Past Clifford Lecturers & Plenary Speakers
1982 - Present

James L. Clifford Lecturers

1984    Donald Johnson Greene, "Samuel Johnson After Two Centuries"

1986    Norman Thrower, Simon Schaffer, and G.S. Rousseau, "Halley and His Comet"

1987    Ralph Cohen, "Replacing Critical Furniture: Mirrors, Lamps, Pictures, etc."

1988    Patricia Meyer Spacks, "Energies of Mind: Plot's Possibilities in the 1790's"

1989    Robert Darnton, "The Literary Revolution of 1789"

1990    Barbara Maria Stafford, "Physiognomics as Corporeal Connoiseurship"

1991    Georges May, "Travelers from Elsewhere"

1992    Claude Rawson, "'Existence is a Covert Operation': From the Garment of Style to the Sans-Culottes"

1993    Eugene V. Genovese, "The Intellectual Foundations of Southern Republicanism: The Slaveholders' Contribution to the Constitution"

1994    Peter Holland, "David Garrick: 3dly, as an Author"

1995    Michael McKeon, "Surveying the Frontier of Culture: Pastoralism in Eighteenth-Century England"

1996    Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, "Divine Art/Infernal Machine: The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Printing Press"

1997    Earl Miner, "A Voyage to Laputa and Japan; or, Conceiving an Eighteenth Century"

1998    Margaret Anne Doody, "Death and the Novel"

1999    Lynn Hunt, "The Psycho-Cultural Origins of Human Rights"

2000    Walter Rex, "Notable Contrarieties in the French Enlightenment: Bayle, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot"

2001    Thomas Crow, "Chardin and Fragonard: the Career of the Brush
in Eighteenth-Century France"

2002    Susan Staves, " Rhetorics, Problems, and Solutions in the Literary History of Women's Writing"

2003    None - met jointly with International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

2004    Pierre Saint-Amand, "The Pursuit of Laziness: Idleness and the Philosophes"

2005    Robert Levin, “ Redeeming Mozart’s Vow: The Unfinished Mass in C minor, K.427, and a New Completion”

2006    Isobel Grundy, "Eighteenth-Century Women and the Digital Turn"

2007    Lawrence Klein, "The Decline of Politeness and the End of the Eighteenth Century"

2008    Howard D. Weinbrot, “The Thirtieth of January Sermon: Swift, Johnson, Sterne, and the Evolution of Culture”

2009    Mary Sheriff, “The King, the Trickster, and the Gorgon Head: On the Illusion of Rococo Art”

2010    Ruth Hill, “Race and the Atlantic Divide”

Plenary Session II - Peter Boerner, Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Indiana University-Bloomington, "'Nations Evolve and Behave Like People': Goethe Looks at European Cultures"

Plenary Session III - Sylvia Frey (Commentator), Tulane University, Discussion will follow a viewing of the BBC film, "Culloden"

Presidential Address - Earl Miner (Welcoming Address)

14th Annual Meeting
April 6-9, 1983 ~ New York, NY

Plenary Session I - Authenticity and Connoisseurship in Eighteenth-Century Music and Art
Barry Brook, Graduate School, CUNY, "Authenticity, Piracy, and Forgery in Eighteenth-Century Music"
Sir John W. Pope, Hennessy, Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Truth and Falsehood"

Plenary Session II - Revolution
Gary Wills, Northwestern University, "The Revolution of 1788"
Peter Mathias, Oxford University, "The Industrial Revolution: Economic Time and Political Time"

Plenary Session III - Theoretical Frameworks for Studying the Augustans
Irvin Ehrenpreis, University of Virginia, "The Wholeness of History: Social Theory and Literacy Criticism"
Roger Lonsdale, Oxford University, "Does Eighteenth-Century Poetry Have a History?"

Presidential Address - Roger Hahn, University of California-Berkeley

                                                        15th Annual Meeting
                                       April 26-29, 1984 ~ Boston, Massachusetts

Plenary Session I - Pauline Maier, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Conspiracy and Suppression in Eighteenth-Century New York"
Ronald Paulson, Yale University, "English Iconoclasm in the Eighteenth Century"

Plenary Session II - Michael Steinberg, San Francisco Symphony, "Haydn's Handel and Mozart's Bach"
Marilyn Butler, Oxford University, "New Writers and the Quest for Legitimacy"

Plenary Session III - Dennis Diderot and Samuel Johnson
Aram Vartanian, University of Virginia, "Diderot and the Technology of Life"

Presidential Address - Jean Perkins, Swarthmore College, "The First Fifteen Years of ASECS"

The James L. Clifford Memorial Lecture - Donald J. Greene, University of Southern California, "Samuel Johnson after Two Centuries"

Plenary Session II - George Clarke, Stowe School, "How Tall the Grass Grew in the Elysian Fields: Problems of Research and Reconstruction in the Gardens of Stowe"

