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For this year's conference, we are handling submissions a bit differently from prior years. To have a more timely overview of everything that's been submitted and accepted when we are scheduling sessions and otherwise building the program, all types of proposals should first be submitted to the conference host, Colin Ramsey (ramseyct@appstate.edu).
For panel submissions: please include with your proposal whether the panel should be posted as fully formed (with individual paper descriptions included in the proposal), or, as a panel still-seeking-papers. Both types of panels will be posted on the conference website, with those seeking papers noted as such, and we will be updating the website regularly as deadlines approach.
For individual paper submissions: please indicate if you are submitting for a specific panel that's been listed as still seeking papers, or, rather, for the conference in general. Papers submitted for specific panels will be routed to those panels' organizers/chairs for review, but, another hoped-for advantage in this year's submission system is that if a good paper is submitted for a specific panel that, in the meantime, has already filled, the conference committee can still accept the paper and place it on different panel, so as to include it in the conference. Likewise, individual papers that have been submitted for the conference generally and been accepted will also be placed on panels with like papers, as organized by the conference committee.
Please note the below list of panels is partial and will be updated regularly.
Completed Panels (as of August 20, 2026)
Vanderlyn Revisited
Chair: Todd Larkin, Montana State University
These three panels various aspects of the life and work of the artist John Vanderlyn (1776-1852), focusing on his resourcefulness in negotiating patronage, production, reception, and marketing challenges in France and the United States, as well as other matters related to his work.
Dancing across Borders and Oceans: Intercity Steps
Chair: Lynn Matluck Brooks, Franklin and Marshall College
Eighteenth-century European and American cities were places of movement: goods, modes of transport, people, ideas, and behaviors all traveled within and among these many and varied cities, crossing borders and oceans to appear and intermix in new environments, urban and otherwise. This panel tours through cities of France, England, and North America (spilling beyond those bounds in some cases) to reveal the people who danced -- dancing masters, social dancers, professional stage performers, workers and elites, and the movements and dance forms they practiced.
Stars, Sand, and Streets: New Ways of Looking, New Ways to See (Roundtable Session)
Chair: Marilynn S. Olson, Texas State University
This roundtable session featuring five speakers will address how a variety of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century artists and writers, such as Vivant Denon, Marcellus Laroon, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Bernard de Fontenelle considered and valued views of both the night sky and more local, earthbound views of the London cityscape and the world beyond.
Dancing Sociability: Eighteenth-Century Ballroom
Dance Session Panel
Chair: Ambre Emory-Maier, University of Hartford
The country dance (contredanse, contradanza) was one of the key dance types demonstrating the nature of "sociability" in the ballroom and with influences beyond that domain. Through this session, participants gain preliminary experience from selected eighteenth-century dances' steps, floor patterns, and social engagements. Absolutely no dance experience is required or expected. All are welcome to come and encouraged to join!
Note: This session will be accompanied by violinist Christopher Brook with assistance by Lynn Matluck Brooks and Amanda Moehlenpagh.
Panels Still Seeking Papers (as of August 20, 2026)
Asia in the Eighteenth Century
Chair: Susan Spencer, University of Central Oklahoma
This panel will explore what was happening in the Eastern hemisphere during the long eighteenth century (c. 1650-1830). All disciplines are welcome.
Cultural Exchanges Circulating in the Arts and Politics in the Eighteenth Century
Chair: Linda Reesman, Queensborough Community College and Hofstra University
This panel will consider salons and other sites of circulation as intellectual centers and "cultural crossroads" in the eighteenth century. All proposals addressing the broad theme of the panel will be considered.
Currents of Empire Beyond the Metropole: the Circulation of News, Ideas, and Commodities In the 'Decentralized' British Atlantic
Chair: Brett McInelly, Brigham Young University
This panel will examine various forms of exchange between the British Metropole and its Colonies in the Long Eighteenth Century, with particular attention to matters not directly related to (or overseen by) the metropole.
The Eighteenth-Century Book Trade(s)
Chair: Catherine Parisian, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
This panel invites proposals from scholars working on any aspect of the eighteenth-century book trade. Proposals on manuscript circulation and other forms of textual exchange beyond print will also be considered.
Expansive Pedagogies: Innovative Approaches to Teaching the Long 18th Century
Chair: Ashley Bender, Texas Woman’s University
This panel is open to proposals that address all aspects of teaching the Long Eighteenth century.
Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
Chair: Jay Curlin, Ouachita Baptist University
Papers on any aspect of Johnson's Lives of the Poets will be considered.
