EC/ASECS 2009 Conference
The next annual meeting of the East-Central American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies will be hosted by Lehigh University in historic Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, settled in 1741 as a Moravian community. We will gather October 8-11, 2009.
The residents of eighteenth-century Bethlehem designed their community to prioritize their local and transatlantic missionary work. With this aim in mind, they re-envisioned property, gender, family roles, and a communal economy. Living in dormitories segregated by gender and by age, they built no private dwellings; parents did not raise their children. These men and women also constructed one of the colonies´ most important industrial districts. Visiting Bethlehem, John Adams marveled in 1777 that "they have carried the Mechanical Arts to greater Perfection here than in any Place which I have seen" and established trade networks across the Atlantic and west to the Ohio River Valley. Many of Bethlehem´s eighteenth-century sacred and secular buildings remain in use today, just steps from our conference site.
Given Bethlehem´s many histories, the theme of this conference will be the Sacred and the Secular in the Transatlantic Eighteenth Century. We welcome proposals that explore these issues in light of science, history, religion, politics, literature, art, or technology. Of course, we also welcome proposals that are not directly related to the conference´s theme.
We are delighted that this year´s keynote speaker will be Jon Sensbach, professor of history at the University of Florida. Professor Sensbach is an outstanding scholar of religion, race, and colonization. He is the author of Rebecca's Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World (Harvard, 2005), and A Separate Canaan: The Making of an Afro-Moravian World in North Carolina, 1763-1840 (North Carolina, 1998).
Send suggestions for panels by March 15, 2009. One-page abstracts of proposed papers should be submitted by May 1, 2009. Both panels and paper proposals should be addressed to ec.asecs@lehigh.edu or Prof. Monica Najar, 9 West Packer Ave., Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015
Thanks to Geoff Sill, our President, we are delighted to announce a scholarly piggy-back of sorts with the Burney Society! The Burney Society will meet in the afternoon on October 8, 2009, in Bet hlehem PA, prior to the start of the annual conference of the East-Central American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Attendees of the Burney Society meeting will have the option of registering also for the EC/ASECS conference, which will begin on the evening of October 8 with a performance of scenes from Burney´s The Witlings.
Thanks to Geoff Sill, our President, we are delighted to announce a scholarly piggy-back of sorts with the Burney Society! The Burney Society will meet in the afternoon on October 8, 2009, in Bethlehem PA, prior to the start of the annual conference of the East-Central American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Attendees of the Burney Society meeting will have the option of registering also for the EC/ASECS conference, which will begin on the evening of October 8 with a performance of scenes from Burney´s The Witlings.
For more information, click on the following link: http://www.lehigh.edu/~inlhgi/annualmeeting/index.html
