Seminar Series

 
The Centre organises regular seminars throughout the academic year, usually on a Thursday 5pm-7pm. For details of the latest seminar series, please read the 'Eighteenth Century Seminar' webpages on the main History website. Listed below are previous seminars:

Seminar Series 2011/12

• 13 October 2011- 'Enlightenment & Empire', Richard Whatmore (Sussex University)
• 22 November 2011- 'Defining Corruption', Mark Philp (Oxford)
• 24 November 2011- 'A Tale of an Upstart: William Hutton of Birmingham 1723-1815', Susan Whyman
• 1 December 2011-'The money I had, I got some of it by work and some of it by gentlemen that gave it to me' Provincial Prostitution and Casual Employment in Port Cities in the Eighteenth Century, Maria Pluskota (Leicester)
• 19 December 2011 -'Are Americans paranoid?: Global Conspiracy (1797-98) and the Crisis of the Cultural Capital' Steve Shapiro (Warwick)
• 1st February 2012- Visual Cultures Workshop with Professor Dror Wahrman (Indiana), Dr Hanneke Grootenboer (Oxford), Dr Rosie Dias (Warwick) was held See flyer here.
• 9 Feb 2012- 'Paddy in London: Staging the Irish in the 18th Century', David O'Shaughnessy (Warwick)
• 1 March 2012- 'Café or Coffeehouse? Transnational Histories of Coffee and Sociability', Joint meeting with Global Seminar- Brian Cowan (McGill)
• Thursday 6-9 March 2012, Gillian Russell (Australian National University)- visting IAS Fellow, sponsored by the C18th Centre with the following sessions:

1. ‘Botany Bay Theatricals: Theatre History and the Imagining of Australia, 1796-2011’ [6 March, public lecture, 5 for 5.30, Capital Centre, Milburn House]
2. Colloquium for Warwick staff, PhD students and postdocs in the Wolfson Research Exchange 'Revolutionary Drama' [8 March] Wolfson Research Exchange, Seminar Room 1, Library, 1-4pm.
3. 'Romantic Public Cultures' workshop [9 March] Please register with Jon Mee

Seminar Series 2010/11

• A series of Mellon workshops, 'Connections, Convergences and Disjuncture - the Joint Histories of Seventeenth-Century and Eighteenth Century England/Britain and English/British America, 1650-1750', took place on 5th November 2010, 25th March 2011, and 10th-23rd July 2011. The overall aim of the series of workshops was to arrive at a genuine collaboration between established scholars and postgraduates/early postdoctoral researchers in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century English/British and British American history. The workshops will explore how Early Modern English, British and British American history can be reunited.

Seminar Series 2009/10

• 22nd October 2009, 'American Exceptionalism, American Imperialism: The Imperial Turn in Early American History', Professor Trevor Bernard (Warwick)
• 19th November 2009, '"The Nature and Role of Traders": Letters in the Long Eighteenth Century', Professor Pat Hudson (Cardiff)
• 21st January 2010, joint session with the Early Modern Seminar, 'The Cult of Seduction: Lust and Gender in English Culture 1600-1800', Dr Fara Dabhiowala (Oxford)
• 4th February 2010, 'Revolutionaries in Paris: Paine and Jefferson, 1787-1792', Professor Mark Philp (Oxford)
• 4th March 2010, visiting IAS Fellow seminar, 'The First Knowledge Economy: How Technological Change and Economic Development in the British Coal Industry Happened', Professor Margaret Jacob (UCLA)
• 13th May 2010, visiting IAS Fellow seminar and a joint session with the Global History Seminar followed by a drinks reception, 'Travels into Print: Writing Exploration c.1780-1850', Professor Charles Withers (Edinburgh)

