Call for Papers: 18th Century Studies Workshop at Indiana University
Call for Papers-
"For Instance . . . : Eighteenth Century
Exemplarity, Its Practice and Limits"
The Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Indiana
University is pleased to announce the twelfth Bloomington Eighteenth-Century
Workshop, to be held on May 8-10, 2013. The workshop is part of a series of
annual interdisciplinary events that has been running since 2002, with 12-15
scholars presenting and discussing papers on a broad topic in a congenial
setting.
Our topic for 2013 is "For Instance. . . : Eighteenth-Century Exemplarity, Its Practice
and Limits." In the seventeenth
century, cultural authority could often be established through the skillful
negotiation of examples past and present. Through this process, men and women
could aspire to exemplary status, as the present instance in a long tradition
of examples. One could "stand in" for others. This relationship of
"standing-in-for," or exemplarity, played a central role for
institutions of learning, knowledge, and morals; for the political and
religious order; and for individuals' understanding of history and art. In this
workshop, we want to explore what happens to these cultures of exemplarity,
modeling, and emulation in the long eighteenth century.
Exemplarity is not a simple relationship. On the one
hand, as in the case of absolutism, the king aimed to become an exemplary
"one" who encompassed all others for whom he could, in turn, become
an ideal model. On the other hand, exemplarity could also invoke a radical
equality, that of the "sample," where everyone can be an example for
everyone else. In the light of such complexity, we ask what happens to the
culture of the example in the eighteenth-century as new ways of understanding
the correlation of the "one case" and "all the others" gain
prominence, as discourses of individuality, probability, experience,
experiment, representation, radical democracy, and revolution hold sway. If the
past stops serving as an example for the present, if the one no longer stands
for all others, what alternative modes of thought serve? What happens when
examples become unruly? Or should we think instead of transmutations and
reinventions in some broader culture of exemplarity?
The focus of our Workshop will be an age when presumably
exemplarity was under pressure and examples became unruly. We want to examine
the practices and limits of exemplarity in different areas, such as politics,
religion, fiction, and the so-called experimental sciences. Papers may explore
(but are not limited to) the following questions:
- How does
"standing in for something" shift in meaning
throughout the eighteenth century?
- To what
extent did eighteenth-century men and women think that
the experiences of one person could apply to others? How
does the language of experience change through the long eighteenth century? How
does the discourse of probability inflect that of experience and/or example?
- To what
extent do political actors stop modeling their acts on
past examples? If they do, what replaces the rhetoric of
exemplarity in political discourse?
- Can
Christ and the martyrs still be "examples" in an era when
exemplarity is only one of many modes of teaching?
- In the
worlds of design and technology, how do constructed
models or patterns - of buildings, terrain, or ships;
fabric, furniture, or china - alter or expand the concept of the example?
- Amazons,
Hottentots, wild children, mad women, sea monsters,
and extraordinary beasts of all sorts: what can one make
of these unruly examples?
- In what
ways do eighteenth-century narratives -fiction or
history - engage the work of exemplarity? To what extent
do characters and storylines provide readers with good/bad examples?
- How does
the logic of exemplarity, rooted in tradition, relate
to categories such as novelty, modernity, or innovation?
Does exemplarity foster, justify, or contest innovation?
The workshop format will consist of focused discussion of
four to six papers a day, amid socializing and refreshment. The workshop will
draw both on the wide community of eighteenth-century scholars and on those
working in this field at Indiana University-Bloomington. The workshop will
cover most expenses of those scholars chosen to present their work:
accommodations, travel (up to a certain limit), and most
meals.
We are asking for applications to be sent to us by
Monday, January 7, 2013. The application consists of a two-page description of
the proposed paper as well as a current brief CV (no longer than three pages).
Please email or send your application to Dr. Barbara Truesdell, Weatherly Hall North,
Room 122, 400 N. Sunrise Drive, Bloomington, IN 47405, Telephone 812/855-2856,
email voltaire@indiana.edu<mailto:voltaire@indiana.edu>.
Papers will be selected by an interdisciplinary
committee. All submissions will be acknowledged by e-mail within a fortnight:
if you have not received an acknowledgment by Jan. 22, 2010, please contact
Barbara Truesdell or Mary Favret.
Further information can be found on our website, http://www.indiana.edu/~voltaire/
, or you can find us on Facebook. For additional details and queries please
contact the director of the Center, Mary Favret, Dept. of English, Indiana
University, Bloomington, IN 47405,
e-mail favretm@indiana.edu<mailto:favretm@indiana.edu>