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The University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NZ, T +44 (0)1227 764000
Centre for Studies in the Long Eighteenth Century
CSLEC
Launched in 2007, Kent’s Centre for Studies in the Long Eighteenth Century is the first eighteenth-century studies centre in southern England. We investigate such questions as, what exactly was the empire that produced ‘postcolonial’ resistance? How might one approach the colonial archive? What logic shapes the literary and artistic culture of the ‘long’ mercantilist moment between 1650 and 1830 in Britain and outside it, and how might this period account for the ‘long revolution’ that Raymond Williams described? The Centre sponsors research and invites postgraduate applications in such areas of enquiry as the rise of print culture and the democratisation of the literary marketplace, including the appearance of labouring-class and women writers on the professional scene; the global ambitions of an emergent British empire, the history of the slave trade and consequent emergence of Black Atlantic writing; the rise of trade with, travel to, and fascination with the so-called Orient and the attendant proliferation of Orientalist scholarship, cultural fantasy, and eventual imperial and colonial institutions; the emergence of Enlightenment science, exploration, and discovery in the New World and the Pacific; and the agricultural revolution, appearance of natural history writing, birth of theories of ecology and the Picturesque, and important shifts in human-animal relations.
The Centre is negotiating links with the National Maritime Museum and University of York. Its interdisciplinary MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies launches in the 2010-11 academic year.
Contact:
Jennie Batchelor (J.E.Batchelor@kent.ac.uk) or Donna Landry (D.E.Landry@kent.ac.uk) Co-Directors of the Centre for Studies in the Long Eighteenth Century
MA in Eighteenth Century Studies
This interdisciplinary MA offers modules in English and History and Philosophy of Art. Modules include: Jane Austen and Material Culture (Jennie Batchelor); Hacks, Dunces and Scribblers: Authorship and the Marketplace in the Eighteenth Century (Jennie Batchelor); Extremes of Feeling: Literature and Empire in the Eighteenth Century (Donna Landry); Taste, Beauty and the Sublime: Studies in the Eighteenth Century Aesthetics (Jonathan Friday); Hogarth and the Analysis of Beauty (Ben Thomas).
For further information, please see the MA webpage or email Jennie Batchelor: J.E.Batchelor@kent.ac.uk or Donna Landry (D.E.Landry@kent.ac.uk)
Current events and projects
- Friday 4 May, 2012 'The ‘Battle of the Books’ & the European Republic of Letters', The Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of Kent, in collaboration with the Agon: La Dispute research project, VALE-Paris-Sorbonne
Speakers: Marcus Walsh, University of Liverpool (keynote); Sylvie Lafon, Paris VIII; Martine Pécharman, CNRS; Henry Power, University of Exeter ; Alexis Tadié, Paris-Sorbonne; Stéphane Van Damme, Sciences Po, Paris; Sophie Vasset, Paris-Diderot; Paddy Bullard, University of Kent
Attendance is free, but numbers are limited: for registration contact p.s.bullard@kent.ac.uk. Click here for further information on the event. - Thursday 3 May 2012 'Methods in the Madness: Problems and Methodological Approach in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century Periodicals', a FREE ONE-DAY SYMPOSIUM. Speakers: Jennie Batchelor (Kent); Laurel Brake (Birkbeck); Jon Cranfield (Kent); John Drew (Buckingham); Fiona Masterson (Kent); James Mussell (Birmingham); Susan Oliver (Essex); Tara Puri (Kent). Click here for further information on the event and how to register for a free place.
Past events and projects
- Hemlow Prize in Burney Studies - essay competition.
- A new workshop series on 'After Marriage in the Long Eighteenth Century' will be taking place in 2011 organised by the Centre for Studies in the Long Eighteenth Century, supported by the School of European Culture and Languages, the School of English and KIASH.
- *NEW* The first three volumes of Palgrave Macmillan’s ten-volume The History of British Women’s Writing (Series Editors Jennie Batchelor and Cora Kaplan) are published this month. For further details, please click here.
