Eighteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Salon
Faculty Co-conveners: Rebecca Messbarger, Associate Professor of Italian; Tili Boon Cuillé, Associate Professor of French
The Eighteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Salon, founded in 1997, is a faculty works-in-progress group that meets once a month throughout the academic year and invites a prestigious guest speaker on an annual basis. Though its discussions all pertain to the long eighteenth century, the topics addressed vary as widely as its members’ current interests and areas of expertise. The Salon has investigated fundamental questions such as the changing definition of Nature, God, and the Enlightenment itself, both at the time and in the critical reception of the period. Salon sessions address topics as diverse and yet interrelated as mysticism and mechanism, sensibility and surplus value, painting and the press. The Salon is a text-based reading group that circulates members’ works-in-progress in advance. The author offers some valuable contextualizing remarks at the beginning of each discussion, after which participants engage in a probing interdisciplinary conversation, asking insightful questions and offering constructive written and oral comments that aim both to enhance understanding of the subject and to improve the quality of the work
