Please consider applying to one of the two 18th-century French panels for the MLA 2026 in Toronto!
Paris and Transcultural Exchange in the Eighteenth Century
Paris is often considered the capital of the Enlightenment, with all eyes throughout Europe looking to the French city for philosophy, taste, and culture. But how did trade, travel, and immigration contribute to shaping intellectual and social cultures in Paris? How did cultures from outside of France impact taste and style in Enlightenment Paris, and where is this impact most salient? This panel invites interdisciplinary papers from fields such as literary studies, visual studies, and cultural history, which examine the influence of transcultural exchange on eighteenth-century France. Areas of interest may include, but are not limited to, the visual arts, jewelry, textiles, craftsmanship, architecture, fashion, technology and innovation, food culture, philosophy, and literature. Please send your abstract to Chloe Edmondson at cmhse14@stanford.edu, before March 20, 2025.
Enlightenment Exchanges: France in the Eastern Mediterranean
Zoe Beenstock zbeenstoc@univ.haifa.ac.il; Hanna Roman romanh@dickinson.edu
Papers on Enlightenment encounters (travelogues, poems, antiquarians, letters, diplomacy, day-to-day material exchanges) among the Ottoman Mediterranean and France. Competition and cultural contact between France and its imperial nemeses, and Egypt, Greater Syria, and Palestine.
Possible topics are not limited by:
- Antiquarian writings both from the perspective of classicists and theologians.
- Alternative perspectives: the Levant looking at Europe; minority voices- gender and class; non-classical philologies; engaging with Levant cultures.
- Different populations: European settlers, Indigenous Arabs (migrant and permanently settled), Mamluks, Ottomans, Wahhabis.
- Incidental antiquarian works of travelers in temporary positions: diplomatic, trade, ecclesiastic, and medical (or others).
- French-Ottoman networks of diplomacy.
- Competition among France and other imperial interests: England, Germany, Russia
- The exchange of material objects and artifacts across the Mediterranean, including commodities, numismatics, manuscripts, remedies, and antiquities.
- Eighteenth-century Paris-Jerusalem syndrome: great expectations meet a non-European Levant.
- Universal histories- primary travel versus the reliance on travelogues by armchair travelers.
- The East as a mirror of the European futures or pasts: ex. the ancient régime and the French Revolution.
Please send your abstract to Zoe Beenstock zbeenstoc@univ.haifa.ac.il and Hanna Roman romanh@dickinson.edu before March 20, 2025.