CFP: Cultural Studies/Eighteenth-Century Studies in the Classroom (MLA ‘07)

Laura R. and I are putting together this Special Session Panel for MLA, and still have some open slots for our roundtable.

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Cultural Studies/Eighteenth-Century Studies in the Classroom 

How has cultural studies changed teaching of the long (and wide) eighteenth century?  What are the challenges, limits, and institutional stakes of cultural studies for our research and teaching?  What happens when research agendas do not align with curricular programs?

In the last twenty years, the eclectic mix of practices featured in cultural studies has become broadly institutionalized in eighteenth-century studies: in our publications, graduate seminars, and conference presentations, but also in textbooks like the
Bedford cultural editions and in course designs that accommodate both theory and “culture.”  Changes of this sort reflect a key assumption about teaching in higher education, which demands that the paradigms that govern our research projects should also determine, if indirectly, the paradigms taught to our students.

And yet cultural studies, to the extent that it has absorbed Marxism, feminism, Foucauldean discourse analysis, and the multicultural critiques and counter-critiques of the literary canon, sits uneasily within an undergraduate curriculum based on concepts, categories, and distinctions that cultural studies has systematically questioned: the distinction between literature and popular culture; conventional periodizations; national boundaries and the nation-state as the fundamental lines of demarcation for literary history; and all the notions of “coverage” that those distinctions entail.What kinds of problems and tensions does this gap produce and/or reveal?  What is the best strategy for addressing them in the classroom, in the curriculum, and in our institutions?While focused on the way we teach eighteenth-century writing in English and foreign language departments, these questions have relevance across a range of traditional fields.  We are envisioning a roundtable discussion of 5-6 participants, with brief papers followed by discussion.  If you are interested in participating, please submit a 1 paragraph proposal with CV by March 29 to David Mazella, at dmazella@uh.edu.

DM

After Atlanta: Scandal, Print, Performance, and Nation

In February several of us at the University of Maryland blogged about Maxine Berg (and David Hume) on luxury and commodity culture in anticipation and as follow-up to the meeting of our reading group. Several others contributed as well. This time, I am posting the topic and reading in advance to encourage everyone to join us in this discussion.

Scandal, Print, Performance, and Nation

In 1777, Sheridan’s *School for Scandal* became a hit on the London stage.  As a play about print culture, *School for Scandal* stands at the crossroads of two major arguments about the emergence of nationalism at the end of the eighteenth century.  In his classic *Imagined Communities,* Benedict Anderson argues that print capitalism in this period established and disseminated a new sense of national identity.  Challenging this perspective, Joseph Roach has argued for looking to performance as a more capacious medium that allows for an understanding of a wider variety of nationalisms.  The plot of *Scandal* hinges on both inherited Englishness and imperial spoils; on scandal sheets and scandalous performances. Please join us for a discussion of this play and these two major critical paradigms on Monday, April 9, 3:30-5:30, SQH 3109, University of Maryland.

Critical Readings:

1. Joseph Roach’s *Cities of the Dead* (1996): p. 1-31 (intro), Ch 3, and Ch 4
2. Benedict Anderson’s *Imagined Communities* (1991): p. 1-46 (the intro + chs 1-2)

We look forward to your thoughts on this topic.