Focusing on the past, present, and future of American eighteenth-century studies.
In a section commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Howard D. Weinbrot, Felicity A. Nussbaum, and Heather McPherson trace the history of the Society. Logan J. Connors, Jason H. Pearl, Jessica Zimble, Adam Schoene, Rebecca Messbarger, and Morgan Vanek then assess the disciplinary divides that still stymie the field. Melissa Hyde's Presidential Address recovers the lives and careers of two female artists in Paris. Laurent Dubois's Clifford Lecture examines the centrality of theater to political action in Saint-Domingue.
In the next section, Consumption and Remediation, Alison DeSimone, Amy Dunagin, Erica Levenson, and Julia Hamilton consider the reception in England of foreign music and theater, including Italian opera, French comic troupes, and abolitionist African songs. These are followed by Michael Edson's investigation of marginalia in Anne Hamilton's Epics of the Ton and Anaclara Castro-Santana's rethinking of the relation between Sophia Western and the Jacobite celebrity Jenny Cameron in Tom Jones.
In Teaching Tough Texts, Anne Greenfield, Holly Faith Nelson and Sharon Alker, and W. Scott Howard offer innovative tactics for engaging students. The penultimate section, Eighteenth-Century Bodies, features essays by Olivia Carpenter on the politics of The Woman of Colour and Meghan Kobza on masquerade costumes. The final section, Disability in the Eighteenth Century, assembles work by Travis Chi Wing Lau, Madeline Sutherland-Meier, D. Christopher Gabbard, Jason S. Farr, Hannah Chaskin, and Declan Kavanagh that aims to push the field forward toward more historically nuanced interpretations of disability.