The aim of this seminar is to bring together faculty and advanced graduate students who share an interest in the “long eighteenth century” (1688 to 1815), a period framed by the Glorious Revolution in England that marks its beginning and the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions that signal its end.

The Transatlantic Eighteenth Century seminar is a revival of a previous seminar (the Transatlantic Enlightenment), which brought together faculty and graduate students from English, History, and WLC from 2015-2022. After a post-pandemic lapse, we seek to renew the project while reaching out to more departments, including Art History and Theatre, to discuss the reshaped field of eighteenth-century studies. The work of our seminar participants reaches across North American, British, French, German, and Caribbean as eighteenth-century studies confronts the global impact of empire and the forging of the transatlantic modern world. We seek to support each other’s work through rigorous interdisciplinary analysis that enhances the production of knowledge about a past that is never past.

Events