 10/31/25

(Cover image: Thomas Martyn, “Garden Pea,” Thirty-eight plates, with explanations, intended to illustrate Linnaeus's system of vegetables : and particularly adapted to the Letters on the elements of botany [1788])