Plenary Session III - Margaret A. Doody, Princeton University, "'Those Eyes are made so Killing': Eighteenth-Century Murderesses and the Law"
Jay Macpherson, University of Toronto, "The Dreadful Archive and the Invisible Hand"

Plenary Session IV - Michel Baridon, Universite de Dijon, "Historicism, Local Colour and the Development of Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics"
Domokos Kosary, Institute d'Etudes historiques, Budapest, "Unity and diversity in the Enlightenment: The Case of Hungary"

Plenary Session V - F. Kenneth Hare, University of Toronto, "George Hadley, F.R.S.: An Enduring Eighteenth-Century Innovator"
Walter Moser, Universite de Montreal, "Buffon: exegete entre theologie et geologie"

Presidential Address - Harry C. Payne, Colgate University, "The Task of Eighteenth-Century Studies"

Plenary Session VI - Women in the Eighteenth-Century: The New Scholarship
Barbara Brandon Schnorrenberg, Birmingham, Alabama, "British and American Women's History"
Ruth Perry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Literature and Women's Studies"
Naomi Griffiths, Carleton University, "Women and Canadian Literature and History"
Harriet Applewhite, South Connecticut State University, and Darline Gay Levy, New York University, "Women and French History"

James L. Clifford Lecturers - Halley and his Comet
Norman Thrower, Director of the Clark Library, UCLA, "Halley: the Man, his Life, his Scientific Achievement"
Simon Schaffer, University Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University, "The Significance of Halley's Comet"
G.S. Rousseau, Clark Library Professor, UCLA, "Halley's Comet and Scriblerian Satire"

Plenary Session III - Goya & Piranesi
John Wilton Ely, Dept. of History of Art, University of Hull, "The Art of Polemic: Piranesi and the Graeco-Roman Controversy"
Barbara Maria Stafford, Professor of Art History, University of Maryland, "Visible Darkness: Goya and the Art of Improper Thought"

Plenary Session IV - Constitution & Rights
William Nelson, New York University School of Law, "The Eighteenth-Century Constitution as a Basis for Protecting Personal Rights"
Robert C. Palmer, Institute of Bill of Rights Law, Marshall-Wythe School of Law College of William & Mary, "Liberties as Constitutional Provisions, 1776-1791"

Presidential Address - Gita May, Dept. of French & Romance Philology, Columbia University

Plenary Session II - A Foundation of Freedom: The U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in Pre-Revolutionary France
John P. Kaminski, University of Wisconsin-Madison, "The U.S. Constitution: A Product of 18th-Century Theory and Practice"
Iring Fetscher, Universitat Frankfurt, "The Reception of the Declaration of Independence in Pre-Revolutionary France"

Plenary Session III - Donald Posner, New York University, "Madame de Pompadour as a Patron of the Arts"
Shirley Strum Kenny, Queens College, CUNY, "The Playhouse and the Printing-House"

Presidential Address - Ronald Paulson, Johns Hopkins University

James L. Clifford Lecture - Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia, "Replacing Critical Furniture: Mirrors, Lamps, Pictures, etc."

James L. Clifford Lecture - Patricia Meyer Spacks, Yale University, "Energies of Mind: Plot's Possibilities in the 1790's"

Plenary Session III - Stanley N. Katz, President, ACLS, "Constitutional Equality in Revolutionary America and France"

Plenary Session IV - French Literature and Criticism
Gita May, Columbia University, "Diderot and the Aesthetics of the Sublime"
Aram Vartanian, University of Virginia, "Derrida, Rousseau, and the Difference"

Presidential Address - Gloria Flaherty, University of Illionois-Chicago

Plenary Session I - Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Administrateur General de la Bibliotheque Nationale, "The Bibliotheque Nationale - Concepts for a French National Library"

Plenary Session II - "Northrop Frye and the Literature of Process Reconsidered"
Howard W. Weinbrot, Ricardo Quintana Professor of English, The University of Wisconsin-Madison
William F. Vilas, Professor, College of Letters and Science, The University of Wisconsin-Madison

Plenary Session III - Nicholas Spitzer, Folklorist, Office of Folklike Programs, Smithsonian Institution, "Eighteenth-Century Life and Twentieth-Century Folklife: The Tradition of Creolization on the French Gulf Coast"

James L. Clifford Lecture - Robert Darnton, Shelby Cullom Davis Professor Director, Program in European Cultural Studies, Princeton University, "The Literacy Revolution of 1789"

Plenary Lecture II - Marie-Hélène Huet, Amherst College, "Margins of Reason: The Power of Imagination in Eighteenth-Century Medical Philosophy"

Plenary Lecture III - Marcus Rediker, Georgetown University, "The Maritime Frontier of Freedom: Sailors, Slaves, and the Underground Railroad by Sea in the Eighteenth Century"

