From its inception, the Graduate Caucus of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies has hosted a luncheon and organized panels of professional and scholarly interest to our members and the larger community. This is a very partial list of Caucus-organized panels--if you have any information about missing or incomplete information, please do contact the Chair or Co-Chair.

Official Caucus Panels at ASECS

2009 - Richmond

• Beginnings and Endings: Locating Boundaries, Crises, and Turning Points in the (Very Long) Eighteenth-Century
  Chair: Emily C. Friedman
  Dan Gustafson, Marjorie Foley, John Traver, and Katharine Zimolzak presented exciting new research from a variety of disciplinary perspectives on the ethics, politics, and utility of boundaries within and around the eighteenth century.
• Roundtable on Finding Money
  Chair: Caroline Wigginton
  Featuring fellowship administrators Carol Brobeck (The Folger Library), Lisa Ford (The Yale Center for British Art), and Robert C. Ritchie (The Huntington Library), as well as recipients of fellowships and other funding David Brewer (The Ohio State University) (link to remarks here) and Brad Pasanek (University of Virginia), this roundtable offered a variety of advice about finding financial support for research and the scholarly life, and about being competitive and creative in the search for money.

2008 - Portland

• “Roundtable on Publishing” Forum
  Chair: Crystal Lake, University of Missouri
  • Linda Bree, University of Cambridge Press
  • David A. Brewer, Ohio State University (link to remarks here)
  • Ann Donahue, Ashgate Publishing
  • Scott Paul Gordon, Lehigh University Press
  • Robert Markley, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  • Marjorie Mather, Broadview Press
• “Has the Local Gone Global? Regionalisms and the Wide Eighteenth Century”
  Studies in transatlanticism, globalism, and cosmopolitanism are changing the face of eighteenth-century studies and making the period as “wide” as it is “long.” These studies, which are frequently interdisciplinary in nature, challenge our traditional ways of reading and even what we read. The wide eighteenth-century continues to both rouse controversy and forge new, insightful methodologies for scholarship. This panel invited papers that investigate aspects of the global eighteenth century. How has the “global” eighteenth-century shifted our understanding of eighteenth-century texts and culture? Additionally, we sought papers that complicate such a wide paradigm. What value remains in investigating the regional, local, and/or provisional? What have we gained and what have we lost with the widening of the period?
  Chair: Caroline Wigginton, University of Texas, Austin
  • Beccie Puneet Randhawa, University of British Columbia, “Lismahago’s American Project: The History of Place in Smollett’s Humphry Clinker”
  • Olivera Jokic, University of Michigan, “Commanding Correspondence: The Letterbook of John Bruce, the East India Company Historiographer”
  • Karen Hiles, Columbia University, “Haydn’s ‘Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser’: The Composer as Architect of Imperial Unity”
  • Neven Leddy, University of Oxford, “Importing the Enlightenment?: The Adventures of a Genevan Undergraduate in Eighteenth-Century Britain"

2007 - Atlanta

• “The Eighteenth Century and the Life and Death of Theory"
  The sentiment that “theory is dead” has become commonplace; it seems as if everyone is debating about whether theory is either about to die, has died, or will never die. Significantly, the long eighteenth century itself has often figured importantly in theoretical texts as a crucial turning point for Marxists, Feminists, Postcolonialists, and others. This panel invited papers that address the life and death of theory specifically with regards to eighteenth-century studies that investigate the following, or similar, questions: How have eighteenth-century texts been theoretically rendered and how has the study of the eighteenth-century contributed to emerging (or declining) theoretical perspectives? What theoretical insights can eighteenth-century texts and studies still offer? In short: how has theory shaped the eighteenth century? How has the eighteenth-century shaped theory?
  Chair: Crystal Lake
  • David M. Palumbo, Emmanuel College, "Alive in Death: Theory in the Eighteenth Century"
  • Zak Watson, University of Missouri-Columbia, "Enthusiasm and the Limits of Reason"
  • Courtney Weiss, Washington University, "McKeon's Bootstraps: Representing History in Theory and Situating Theory in History"
• “Publishing” (Roundtable)
  This roundtable panel featured editors of various eighteenth-century-oriented journals who dispensed advice to graduate students and junior scholars about publishing.
  Chair: Crystal Lake
  
  • Tita Chico, Co-Editor, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, University of Maryland
  • Devoney Loosey, Co-Editor, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, University of Missouri-Columbia
  • Jack Lynch, Editor, The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual, Rutgers University
  • Cedric D. Reverand II, Editor, Eighteenth-Century Life, University of Wyoming

2006 - Montreal

• "Graduate Student Caucus Roundtable"
  • Jonathan Kramnick, Rutgers University
  • Sue Howard, Duquesne University
  • Jennifer M. Watson, University of Texas at Austin

2005 - Las Vegas

• "Employed? Employed!: New Scholars Speak" (Roundtable)
  • Emily Hodgson Anderson, University of Southern California
  • Jason Gieger, California State University, Sacremento
  • Jennifer Frangos, Texas Tech University
  • Christopher J. Lukasik, Boston University

2004 - Boston

• "Enlightenment, Religion, and Violence" (Roundtable)
  • Lori Branch, University of Iowa
  • Anne Barbeau Gardiner, City University of New York
  • Jeremy Gregory, University of Manchester

2003 - Los Angeles

2002 - Colorado Springs

2001 - New Orleans

2000 - Philadelphia

1999 - Milwaukee

1998 - South Bend

1997 - Nashville

1996 - Austin

1995 - Tucson

• Life as an Eighteenth-Century Scholar
  organized by Leigh Anna Eicke (then English at University of Maryland)
  
• "Historical Perspectives: Literature & the Politics of Representing the Past"
  organized by Allen W. Grove (University of Pennsylvania)

1994 - Charleston

1993 - Providence

• An informal panel "Getting a Job in Today's Market (if your Specialty is 18th-Century Studies)"
  • Robert Markley (then English Department Placement Director at the University of Washington)
  • Deborah Payne (then of American University)
  • Alex Pettit (then a "new" Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Texas)
  • Jay Tribby (then Assistant Professor of History, University of Florida

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Page Updated July 27, 2009