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Eighteenth Century Centre Activities 2011

Grants awarded and in the pipeline:

Jon Mee (co-director): Leverhulme Major Project Grant to work on 'Networks of Improvement: Literary Clubs and Societies, 1760-1840'. This will employ a PhD student and a post-doc, and will produce a website and monograph/articles.

Mark Knights (co-director): AHRC Network grant linking the early modern community at Warwick with those at Yale, Boston, Vanderbilt, USC/Huntington and the Sorbonne, Paris. This expands the existing Early Modern Forum, which has now been redesigned with additional functionality.

Work is proceeding on applications to investigate early modern keywords; eighteenth century petitioning; and corruption (the subject of an IAS sponsored Network that links us to an interdisciplinary network of scholars across Warwick depts of English, Law, Economics, Politics, and Italian)

Seminars, workshops and Visiting Fellows:

We have a very active events programme.

Mellon-funded two-week summer workshop at the Newberry Library, Chicago, run by Mark Knights and Trevor Burnard, on 'Britain and British America 1650-1750'. This was the third workshop, with two earlier ones held at Chicago 5 Nov 2010 and Warwick 25 March 2011. The collaboration may lead to a jointly authored book and/or collection of essays.

Collaboration with the Eighteenth Century Centre at Birmingham resulted in a workshop last May at Soho House on 'Useful Knowledge'. Another collaborative event is planned for this May, on the theme of 'Clubs and Societies'.

A workshop is planned for February about visual culture, with Dror Wahrman.

Seminar visitors are routinely interviewed for the Early Modern Forum

In 2012 IAS is sponsoring a visit by Prof Gillian Russell, whose visit is hosted by the Centre. Prof Russell's interests are in theatre, gender and sociability. She will give a number of seminars whilst at Warwick.

In 2012 the centre will host a visting Chinese scholar of the media, Yuwen Zhang, from North-West University. She is particularly interested in the C18th press.

Recent Publications:

'The Devil in Disguise' (Oxford University Press, April 2011) by Mark Knights

Conversable Worlds: Literature, Contention, and Community 1762-1830 by Jon Mee (Oxford University Press, Sept. 2011)

 the_devil_in_disguise.jpg mee_book.jpg

Teaching:

The Centre will help coordinate a new collaboratively taught History module on The Enlightenment, starting in 2012. The module will involve colleagues from Law, English, Art History, French and German, giving an ug presence for the Centre for the first time.

The Centre continues to run the MA in Eighteenth Century Studies.