The Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Indiana University is pleased to announce the fifth Bloomington Eighteenth-Century Workshop, to be held on May 10-13, 2006. The workshop is part of a series of annual interdisciplinary events that has been running since 2002, with 20-30 scholars presenting and discussing pre-circulated papers on a broad topic in a congenial setting.
Our topic for 2006 is "Lines of Amity, Lines of Enmity: War and Peace in the Eighteenth Century". The eighteenth century witnessed both the envisioning of a state of perpetual peace (Kant), as well as what some have called the first world wars. What defines a "state of war" or "state of peace" in this period? Are they opposed or complementary? Indeed, are they even definable, stable states? Contemporary scholarship continues to tell stories of the growth of civil society and the Habermasian "public sphere," locales that seemingly domesticate conflict, even render it productive. What relation do economic or social competition, intellectual or scientific debate, political or religious dissent have with ideas of war and peace? Foucault thought he discerned in modernity a growing focus on "governmentality," which took the life of the citizen as opposed to his death to be its object of concern and calculation. But does the growth of such Enlightenment ideals as perpetual peace, humanitarianism, and cosmopolitanism effectively repudiate war and conflict as the norm for society, or even some parts of society? Do the concepts of war and peace as articulated in diplomacy, statecraft, law, literature, and philosophy have any bearing on how war and peace were experienced by people at home, on the battlefield, in the colonies? We would like to encourage the reconsideration of the meaning, theory, practice, and discursive force of peace and war in this period.
Papers might address questions such as:
The workshop format, which has proven to be extraordinarily fruitful, will consist of intense discussion of 4-6 pre-circulated papers a day, amidst socializing and refreshment. The workshop will draw both on the wide community of eighteenth-century scholars and on the large and growing group of scholars in this field at Indiana University-Bloomington. Papers will be selected by an interdisciplinary committee. 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 the 5th of January 2006. The application consists of a two-page description of the proposed paper as well as a current CV. Please email or send your application to Dr. Barbara Truesdell, Weatherly Hall North, Room 122, Bloomington, IN 47405, Telephone 812/855-2856, email voltaire@indiana.edu.
For further information please contact Dror Wahrman, Dept. of History, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, email dwahrman@indiana.edu.