Seminar Series 2006/07

• 11th October 2006, 'The sex of human capital: skill and women's occupations in 18th-century London', Dr Amy Erickson (Cambridge)
• 25th October 2006, 'Silk-making: A Domain of Women', Dr Claudio Zanier (Pisa, EHESS, Paris)
• 22nd November 2006, special departmental seminar, 'In search of selfhood: Mass-Observation diarists and the meaning of life', Professor James Hinton (Warwick)
• 6th December 2006, 'Lucky Lottery Tickets: Calculating and Conjuring in Eighteenth-Century England', Dr Natasha Glaisyer (York)
• 17th January 2007, 'Newton on the beach - the global information order of Principia Mathematica', Dr Simon Schaffer (Cambridge)
• 31st January 2007, 'Pre-modern Economics: The logic of the Indian economy in the 18th Century', Dr David Washbrook (Oxford)
• 28th February 2007, 'Redisplaying the Ceramic Collections at the Victoria & Albert Museum', Dr Hilary Young (V&A)
• 14th March 2007, '"Outline maps of knowledge": John Aikin's geographical imagination', Professor Stephen Daniels (Nottingham/ AHRC Landscape Programme)
• 2nd May 2007, Reading Group on Natalie Zemon Davis' Trickster Travels (2006), Professor William Gervase Clarence-Smith (SOAS, London)

Seminar Series 2005/06

• 5th October 2005, 'Lodging at the Old Bailey: Lodgings and their Furnishings in the 18^th Century', Professor John Styles (Hertfordshire)
• 19th October 2005, 'Antoine Watteau’s Drawings of the Persian Embassy of 1715', Dr Alicia Weisberg-Roberts (Warwick)
• 21st October 2005, Field Trip to the Enlightenment Galleries at the British Museum and Sir John Soane’s Museum, London
• 16th November 2005, 'Liqueurs, luxury and chemical legitimacy in eighteenth-century Paris', Dr Emma Spary (Cambridge)
• 30th November 2005, 'Reading Group on Empire and Collecting' - a Discussion of Maya Jasanoff, 'Edge of Empire. Conquest and Collecting in the East 1750-1950' (Fourth Estate, London, 2005), Ms Sarah Easterby-Smith (Warwick)
• 11th January 2006, 'Specs and the Single Man: An Artisan Fashions Himself c. 1769', Dr Lawrence Klein (Emmanuel College, Cambridge)
• 25th January 2006, 'The international trade in velvets in India, Turkey, Iran and Italy, ca. 1590-1700', Rosemary Crill (V & A Museum)
• 22nd February 2006, 'Trompe-l'oeil and trauma: money and memory after the Terror', Dr Richard Taws (University College London)
• 8th March 2006, 'Perceptions of Rome on the Grand Tour', Dr Rosemary Sweet (University of Leicester)

Seminar Series 2004/05

• 6th October 2004, 'Historians and Exhibitions', a panel discussion led by Sir John Elliot and Dr Helen Clifford
• 20th October 2004, a trip to the 'Encounters' exhibition at the V&A
• 17th November 2004, 'Immoderate and Excessive Corrections: Manslaughter and the discipline of Servants in Late Eighteenth Century British India', Professor Sudipta Sen (University of California)
• 1st December 2004, 'Walking the Streets of Eighteenth Century London', Dr Giorgio Riello (LSE)
• 12th January 2005, 'British Trade with Spanish America 1763-1808: Routes, Vehicles, Value', Dr Adrian Pearce (Warwick)
• 26th January 2005, discussion on Margot Finn's publication 'The character of credit'
• 9th March 2005, a group discussion of Dror Warhman's 'The Making of the Modern Self' and John Brewer's 'A Sentimental Murder'
• 11th May 2005, a trip to Compton Verney

 
Workshops

• 26th June 2009, University of Warwick, 'Globalising the Age of Reform, c.1780-1850: Varieties of Reform in Britain and the British Empire'.
• 3rd-4th June 2009, 'Sciences and Capital Cities: Revisiting the Public Sphere of Knowledge', organised by Dr Stephane Van Damme, European University Institute, Florence
• 14th May 2009, 'Economies of Improvement: Technological Innovation, Science and the Public Sphere in the Eighteenth Century', organised by Dr Marie Thebaud-Sorger of the Marie Curie (FP7), and the Economic History Society.
• 24th-25th March 2009, 'The Lure of Italy', organised by Professor Jacqueline Labbe with the Clark Library, at the Warwick Venice Centre.
• 20th-21st June 2008, Maison Francaise, Oxford, 'Centres of Enlightenment in Global Context'.
• 9th-10th June 2008, Berlin, 'Forms of Artistic Expertise in Europe: Actors, Practices and Objects'.
• 20th March 2008, Venice, 'Mexico and the Enlightenment'.
• 7th-9th July 2004, Panel at the Anglo-American Conference on Wealth and Poverty 'Global Origins of Wealth between East and West'
• 10th July 2004, London, 'A Commerce with Strangers: Trade and Technology between East and West'
• 4th June 2004, Paris, 'Minorities and Technical Exchange in Europe and Asia'
• 8th July 2003, Elizabeth Eger workshop session, 'The Fabulous Transformations of Luxury in the Capital: John Gay’s Trivia: Or the Art of Walking the Streets of London'. See Bibliography
• 4th July 2003, 'Useful Knowledge: A Discussion of Joel Mokyr's The Gifts of Athena (Princeton 2002)'
• 27th May 2003, Paris, 'Promoting and Advertising Invention: Sources and Texts'

