2002)

CALL FOR PANEL PARTICIPANTS.
AMERICAN SOCIETY OF 18TH-CENTURY STUDIES. APRIL 2002. COLORADO SPRINGS.

Women and the forgotten eighteenth century: Between genres, outside of
academies, and beyond canons.

The panel asks how studying the history, writing, and art of
eighteenth-century women can call attention to overlooked swaths of
eighteenth-century culture. Over the past two decades, scores of women
artists and writers have been added to the canons of their disciplines. This
session argues that we must now move beyond both canons and disciplines to
see how the study of women writers and artists can illuminate deeply
significant, but largely forgotten, venues, institutions, and strategies
that have been passed over by the scholarly emphasis on Royal Academies,
elevated genres, and time-honored canons.

The panel seeks papers that examine forgotten crevices of eighteenth-century
culture through a lens of women writers and artists. What alternative venues
challenged the hegemony of Royal Academies (which often limited women's
participation)? How could one forge a career in the so-called "lesser
genres" (to which women were often relegated)? How could ambitious figures
achieve success in the margins of official sanction (often denied to women)?
What do these forays into alternative experiences tell us about the history
of dominant institutions?

Please contact: Laura Auricchio, lea4columbia.edu