SASECS-Sponsored Conferences and Sessions
American Society of
Eighteenth-Century Studies
49th Annual Meeting
Orlando, Florida March 22-24, 2018
#ASECS18 #SASECS
Daring Not to Know: Consuming Otherness and Making the Familiar in Asian-European Exchanges
Thursday, 22 March 2018
Palm H
Chair: Emily M. N. KUGLER, Howard University

- Bernadette ANDREA, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Beyond Montagu: Subaltern Women Travelers during the Long Eighteenth Century”
- Susan SPENCER, University of Central Oklahoma, “Exporting Bengali Culture: The Ethnographical Etchings of François Balthazar Solvyns”
- Kathryn DUNCAN, St. Leo University, “East Reads West: A Buddhist Analysis of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”
- Samara CAHILL, Nanyang Technological University, “The ‘Passion we have for Exotics’: Indian Wares in Eliza Haywood’s Feminist Orientalist Imaginary”
American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies
48th Annual Meeting
Minneapolis, MN March 30-April 2, 2017
#ASECS17 #SASECS
“Journeys to the West: Silk Roads and Settlers in the Eighteenth Century”
Organizers: Samara Cahill (Nanyang Technological University) and Emily MN Kugler (Howard University)

What do we mean and whom do we envision when we discuss “settlers” or “settler colonialism”? How do we address the impact of European imperialism while not defaulting to a historical perspective that unquestioningly places Europe and Europeans as an origin point for global migration? Similarly, what if, instead of viewing regions such as the “Far East” and “Orient” as the exotic, we take Daniel Goffman’s idea of Europe as the “Far West”? This panel welcomes papers questioning the idea of what a “settler” is and the kinds of cultural hybridity that are recognized by history and those that aren’t. Topics may deal with forced as well as voluntary relocations
Chair: Samara Anne CAHILL, Nanyang Technological University
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- Rachel GOULD, Vanderbilt University, “Shared Spaces: The Oriental Fable within the London Coffeehouse”
- Baerbel CZENNIA, McNeese State University, “Trans-Plant Perspectives: Western Gardens, Eastern Views”
- Kevin COPE, Louisiana State University, “Excavating the Exotic: Slovene Spelunking, Calcareous Diversity, Reoriented Recluses”
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Respondent: Emily MN KUGLER, Howard University
ASECS 2016:
Pittsburgh, March 31-April 2 2016
Thursday, March 31 — 8-9:30am
Thursday, March 31 — 4:15pm-5:45pm
Grand Ballroom (17th Floor)
“Re-Imagining Enlightenment: Islamic Cosmopolitanism in the Pan-Oceanic World”
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The 16th Biennial Symposium on
Literature and Culture in the Asia-Pacific Region
The Forbidden
What is considered illegal, unethical, subversive, sinful, or politically incorrect? What aren’t we allowed to do, say, or think? Which spaces are closed to us? How have we infiltrated these spaces and crossed these lines? Who are we crossing? Can we assume that “the forbidden” is indeed an objective or stable category, or can we discuss the line between the acceptable/permissible/moral and the transgressive/unethical/deviant as being contingent on other factors?
Because so many standards, codes, traditions, and conventions must be renegotiated, from ancient times to the digital age, such questions are especially difficult to answer. Both online and offline, new boundaries are simultaneously being set, tested, and crossed. Especially in this time of profound change, very little is off limits. At the same time, these once-forbidden sites, practices, and behaviours constitute territory that authorities are struggling to control and monitor even as it fends them off.
While all literatures explore the forbidden, this Symposium seeks to investigate its implications specifically for the literatures, cultures, and perspectives of the Asia-Pacific region seen by scholars on and in the region. It invites research on impropriety in all its forms, from mischief and rule-breaking to crime, sin, and subversion. It also celebrates writing itself as a dangerous or deadly habit, a form of deviant behavior, infiltration, or transgression.
Paper topics include but are not limited to:
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- Subversive/transgressive literature and misreading
- Crime narratives: detective fiction, noir, psychological thrillers, postmodern mystery, true crime
- Forbidden love: extramarital affairs, incest, paedophilia, man/machine/vampire/zombie/beast
- Erotica/Porn studies
- Abjection, taboo, fetish
- Literature and the occult
- Literature in the time of terrorism
- Banned books and/or censorship
- The black market: fraud, forgery, theft, piracy
- Taboo in the academe
- Forbidden language
- The politically incorrect
- Errancy and sin in literature
- Forbidden geographies/spaces in literature
- Science and transgression
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Conference Details
Dates November 19-21, 2015
Venue and Transportation The symposium will take place in three universities in Manila, each with its own flavour and atmosphere. The three universities are also recognized as centers of excellence for Literature. The first day will be at the University of the Philippines in Quezon City, the second day will be in De La Salle University in the heart of Manila, and the third will be at the Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City.