 
Visiting Fellows

• Professor Steven C A Pincus (Chair, Council on European Studies, Department of History, Yale University, USA) was an IAS Visiting Fellow for a week in February 2011. During his time at Warwick he gave a public lecture on the theme of the 'Origins of the British Empire', a seminar on 'Party Politics, Political Economy and Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century', and participated in a workshop about 'Political Economy and Empire'. co-organised with the Trading Eurasia project.
• In June 2007, Professor Ann Smart Martin from the University of Wisconsin visited the Centre to lead a seminar in order to expand the Centre’s expertise in the field of material culture. Professor Martin works in the interdisciplinary mode of material culture analysis. Her current research focuses on how ideas of craft practice and aesthetics can be joined with ideas of consumerism, luxury, and pleasure to look at decorative arts objects in the world of goods.
• Professor Margaret Jacob (distinguished Professor of History, UCLA), sponsored by Professor Jackie Labbe (English), Professor Jacob visited from 28th February to 8th March 2010 with a programme of events and workshops affiliated to this and other research centres.
• Professor Charles Withers (Professor of Historical Geography, University of Edinburgh), sponsored by Professor Karen O'Brien (english). Professor Withers visited from 3rd to 14th May 2010with a programme of events, including:
  • 7th May 2010, 'Spaces of Knowledge-Making in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries', a workshop at Compton Verney open to all Warwick arts, humanities and sociology postgraduates and postdocs featuring sessions lead by Professor Withers, Dr Renaud Morieux (University of Lille), Dr Clare Anderson (Warwick), Dr Rosemarie Dias.
  • 13th May 2010, public lecture entitled 'Writing Exploration: Travels into Print c.1780-1850'

 
Conferences

• The Lure of Foundations and Experiences of Mobility: The Making of Jesuit Spaces in the Early Modern period - 19-20 October 2007 
  Organised by Pierre-Antoine Fabre, Antonella Romano, Stéphane Van Damme Maison Française d’Oxford
  Ceramics Day at Waddesdon Manor (22 June 2007) Programme
  Craft and World Commerce (8 July 2005, The British Academy)
  Participants included: Dr Liliane Hilaire-Perez (Paris), Professor Maxine Berg, Dr Andrew Sherratt (Ashmolean Museum), and a team from Waddesdon Manor - Ms. Pippa Shirley and colleagues.
• Archives and Invention (26-27 May 2003, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris)
  Research Interchange Panel on 'Advertisement and Invention'
  Chairs: Colin Jones and Natacha Coquery
  Speakers: Christine Velut,Dena Goodman, Sarah Richards, Dominique Massonnie & Liliane Hilaire-Perez, Luca Mola, Morag Martin, Katie Scott, Helen Clifford and Maxine Berg
• Warwick-CNAM Workshop: Useful Knowledge (4 July 2003, London)
  A discussion of Joel Mokyr's The Gifts of Athena. Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy
  Held at 'Warwick in London' 4 July 2003
  Invitation Only Symposium
  Speakers: Joel Mokyr, Larry Stewart, Liliane Hilaire-Perez, Patricia Brett, Robert Fox and Anna Guaguine, Nigel Thrift, Anne Puetz, Kristine Bruland, Robert Allen
• The Commerce of Art and Invention (5 July 2002, London)
  A one day workshop at ‘Warwick in London’, 11 Tufton St, SW1
  The workshop brought together the Warwick Art and Industry Project, which finished in 2002, and the new Warwick-CNAM, Paris Research Interchange on Cultures of Commerce and Invention 1550-1850. It consisted of short papers; enough time enabled to develop a lively and productive discussion. See Programme
• Woman and Luxury Programme (7 July 2000, Radcliffe House, University of Warwick)
  Organised by Karen O’Brien and Elizabeth Eger (University of Warwick). See Programme