18th Century and Romantic Studies Colloquium
The 18th Century and Romantic Studies Colloquium brings together Princeton’s community of graduate students and faculty specializing in the long eighteenth century and Long Romanticism through a forum where we gather to discuss the current work being done in our field. Though the colloquium has traditionally focused on British literature of the 18th century and Romantic periods, we have recently hosted scholars with trans-Atlantic interests during this time frame. We invite speakers from around the country as well as international speakers, to share their research and answer questions in an environment that fosters engaged discussion. Recent speakers include Frances Ferguson, Sandra Macpherson, Marshall Brown, Anahid Nersessian, Wendy Lee, Abigail Zitin, Margaret Doody, Stuart Sherman, Cynthia Wall, Duncan Wu, and Maureen McLane.
Past Events
This talk draws on my recently completed book, The Trembling Hand: Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive, which explores connections between Romanticism and the racial imaginaries engendered by the transatlantic slave economy. The book is organised around objects that once belonged to the major poets. Here, I will begin…
Both Walter Benjamin and Cedric Robinson use the term "preservation" to name the nature of European law. For Benjamin, existence names an outside to the law's preservationist nature. In Robinson, survival is the name for that outside. In this talk, I consider these terms of existence and survival, and their difference from what…
![[Drawing] A man and a woman operating a circular saw, a second man braced against it and suspended from ropes, touching a sparkler held by a third man.](/sites/g/files/toruqf5551/files/styles/3x4_750w_1000h/public/2023-09/wonder-literature-science.jpg?itok=y6stXo9G)
In this talk, Tita Chico will speak about her current book project, Wonder: Literature and Science in the Long Eighteenth Century (under contract with Cambridge University Press), which looks at wonder as a defining epistemology for what we now understand as literature and science in the period. The Enlightenment has long been…
Lynn M. Festa, Rutgers University
Associate Professor of English and author of Sentimental Figures of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France.
Associate Professor School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Her most recent book is Romantic Literature and the Colonised World: Lessons from Indigenous Translations (Palgrave, 2018).
This event has been canceled.
- Adela Pinch, Department of English, University of Michigan
- Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 2019-20
Two Wordsworths: Mountain-Climbing, Letter-Writing
Book Learning
Reception in the Thorp Library to follow talk.
Co-sponsored with the English Department and the Victorian Colloquium.
Book Learning
Reception in the Hinds Library (Room B14), McCosh Hall, to follow talk.
"Willing Wandering: Being mobile between creative and critical imaginaries"
On Handsomeness, Considered as a Category of Aesthetics
Reception in the Thorp Library to follow talk.
" 'In the cowslips peeps I lye': Romantic Botany and Telling the Time of Day by the Light of the Anthropocene"
Abstract: What can Romantic-period botanical writings contribute to contemporary phenological study at a time when catastrophic climate change means the dissociation of former synchronies between pollinators and flowering…
Samuel Johnson's Chemical Ethic
Reception in the Thorp Library to follow talk.
Professor Castell presented his work on Romanticism in the Anthropocene, a uniquely interdisciplinary event that attracted students from various departments (science as well as humanities fields) and put the humanities in conversation with environmental sciences.
Co-sponsored by Princeton University Environmental Institute.
The colloquium collaborated with Susan Wolfson to organize an interactive roundtable seminar with Paul Hamilton on Felicia Hemans, in which graduate students in our department had the opportunity to closely read Hemans’ poems along with Professor Hamilton’s expert guidance.
This event was a collaboration between our colloquium and Comparative Literature, German, Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, and the Theory Colloquium. Professor Balfour gave a lively presentation on the aesthetics of the sublime and inversion.
Affiliated Institution:
18th C./Romantic Studies…
Anahid Nersessian presented a thought-provoking paper on obscurity in Wordsworth, which was followed by a lively discussion with graduate students and faculty.