Registration for Paper Readers The registration fee is 100USD/4300PHP. This covers morning snacks, lunch, and afternoon snacks for the duration of the conference and a conference kit. Payment details will follow.
Paper proposals Please send a 200-word abstract of your paper by email to the symposium convenors at lcap16@up.edu.ph on or before June 30, 2015. Abstracts should be in Word format and should be sent as an attachment. A registration form will be sent to those whose abstracts will be accepted. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by July 15, 2015.
Literary Readings Literary reading sessions will be held at the end of each conference day. Please indicate in your registration form whether you are interested in participating in these sessions.
Recommended Hotel Microtel Inn, UP-Ayala Technohub (http://www.microtel-uptechnohub.com), offers a special conference rate to participants in the symposium (USD75/night). It is located along Commonwealth Ave, Diliman, Quezon City, near two of the university conference venues. Shuttle buses will be provided between this hotel and conference venues. Microtel is a green hotel, with rooms that overlook a triangular garden. Rooms and facilities are at par with international standards, including chiropractor-approved mattresses, cable TV, and wireless internet access. The hotel also features a restaurant with an al fresco patio, and is right next door to the UP-Ayala Technohub’s complex of restaurants. It is also close to an array of key landmarks in the area, including UP, churches, dining spots, and shopping malls. Book through Alyssa Fagutao affagutao@microtel.ph, subject heading your email: ‘LCAP16 Manila Booking.’
Convenors
Lily Rose Tope, University of the Philippines
Dinah Roma, De La Salle University Manila
Danilo Francisco M. Reyes, Ateneo de Manila University
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A SASECS-sponsored panel at the ISECS Congress, July 26-31, 2015, Rotterdam
“Eighteenth-Century Narrative Traffic (I)”
S145(I) Thursday, July 30
09:00 – 10:30
Room: M2-10: Rochester: Van Der Goot Building
Organizer / Chair: Samara Anne Cahill, Anne M. Thell
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- Singh, Brijraj: “Two Eighteenth-Century South Indian Priests Go to Europe”
- Min, Eun Kyung: “The Inconstancy of Widows: Narrative Mutability in Thomas Percy’s Matrons (1762)”
- Khan, Maryam: “The Oriental tale in the Orient: Imperial Pedagogy and the Transformation of Narrative”
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“Eighteenth-Century Narrative Traffic (II)”
S145(II)Thursday, July 30
11:00 – 12:30
Room: M2-10: Rochester: Van Der Goot Building
Organizer / Chair: Samara Anne Cahill, Anne M. Thell
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- Stringer, George: “Sea Changes: an Indian Complaint.”
- MacNeill, Máire: “Time and Space, London and Abroad: English Opera in the 1730s”
- Perot, Sandra: “Performance and the Word: Transatlantic Anglophone Theatre and Exchanging Ideas in the Late-Eighteenth Century (1752-1800)”
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SASECS-sponsored panels at the ASECS Annual Meeting, 19-21 March 2015, Los Angeles.
“New Approaches to Trans-Pacific Studies” (Roundtable).
From the French and English travel accounts of China during the late 17th century, to the founding of the California Missions in the 1740s, to Captain James Cook’s memorable travels to Australia, New Zealand, and his ultimate death in Hawaii in the 1770s, the eighteenth century saw increased scientific, colonial, artistic and commercial activity across the continents and islands that frame the Pacific, causing a proliferation of both cultural and imaginative textual productions. In recognition of the conference location this year, this roundtable panel seeks talks that address innovative cross-disciplinary approaches to the literary, textual, visual, and/or cultural productions of the trans-pacific eighteenth century; these approaches might offer new arguments to seminal texts, or they might consider new scholarly, methodological, pedagogical, and/or archival techniques or discoveries. How did the cultural output from the period define a distinctive trans-pacific eighteenth-century identity? We are especially interested in presentations from fields within and beyond literary studies, particularly those that consider interdisciplinary fields such as art history, history of science/medicine, or bibliographic/archive studies.
Chairs: Jacqui Grainger, University of Sydney and Danielle Spratt California State University, Northridge
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- Louise Anemaat, The State Library of New South Wales, “Natural Curiosity. Unseen art of Australia’s First Fleet”
- Melissa Bailes, Tulane University, “Scientific Poetry and the Posthumous Gender Politics of Captain Cook”
- Lance Bertelsen, University of Texas at Austin, “Political Discussions Onboard HMS Crocodile: David Samwell, James King, and the Historical Implications for Captain Cook’s Third Voyage”
- Hannah Doherty Hudson, University of Texas at San Antonio, “Periodicals and the Trans-Pacific Eighteenth Century”
- Jeremy Wear, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, “The Pacific and the Problem of Naval Masculinity in Jane Austen’s Persuasion“
- Michelle Burnham, Santa Clara University, “The Value of Transoceanic Models”
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“Beyond Orientalism: Consumer Agency and Producer Adaptation in Asia Exchanges with Europe and the Americas”

Due to early modern globalization, Chinoiserie, curry, Persian poetry, calicoes, and other “exotic” imports entered European markets, where they were adapted and imitated. In the eighteenth-century world of goods, how did the importation and/or representation of foreign goods reflect cultural exchanges that complicate our ideas of European-Asian relations? As Prasannan Parthasarathi and Brijraj Singh have recently observed (independently), much more research is needed on the reception of European imports in Asia: Europeans were not the only consumers. How were European imports (textile designs, music, painting, fashion) adapted within Asian contexts to suit local tastes? How did Asian technologies advance European industries? This panel is particularly interested in papers and projects that complicate conflations of a colonized East with passivity and imitation.
