The Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies is pleased to announce the launch of a new Online Speakers Series. This series aims to provide an opportunity to connect with the scholarly community working on the eighteenth century and extend our scholarly conversations beyond our traditional in-person conference. The focus of this series in 2024-25 will be to discuss ideas around equity, diversity, and inclusion, and explore how these ideas relate to eighteenth-century studies. Each of our sessions will be organized around a specific theme and will take the form of a round table during which participants will be invited to discuss and engage with multiple perspectives.
Session 1 - The Enlightenment and the idea of the University
Date: Friday, November 1, 2024
Time: 12h00 – 13h30 (eastern standard time)
The purpose of this first online round table is to open a conversation about the relationship between the university and the Enlightenment. How do these two terms speak to each other? Can the university embody Enlightenment values about emancipation and social progress or are those values in contradiction with the idea that institutional neutrality is essential to its mission and the pursuit of knowledge? Our panelists will discuss how they perceive the role of activism, advocacy, and social justice in the university setting and how these intersect with their teaching and research.
Panelists:
Brian Cowan (McGill University), Kerry Sinanan (University of Winnipeg), Sophia Rosenfeld (University of Pennsylvania), Eugenia Zuroski (McMaster University).
RSVP (by October 30): https://forms.gle/Bp7rd2N4pLLNz8ks7 (You will receive a link by email one day before the event.)
Session 2 - Thinking Equity, Diversity and Inclusion with the Enlightenment
Date: Friday, November 29, 2024
Time: 12h00 – 13h30 (eastern standard time)
This roundtable sets out to ask a provocative, if not a paradoxical question: how did 18th-century writers think of inclusion, equity and diversity, and how can their work help us to reflect on these topics today? For decades, scholars have continued to think about the predominance of a taxonomic approach within Enlightenment. On the other hand, scholars have also tried to highlight the radical and minor impulses within Enlightenment thought to rethink difference, diversity, and community. With this history of thought in mind, the roundtable sets out to ask how do we do EDI work in the afterlife of Enlightenment and within Enlightenment studies. What are some successful initiatives that scholarly societies since the eighteenth century have taken to honor diversity and inclusion? What do the failures of some other initiatives teach us today as we deliberate on our society's way forward?
Panelists:
Katherine Binhammer (University of Alberta), Emily C. Friedman (Auburn University), Sal Nicolazzo (University of California, Davis), Surya Parekh (Binghamton University)
RSVP (by November 28): https://forms.gle/iTUGuVp4BT3aNh8j7 (You will receive a link by email one day before the event.)
Session 3 - The Natural and the Social: Thinking About Diversity and Norms with the Enlightenment
Date: Friday, February 7, 2025
Time: 12h00 – 13h30 (eastern standard time)
The Enlightenment enterprise can be described as a search for the natural state of humanity, independent of the social orders that philosophers often criticized as arbitrary and unjust (e.g., social inequality, slavery as contrary to the laws of nature). While Enlightenment thinkers embraced the Christian notion of universal human nature, they also gave significant attention to the variability and diversity of humankind across time and space. Fictional texts of the period frequently juxtapose the natural and the social through thought experiments involving uneducated or "uncivilized" beings (e.g., the blind, the deaf, feral children, and so-called "savages"). To what extent did Enlightenment thought anticipate contemporary social definitions of gender, race, or disability? How should we approach these ideas today, especially in light of critiques highlighting that figures such as Montesquieu and Voltaire propagated racist views?
Session 4 – Enseigner les Lumières aujourd’hui
Date: Friday, March 28, 2025
Time: 12h00 – 13h30 (eastern standard time)
