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                                But who can paint

    Like Nature?  Can imagination boast,

      Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?

  

     James Thomson, "Spring" (1728)

 

The Nature of Knowledge:
Eighteenth-Century Engagements with the Natural World

Papers are invited on The Nature of Knowledge in the Eighteenth Century, the topic of the Nineteenth Annual DeBartolo Conference on Eighteenth-Century Studies, which will meet 17-19 February 2005 in Tampa, Florida.  The 2005 conference will feature presentations by distinguished scholars Margaret C. Jacob, Professor of History at UCLA, Julia Douthwaite, Professor of French at Notre Dame, and Pat Rogers, DeBartolo Professor in the Liberal Arts at the University of South Florida. 

As evidenced by key works ranging from Robinson Crusoe to the writings of Rousseau, nature was a constant preoccupation of the eighteenth-century imagination. But what, exactly, was this thing called nature? It manifested itself as friend and foe, as agency and actor, as external environment and inner state. It was demonic, angelic, helpful, hurtful, inevitable, alterable, frustrating and ultimately fascinating. For if nature was a constant, it was not a given: indeed, the nature of Nature might arguably be the central question of the Enlightenment. The semantic overlay itself nominates the intellectual problem, which emerged from the very insufficiency of words to capture its essence. Thus the Encyclopédie listed six separate entries for “nature,” as derived from philosophy, physics, mythology, poetry, theology, and aesthetics, but merely ended up dissecting the word into a tidy series, leaving nature itself intact.

Papers are invited that explore the eighteenth-century preoccupation with Nature, and particularly the problem of fully comprehending Nature as a corollary effect of the epistemological limits of human knowledge. Topics might include but are not limited to:

*  Picture Theory: Nature as Landscape  *  Gender: Maternal Nature; Sexual nature; Nature-as-woman and woman-as-Nature  *  Quest: The end of Wilderness; the voyages of Captain Cook  *  Origins: The myth of l’enfant sauvage; the search for the noble savage  *  Encyclopedism: Buffon and L’histoire naturelle  *  Representation: Scientific illustration  *  Politics: the three kingdoms of nature; colonialism and the conquest of nature  *  Collections: Cabinets and Wunderkammern

The DeBartolo Conference is an annual meeting devoted to the interdisciplinary treatment of a theme in eighteenth-century studies.  It follows a single-session, discussion-oriented format; consequently we are interested in scholars who are willing to share their research and to participate in the ongoing discussion. 

We invite single presentation abstracts or complete panels with individual abstracts for each paper.  Abstracts should be approximately 500 words in length; in addition to the abstract, we ask that individuals include the following: an e-mail address, as well as a snail mail address, at which they may be reached during the Fall of 2004; any expected audio-visual needs (including special software needs); and academic affiliation (if applicable).

 

Due date for submissions: September 30, 2004

 

Dr. Laura Runge, DeBartolo Conference Director

Department of English / University of South Florida 

4202 E Fowler Avenue, CPR 107/Tampa, FL 33620-5550

Fax: (813) 974-2270 · runge@chuma.cas.usf.edu · www.cas.usf.edu/english/debartolo

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