INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIESSOCIÉTÉ INTERNATIONALE D’ÉTUDEDU DIX-HUITIÈME SIÈCLE

International Seminar for Early Career
Eighteenth-Century Scholars

Séminaire international des jeunes
Dix-huitiémistes

Silence in eighteenth-century arts, history and philosophy

2018 ISECS Seminar for Early Career Scholars
Silence in eighteenth-century arts, history and philosophy
Università della Tuscia, Viterbo, 10–14 September 2018
Proposals due by 30 January 2018
The International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS) is pleased to announce the2018 International Seminar for Early Career Eighteenth-Century Scholars. Colleagues fromall fields of eighteenth-century studies are invited to submit abstracts for this one-week
event. Formerly called the East-West Seminar, the International Seminar for Early Career
Eighteenth-Century Scholars brings together young researchers from a number of countries
each year. The 2018 meeting will take place in Viterbo, Italy and will be organized by Prof.
Francesca Saggini and the Dipartimento di studi linguistico-letterari, storico-filosofici e
giuridici – DISTU.
The seminar will be held from Monday, September 10 to Friday, September 14, 2018 inViterbo, under the direction of Francesca Saggini (English Literature, Tuscia), with Antonella
Del Prete (History of Philosohy, Tuscia), Paolo Procaccioli (Italian Literature, Tuscia),
Saverio Ricci (History of Philosophy and Intellectual History, Tuscia), Gino Roncaglia(Digital Humanities, Tuscia). The seminar’s focus on praxis will give early career scholars theopportunity to work closely with these specialists, individually or in small groups, during
workshops devoted to theoretical issues, bibliographic research and research methodologies.
More specific training opportunities will include know-how sessions and discussions on
professionalisation (getting published, the activities and publications most valued byemployers in the education sector, the peer-review system), digital methods, editorial skills.
The seminar will also be an opportunity to engage with international scholars who will
present their research in areas cognate to the Seminar Aims and Themes: Prof. Rosamaria
Loretelli (Emerita, Napoli Federico II/Vice-President ISECS), Prof. Peter Sabor (McGill
University, Montréal), and Dr. Anne Toner (Trinity College, University of Cambridge).
The 2018 ISECS International Seminar for Early Career Scholars will engage discussions on
the forms, representations and modalities of silence in the eighteenth century.
Silence, of individuals and cultures, of the physical voice or of the written word andinformation deleted from the page, has historically taken many forms. It may be reticent,dissembling or imposed by others. Voluntary or coerced, it might be the silence of women, ofmarginal social and religious groups, of communities that are denied the right to speak.
There are other silences as well: the interruption of sound in a musical pause and the silenceof religious practices, which speak to, and of, the inner life. All these forms of silence werepresent in the eighteenth century, as they had been throughout history, but perhaps for thefirst time, some of them were singled out for special scrutiny. Works on aesthetics, forexample, investigated the use of silence and the implicit in rhetorical writing, or dwelled onreverie, and how it might be induced in the reader. In rhetoric, attention was paid to
discursive figures and strategies capable of making silence more eloquent than the word.
Conduct books devoted many pages to the art of conversation, emphasising the essential roleof silence to ensure the correctness of social interactions, especially for women, but also forpoliticians. Censorship – whether institutional or self-imposed – also produces silences, as
do the more or less conscious failures of memory found in life writing and in historical
discourse: one need only think of the revisions required to write the history of colonialism,

wars or slavery. Eighteenth-century historiography attempted to remove some of the silences
it found in history, often filling in the lacunae through conjecture. Silence is also represented
in the visual arts and, signally, in the novel, which devised new narrative techniques for thepurpose, whether to evoke the silences in characters’ conversations, and the contexts andlandscapes in which silence reigns (a hallmark of the picturesque, for example), or to leave
the reader in suspense by strategically withholding information. And then there is thetheatre, where after the triumph of pantomime and the illegitimate spectacles that deployed ahybridized combination of body, speech, stage machinery and lighting effects, the century
comes to a close with the rise of melodrama, which replaced the spoken word with music andrevolutionised the notion of acting as the art of speech, while giving new prominence to silent
characters and heroes. Finally, there is the silence that becomes firmly and widely establishedin the eighteenth century through the practice of reading narrative texts for oneself, replacing
the social activity of reading aloud for a group of listeners with a solitary, interiorizedexperience. On these and other silences, on silence in all its forms and meanings in theeighteenth century, the seminar calls for contributions. The theme of the conference, “Silencein eighteenth-century arts, history and philosophy,” must thus be understood in the broadest
terms possible to include:-anonymity
silence, reflection, meditationsocial silence, silence and social interaction
negation: denials, disclaimers, disavowals
silence and secrets
censorship and self-censorship
ellipses, omissions, blank pages, hyphens, asterisks – the typographical and linguistic
modes of silence
ghost chapters (deleted, lost, rewritten)
silenced characters, characters that disappear
quiet spaces: the loci of silence
reading and silencesilence as resistance and rebellion
scripting silence and mutenessthe performativity of silencesilence and the canon
silence and history
silence in relation to cultural memory studies
silence and/as remembrance

A detailed description of this theme (English, French, Italian), with a list of abstracts will beavailable online.{dedicated page to be made accessible in Distu’s homepage}The seminar is limited to 15 participants. The proposals (approx. 3 pages, double-spaced,max 1,000 words) should be based on an original research project (e.g. a doctoraldissertation) which addresses one of the aspects mentioned above. Because this is a seminarrather than a conference, each participant will be given approximately one hour to present
the texts and questions that will then form the basis of a group discussion led in turn by one

of the participants. Preference will be given to scholars who are at the beginning of theiracademic career (ABD; PhD or equivalent for less than six years, including ECRs). The officiallanguages of the seminar are English, Italian, French. Translations of abstracts and various
seminar materials not in English will be made available to participants.
Accommodation costs (Sunday night to Friday night included), lunches and dinners (Monday
dinner to Friday lunch included) will be covered in full by the organizers, who will beresponsible for reserving rooms in the students’ hall of residence. Other travel costs are
currently under evaluation for a grant from the University of Tuscia. If the seminar should
benefit from such funding, transfers from Orte train station (on the Rome-Milan train line)or the Rome airports (Ciampino and Fiumicino) to Viterbo will be covered in full or in part.
In that case, in order for travel expenses to be considered, participants are asked tocoordinate, to the extent possible, their times of arrival and departure, so as to enable grouptransfers to/from Orte train station or the Rome airports .
As is the case each year, the proceedings of the seminar will be published by HonoréChampion (Paris) in the Lumières internationales series.
Applications should include the following information: a brief curriculum vitae with date ofPhD (or equivalent); a list of principal publications and scholarly presentations; a brief
description of the proposed paper (approx. 3 pages, double-spaced, max 1,000 words); andone letter of recommendation. Colleagues are invited to submit proposals by January 31,
2018. Please send abstracts by e-mail to Francesca Saggini: fsaggini@unitus.it, ccing into theconversation Alberta Boschi alberta.boschi@gmail.com . If your email programme supports
the delivery receipt option we encourage you to request delivery receipt. We will attempt tonotify all correspondents before February 28, 2018 regarding the status of their submission.