Chair: Samara Cahill, Nanyang Technological University
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- Sofía Sanabrais, University of Southern California, “’…desired and sought by the rest of the world’: The Philippine–Asia Trade and its Impact on Spanish Colonial Artistic Production”
- Rachel Tamar Van, Cal Poly Pomona,“A Market for Fakes: Knock-Offs, Adulteration, & Faux Masterpieces between China & Early America”
- Susan Spencer, University of Central Oklahoma, “Ihara Saikaku: Literary Artistry Meets the Art of the Deal”
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Discussant: Emily MN Kugler, Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University
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Modernization in the Long Eighteenth Century, and/or Resistance to It
South-Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Point Clear, Alabama
February 26-28, 2015
Conference Website
Asian Innovation and Influence in the Long Eighteenth Century
Saturday, February 28, 8:30-10am
Chair: Susan Spencer, University of Central Oklahoma
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- Bobby Reed, University of Central Oklahoma, ”Inventing Fun: The Prose of Ihara Saikaku and the Dissemination of Japanese Coin”
- Samara Cahill, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, “Asian Connections: Research, Pedagogy, New Silk Roads”
- Susan Spencer, University of Central Oklahoma, ”Teaching Asian Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century”
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Sustainable Networks: Enlightenment to the Contemporary
13-15 June 2014, Nanyang Technological University
Website: http://portal.cohass.ntu.edu.sg/sustainablenetworks/default.asp
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SASECS-Sponsored Sessions
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) 2014 Annual Meeting: Williamsburg, Virginia, USA
Website: http://asecs.press.jhu.edu/general%20site/2014%20Annual%20Meeting.html
Siamese Dreams: European Depictions of Southeast Asia in the Eighteenth Century
Thursday, March 20, 2014
9:45 – 11:15 a.m.
Chairs: Danielle Spratt, California State University, Northridge and Anne M. Thell, National University of Singapore
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- Ellen R. Welch, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “Staging Siam in Ancien Régime France: The Mediatization of a Diplomatic Encounter”
- Ashley Bruckbauer, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “The Little (Cochinchinese) Prince: Diplomatic Masquerade and the Construction of Fantasy in Maupérin’s Portrait of Prince Cảnh”
- Meredith Martin, New York University, “Visions and Revisions of Franco-Siamese Diplomatic Exchange, 1680s/1860s”
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Enlightenment Occlusions: Hidden Hybridity in European Literature and Culture
Saturday, March 22, 2014
2 – 3:30 p.m.
Chairs: Emily MN Kugler, Colby College, and Samara Cahill, Nanyang Technological University
Paper Abstracts and Presenter Biographies
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- Katarzyna BARTOSZYNSKA, Bilkent University, “Foreign Imports: Jan Potocki’s Gothic Orientalism”
- David BORGONJON, Brown University, “From Oriental Genius to Native Genius/Oriental Genies: The ‘Bizarre Silks’ and Exoticist Abstraction”
- Christine A. JONES, University of Utah, “On the Making of a Beverage Trinity: Coffee, Tea, and Hot Chocolate”
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Modern Language Association (MLA) 2014 Annual Convention: Chicago, Illinois, USA
Approaches to Feminist Orientalism: The Enlightenment to the Contemporary
Sunday, 12 January, 2014
1:45–3:00 p.m.
Presiding: Samara Cahill, Nanyang Technical University
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- “The Despot and the Harem: Gender, Sexuality, and Reform in the Orientalist Culture of the Enlightenment,” Hsu-Ming Teo, Macquarie University
- “Feminist Orientalism and Enlightenment England’s Quest for Eden,” Bethany Williamson, Southern Methodist Univ.
- “‘To Strike Out a New Path’: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Astell, and Muslim Veiling Practices,” Humberto Garcia, Vanderbilt Univ.
- “Revisiting ‘Feminist Orientalism’ in the Twenty-First Century,” Joyce Zonana, Borough of Manhattan Community Coll., City Univ. of New York
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Related Eighteenth-Century Conferences
Ideas and Enlightenment: Univ. of Sydney, December 10-13 2014
Website: http://sydney.edu.au/intellectual-history/news-events/dns-conference-2014.shtml
Call for Papers: http://sydney.edu.au/intellectual-history/documents/dns-2014-call-for-papers.pdf