Presidential Address - Paul Alkon, Bing Professor of English, University of Southern California

James L. Clifford Lecture - Barbara Stafford, University of Chicago, "Physiognomics as Corporeal Connoiseurship"

Plenary Lecture I - Wye J. Allanbrook, St. John's College, Annapolis, "'All'usanza teatrale': Mozart and Representation"

Plenary Lecture II - Laura Brown, Cornell University, "Africans and Amazons: Gender, Race, and Empirein Daniel Defoe"

James L. Clifford Lecture - Georges May, Yale University, "Travelers from Elsewhere"

Plenary Lecture IV - Roy Porter, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London
"Medicine, Culture, Enlightenment: Some Revisions"

Plenary Lecture II - Catherine Gallagher, University of California, Berkeley, "Nobody's Story: Gender, Property, and the Rise of the Novel"

James L. Clifford Lecture - Claude Rawson, Yale University, "'Existence is a Covert Operation': From the Garment of Style to the Sans-Culottes"

Presidential Address - Jane Perry-Camp, Florida State University, "Play-Time and Progress: When to Say When, How to Say Now, and the Eternal Mozart"

Plenary Lecture II - Ralph Cohen, Kenan Professor of English, University of Virginia,
"Renewing the Eighteenth Century"

James L. Clifford Lecture - Eugene D. Genovese, Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, University Center in Georgia, "The Intellectual Foundations of Southern Republicanism:
The Slaveholders' Contribution to the Constitution"

Presidential Address - Paula Backscheider, Auburn University, "The Cavalier Woman"

Plenary Lecture II - Margaret Jacob, New School for Social Research, "The Mental Landscape of the Public Sphere: A European Perspective"

James L. Clifford Lecture - Peter Holland, Director in Studies in English, Trinity Hall, Cambridge University, United Kingdom, "David Garrick: 3dly, as an Author"

Presidential Address - Lawrence Stone, Princeton University, "Twenty-Five Years of English Social History: A Retrospect"

Plenary Lecture II - Mary D. Sheriff, Hohen Chair of Art, 1994-95, The University of Memphis; Associate Professor, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Co-Editor of Eighteenth-Century Studies, "Letters: Painted/Penned/Purloined"

James L. Clifford Lecture - Michael McKeon, Professor of English, Rutgers University
"Surveying the Frontier of Culture: Pastoralism in Eighteenth-Century England"

Plenary Lecture IV - Ramon Gutiérrez, Professor of History and Ethnic Studies and
Chair, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego, "The Indian Witches of New Mexico: Shattering the Cultural Boundaries of the Body Politic"

Presidential Forum - Ronald C. Rosbottom, Amherst College, "What Does It Mean to Be Disciplined?"

Plenary Lecture II - Research Opportunities for Eighteenth-Century Scholars at the
University of Texas at Austin-Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
Participants:
John Thomas, Rare Book Librarian, HRHRC
Alexander Pettit, Dept. of English, University of North Texas
Laura Gutierrez-Witt, Head Librarian, Benson Latin American Collection

Presidential Forum - Barbara Stafford, William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago, "The Public Duties of Our Profession"

Plenary Lecture II - Peter Reill, Director, Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies,
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles
"Vitalizing Nature and Naturalizing the Humanities in the Late Eighteenth Century"

Presidential Forum - "As Others See Us: Institutional Perspective on Interdisciplinarity"
J. Paul Hunter, Barbara E. and Richard J. Franke Professor and Director of the
Chicago Humanities Institute, University of Chicago, presiding
Keith Baker, Director of the Stanford Humanities Center
Shirley Strum Kenny, President, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Harriet Zuckerman, Vice-President, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New York

Getty Center Forum - "Getty Forum on the Challenges to Learned Societies and Relations of Intellectuals and Their Publics"
Barbara Stafford, William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago, presiding
Stephen Benton, Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Peter Lyman, University Librarian, Univ. of California at Berkeley (videotaped)
Roger Malina, Executive Editor, Leonardo
Gregory Ulmer, English Dept., University of Florida at Gainesville

Plenary Lecturer I - J.G.A. Pocock, Johns Hopkins University, "The Tell-Tale Article: Reconstructing (. . .) Enlightenment"

Plenary Lecturer II - Daniel Heartz, University of California-Berkeley, "Haydn, Mozart, and Free Masonry: In Celebration of The Creation"

Plenary Lecturer III - Roy Porter, The Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine
"An English Enlightenment"

Presidential Address - Margaret C. Jacob, University of Pennsylvania, "The Populist Origins of the Enlightenment"

Plenary Lecturer I - Donald Posner, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, "The Visual Arts and the Civilizing Process in Eighteenth-Century Europe"

Plenary Lecturer II - Martin Battestin, University of Virginia, "Historical Criticism and the Question of Contemporaneity"

Presidential Address - Carol Blum, State University of New York-Stony Brook, "Celibacy in Eighteenth-Century France: 'Sacrifice to God' or 'Scourge of Nations'?"

