19.-22.5.04)
Date: 12 Oct 2003

Announcing the third Bloomington Eighteenth-Century Workshop, to
be held on 19-22 May 2004 at Indiana University. 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. It will be hosted by our
newly established Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Our topic for 2004 is "Geographies of the Eighteenth Century:
The Question of the Global". What does it mean to locate the invention
of the global in the eighteenth century? What does this location of the
global legitimate or make visible? What does it neglect or occlude? We
would like to interrogate the meaning and distinctiveness of 'the
global' in the eighteenth century, encouraging comparisons across space
and time and debates across disciplines.
To mark the edges of the global geographically, it helps to
globalize the question itself: was this idea conceptualized differently
in different parts of the world? Are there in fact many "globals"? Where
did the global fail to reach, and why? To mark the historical parameters
of the question, it helps to question whether eighteenth-century notions
of the global were distinctive from what came before or after. What sort
of practices -- political, representational, juridical, technical,
narrative, scientific -- furthered or, alternately, thwarted the
development of the idea of the global? Conversely, what practices did
this idea help put to rest?
Possible paper topics might include:

* When and where did the "globe" or the "world" become a unit of
intellectual analysis?

* What effects did the practices of world exploration and world commerce
have on global theory, and vice-versa?

* How did the local community, the regional empire, and the emergent
nation state compete with or create the notion of the global?

* How were theories of cultural exchange and transmission generated to
account for the global eighteenth-century?

* How variously was the global experienced? Are there distinctive ways
in which experiences of the global were represented?

* Were conceptions of a global society put forward outside of Europe? If
so, what was their range and intellectual ambition, and to what extent
did they interact with European notions?

* What was the cultural significance of maps, universal histories,
compilations of global travels, studies of languages, etc?

* Did the treatment of the global in theories and artistic practices lag
behind or outstrip the political and economic realities of global
exchange?

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 2004. 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, Ashton-Aley West, Room 264,
Bloomington, IN 47405, Telephone 855-2856, email barbara@indiana.edu.
For further information check our website,
http://www.indiana.edu/~voltaire/cfp04.html, or contact Dror Wahrman,
Dept. of History, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, e-mail
dwahrman@indiana.edu.