- *NEW EXHIBITION* 4 October to 17 December 2010. In Elysium: Prints James Barry. Venue: Studio 3, Jarman Building. Admission is free. Entry times 09:00-17:00. For further information, telephone 01227 827228. To download the exhibition poster, please click here.
- *NEW* 30 November 2010. Martin Myrone (Tate Britain), author of Bodybuilding: Reforming Masculinities in British Art, 1750-1830 will be giving a talk on James Barry. Details of time and venue to follow. For further details, please email Ben Thomas (B.D.H.Thomas@kent.ac.uk).
- The Evliya Çelebi Way: An international project of historical re-enactment and cultural re-connection that will establish a Cultural Route through Western Anatolia. For further details, please follow the link above or contact Donna Landry.
- 9 October 2010 at Godmersham Park Heritage Centre: A series of talks on Jane Austen’s reading by Jennie Batchelor (Kent), Gillian Dow (Chawton) and Katie Halsey (Stirling) on Jane Austen’s Reading at Chawton and Godmersham Park to coincide with a three-day exhibition on Jane Austen’s reading between 7-9 October. For full details and information on how to obtain tickets, please click here.
- 5 November 2010. ‘The Visual and the Verbal in the Eighteenth Century’. This day-conference is generously funded by the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art and will feature talks by John Barrell (York); Peter de Bolla (Cambridge); Harriet Guest (York); Michael Phillips (York); Micheal Rosenthal (Warwick) and Jenny Uglow. The day will close with a drinks reception and viewing of an exhibition of the work of James Barry and his contemporaries (curated by Ben Thomas) in the Jarman building.
- Workshop Series: ‘Writing Women’s Literary History: Problems and Possibilities’ (November 2009-June 2010).
- A Day Symposium on Aphra Behn (13 May 2009)
- Conference: ‘British Travellers and Equestrian Enthusiasts in Great Syria and Arabia' (25-26 May 2007)
- The Centre has sponsored talks by: Tim Fulford(Nottingham Trent University ) ; Stephen Daniels(University of Nottingham); Jonathan Lamb(Vanderbilt University); Mahmut Mutman (Bilkent University, Ankara); Jyotsna Singh (Michigan State University).
MEMBERS
Donna Landry (English), Jennie Batchelor (English), Helen Brooks (Drama), Paddy Bullard (English), Jonathan Friday (History and Philosophy of Art), Karl Leydecker (SECL), Yvonne Noble (Research Fellow), Alex Padamsee (English), Charlotte Sleigh (History), Axel Staehler (SECL), David Stirrup and Ben Thomas (History and Philosophy of Art), Jenny Uglow (Honorary Professor of English and History), James Fowler (French) J.E.Fowler@kent.ac.uk.
VISITING POSTGRADUATES
Dragos Ivana (University of Bucharest, Romania): Sponsored by the Ratiu Foundation, 2007, 2009
Thesis project: ‘From the Battle for Reason to Virtuous Feelings and Powerful Interests: Eighteenth-Century English Quixotism between Political Discourse and Moral Reform’
The thesis investigates eighteenth-century English novels, 1747-1801, that are overt or covert imitations of Cervantes’s Don Quixote and endeavours to show that quixotism turns into political discourse, opposing eighteenth-century values. The term quixotic ideology, although tautological at first sight, points to the Quixotes’ capacity to renovate and redress the disenchanted world of the capitalist marketplace through an axiological system that propels them, against the odds, into a recalcitrant public sphere without any loss of politeness, gentility or intellectual coherence.
Syed Zahid Ali Shah (University of the Northwest Frontier, Peshawar, Pakistan): Sponsored by the Higher Education Commision of Pakistan, 2008
Thesis Project: ‘The Sea of Alterity: Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Hospitality, and the Ethics of Otherness’
The thesis analyses the multiple possibilities for interpretation and ethical rapprochement offered by a highly canonical, yet radical and experimental, Romantic poem. As Coleridge imaginatively voyaged East and South, so also are readers invited by the poem, and by Coleridge’s poetics as a whole, to entertain and not repudiate the other, and to cultivate an ethics of hospitality against the endlessly present situations of violence and alienation produced by empire and its aftermaths.