Trading on 18th Century in the 20th and 21st Centuries
Chair: Catherine Parisian, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
This panel invites scholars to consider popular representations of the eighteenth century in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Papers may focus on adaptations (film, print, or other media) of eighteenth-century works, exhibitions of eighteenth-century works, reproductions of eighteenth-century artifacts, 20th and 21st-century texts (written or otherwise) set in the eighteenth century, or merchandise related to 18th-century works (ie. Jane Austen tea towels etc.).
Vanderlyn Revisited, II
Chair: Todd Larkin, Montana State University
Per the above, session II on the artist John Vanderlyn is seeking one additional paper: proposals addressing any subject that deals with the artist John Vanderlyn (1776-1852) will be considered.
NB: The below panels include just a few of the possibilities being developed by the conference organizers. The list is not exhaustive of all panels being planned for the conference and will also be regularly updated.
The North American Southwest in the Long Eighteenth Century
Chair: TBA
As the title suggests, this panel is open to paper proposals that consider any aspect of the North American Southwest region as it existed during the long eighteenth century, defined capaciously to include the modern US states of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas, the modern Mexican states of Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, Baja California, Baja California Sur, and other associated borderland areas.
Sedona Ain't Nothing New: Alternate Identities in the New and Old Worlds
Chair: TBA
This panel is open to paper proposals that consider all manner of different and/or novel identities that existed or came into being around the eighteenth-century world.
Traveling Philosophers and Philosophy(ies)
Chair: TBA
This panel is open to paper proposals that consider either the literal travels of eighteenth-century philosophers and how such travels influenced their work, or how the movement of philosophical ideas across borders tended to transform those ideas.
Canonical Poets
Chair: TBA
New approaches to major eighteenth-century poets and poetry, including questions of canon formation, reception, influence, and interpretation.
Non-Canonical Poets
Chair: TBA
Poets beyond the established canon, from overlooked or forgotten published writers to manuscript poets whose work survives in archives, commonplace books, correspondence, and other records.
The Global City
Chair: TBA
Cities as sites of encounter, exchange, mobility, diversity, and cultural or intellectual circulation across the eighteenth-century world.
Crossroads and Borders
Chair: TBA
Borders, borderlands, crossroads, and other spaces where peoples, cultures, ideas, objects, and identities met and interacted.
Between the Sands and the Stars
Chair: TBA
Eighteenth-century encounters with deserts, skies, astronomy, exploration, and the imaginative spaces between the terrestrial and celestial.
Neoclassicism
Chair: TBA
Approaches to neoclassicism across eighteenth-century literature, art, architecture, material culture, aesthetics, and intellectual life.
The Gothic (Architecture and Art, as well as Literature)
Chair: TBA
The Gothic in its many eighteenth-century manifestations, from literature and aesthetics to architecture, art, landscape, and material culture.
Romanticism
Chair: TBA
Papers might consider the origins, development, and varieties of Romanticism within the broader context of the long eighteenth century.
Trends and Fashion
Chair: TBA
Changing fashions, tastes, styles, and trends in dress, material culture, literature, art, behavior, and social life offer possibilities for this panel.
Food and Festivities
Chair: TBA
Food and drink, dining and sociability, celebrations, entertainments, festivals, and other forms of eighteenth-century festivity.
Empire and Encounter
Chair: TBA
Colonialism, diplomacy, trade, conquest, resistance, and cross-cultural encounters throughout the eighteenth-century world.
Travel and Travelers
Chair: TBA
Travel and mobility in their many forms, including tourism, exploration, the Grand Tour, pilgrimage, scientific expeditions, forced movement, and travel writing.
Print, Books, and Readers
Chair: TBA
Books and periodicals, authors and publishers, libraries and booksellers, and the production, circulation, and consumption of print in the long eighteenth century.
Performance and Spectacle
Chair: TBA
Theater, opera, music, dance, public entertainments, ceremonies, exhibitions, and other forms of performance and spectacle.
Nature and the Environment
Chair: TBA
Eighteenth-century engagements with landscape, climate, natural history, gardens, agriculture, animals, and the changing natural world.
Religion and Belief
Chair: TBA
Religious practice and belief, theology and devotion, skepticism and toleration, conversion and missions, and encounters among religious traditions.
Science, Medicine, and the Enlightenment
Chair: TBA
Scientific and medical knowledge, practices, discoveries, institutions, and debates in the eighteenth century and the broader Enlightenment.
Objects and Material Culture
Chair: TBA
The objects of eighteenth-century life, including commodities, collections, luxury goods, furnishings and interiors, decorative arts, consumption, and the meanings people attached to things.
Don't see anything here that fits your idea, or see a panel here that you'd really like to chair? Contact Professor Ramsey at ramseyct@appstate.edu and tell him what's on your mind!
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