15th International Congress on the Enlightenment
Edinburgh, Scotland
14–19 July 2019
www.bsecs.org.uk/isecs
CALL FOR PAPERS: ISECS 2019
The International Congress on the Enlightenment is the quadrennial meeting of the International Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (ISECS) and the world’s largest meeting of specialists on all aspects of the eighteenth century. Recent ISECS congresses have been held in Los Angeles (2003), Montpellier (2007), Graz (2011), and Rotterdam (2015). The 15th ISECS Congress will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland, from Sunday 14 July to Friday 19 July 2019. It is organized by the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS) and the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society (ECSSS), and hosted by the University of Edinburgh.
Enlightenment Identities
While proposals for papers, panels, and roundtables on any topic relevant to the long eighteenth century are welcome, we particularly invite contributions that address the theme of ‘Enlightenment Identities’. The question of ‘identity’ was much disputed in the eighteenth century, in ways ranging from the local, regional, colonial, national, federal, imperial, to the global. Identities are complex. They are forged by factors ranging from the personal to wider political, military, religious, intellectual, techno-scientific, cultural, ethnic, social, sexual, economic, class/caste, geographical, and historical contexts. The idea of Enlightenment was itself much debated. Given these interlocking complexities, ‘Enlightenment Identities’ constitutes an important theme for an international gathering in the Enlightenment city of Edinburgh, whose eighteenthcentury denizens, like Adam Smith, were at once Scottish, British, and ‘citizens of the world’.