HIST6730 - Transatlantic Enlightenment

The Trans-Atlantic Enlightenment: Approaches to the Intellectual and Cultural History of the Eighteenth Century

The purpose of this seminar is to introduce graduate students to the key topics, issues, and debates in the 20th- and 21st-century historiography of the Enlightenment in Europe and the Americas. We will do so primarily through extensive reading and discussion of landmark secondary work in this field. We will also pay close attention to the varied approaches and methods by which the history of eighteenth-century thought and culture have been reconstructed and consider the ways these different methods might be put to new uses in future research. No previous knowledge of the period or key texts is assumed, and brief primary sources will also be assigned most weeks in order to make the textual foundations of the secondary literature clearer. Topics for discussion will include, among others, the birth of the intellectual; the idea of the public sphere and commercial development; the history of reading and reception; religious enlightenment and secularism; race, slavery and colonialism; gender politics; the history of the prison and state power; Enlightenment and revolution; and the modern legacy of the Enlightenment project.