31st Annual Meeting
April 12-16, 2000 - Philadelphia, PA

Plenary - Adam Potkay, College of William and Mary and Vincent Carretta, University of Maryland, "Writers of the Black Atlantic"

Presidential Address - Ruth Perry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Home Economics"

(Clifford) Plenary - Walter E. Rex, "Notable Contrarieties in the French Enlightenment: Bayle, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot"

Plenary - Robert Ferguson, Columbia University and Jay Fliegelman, Stanford University
"The American Enlightenment: A Dialogue Over Current Directions"

32nd Annual Meeting
April 19-22, 2001 - New Orleans, LA

(Clifford) Plenary - Thomas Crow, Getty Research Institute, "Chardin and Fragonard: The Career of the Brush in Eighteenth-Century France"

Presidential Address - Keith Baker, Stanford University, "Saturn's Offspring: On the Political Languages of the French Revolution"

Plenary - Dena Goodman, University of Michigan; Toby Ditz, Johns Hopkins University; Madelyn Gutwirth, University of Pennsylvania; Susan Lanser, University of Maryland
"The View from Here: Problems and Possibilities in Eighteenth-Century Women's
and Gender Studies" (Roundtable)

ASECS/BSECS Lecturer - Amanda Vickery,

33nd Annual Meeting
April 4-7, 2002 - Colorado Springs, CO

(Clifford) Plenary - Susan Staves, Brandeis University, " Rhetorics, Problems, and Solutions in the Literary History of Women's Writing"

Presidential Address - Daniel Brewer, University of Minnesota, "Lights in Space"

Plenary - J. Paul Hunter, University of Virginia, "The Work of J. Paul Hunter

ASECS/BSECS Lecturer - David Fairer, University of Leeds, "Organic Matters: Georgic and Gothic in Eighteenth-Century Britian"

34th Annual Meeting
August 3-10, 2003, Los Angeles, CA
(Held in conjunction with the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies)

35th Annual Meeting
March 24-28, 2004 Boston, MA

(Clifford) Plenary- Pierre Saint-Amand, Brown University, "The Pursuit of Laziness: Idleness and the Philosophes"

(Presidential) Plenary- Joan Landes, Pennsylvania State University,  “Enlightened Bodies”

Plenary – Madelyn Gutwirth, West Chester University of Pennsylvania,  “The Work and Method of Madelyn Gutwirth” (Sponsored by the Women’s Caucus of ASECS in Celebration of its 30th Anniversary)

36th Annual Meeting
March 31-April 2, 2005, Las Vegas, NV

(Clifford) Robert Levin, Harvard University, “Redeeming Mozart’s Vow: The Unfinished Mass in C minor, K.427, and a New Completion”

(Presidential) Margaret Anne Doody, University of Notre Dame, “Play, Time, Chance, Games: The Eighteenth Century Revealed”

(Plenary) Wole Soyinka, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Keynote Address

(Plenary) Colin Jones, University of Warwick, “French Dentists and English Teeth in the Long Eighteenth Century”

(Plenary) Robert Folkenflik, University of California-Irvine, “Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure and the Literary Culture of Eighteenth-Century Britain”

37th Annual Meeting
March 30-April 2, 2006, Montreal, Quebec

(Clifford) Isobel Grundy, "Eighteenth-Century Women and the Digital Turn"

(Presidential) Sarah Maza, Northwestern University, " Interdisciplinarity: Beyond the For-orAgainst Debate"

38th Annual Meeting
March 22-25, 2007, Atlanta, GA

(Clifford) Lawrence Klein, "The Decline of Politeness and the End of the Eighteenth Century"

(Presidential) Felicity Nussbaum, "The Arabian Nights in the Eighteenth Century: Other Empires, Other Slaves"

39th Annual Meeting
March 27-30, 2008, Portland, OR

(Clifford) Howard Weinbrot, "The Thirtieth of January Sermon: Swift, Johnson, Sterne, and the Evolution of Culture

(Presidential) Bernadette Fort, "Arresting the Gaze: Greuze's Self-Portraits"

40th Annual Meeting
March 26-29, 2009, Richmond, VA

(Clifford) Mary Sheriff, "The King, the Trickster, and the Gorgon Head: On the Illusions of Rococo Art"

(Presidential) John Richetti, "Performance in Eighteenth-Century English Verse: Form and Expressiveness"

41st Annual Meeting
March 18-21, 2010, Albuquerque, NM

(Clifford) Ruth Hill, "Race and the Atlantic Divide"

(Presidential) Peter Reill, "Vitalism and the Construction of the Human Sciences in the Enlightenment: Johann Gottfried Herder and Adam Smith"