CAUCUSES
Tartars Playing Polo. Kano Eisen’in Furunobu, early 18th Century. Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk. Metropolitan Museum of Art
Caucuses offer members the opportunity to share ideas and strategies to further the goals of the society. Caucuses receive two guaranteed sessions at the Annual Meeting, and can reserve a meeting room there free of charge. Feel free to contact caucus coordinators or the Business Office (asecsoffice@gmail.com) for further details.
Please send caucus updates to director@asecs.org or fill out the form at the bottom of the page. Thanks!
Digital Humanities Caucus
Co-chairs: Kelly Plante and Karenza Sutton-Bennett (asecsdh@gmail.com)
If you wish to be added to the DH Caucus email list, please contact Co-chairs Kelly and Karenza and the.ladys.museum at gmail.com.
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2026 Annual Meeting Sessions
Panel: We’re Going to See the Wizard: LLMs, Machine Learning, and Digital Humanities Projects [ID 46]
Roundtable: DH DIY: What do we do when we’re all we’ve got? [ID 45]
Disability Studies Caucus
Est. 2013
Co-chairs: Paul Kelleher (pkelleh@emory.edu) and Leslie Thulin (lthulin@g.ucla.edu)
2026 Annual Meeting Sessions
Panel: Proto-Disability Justice in the Eighteenth Century [ID 43]
Roundtable: The Joys of Disability in the Eighteenth Century [ID 44]
Graduate Student and Early Career Scholars Caucus (GECC)
Co-chairs: Shruti Jain (sjain15@binghamton.edu) and Pamela Ahern (pahern@udel.edu)
2026 Annual Meeting Sessions
Panel: What can the Eighteenth Century do? [ID 57]
Roundtable: Teaching the Eighteenth Century [ID 59]
Learn more
The Graduate Student Caucus of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) organizes panels of professional and scholarly interest, runs a mentoring program to connect graduate students with scholars, awards a mentoring prize each year to recognize outstanding faculty, and generally promotes the “next generation” of eighteenth-century scholars.
N.B. The 2nd year co-chair of GECC serves as the graduate student member of ASECS’ Executive Board.
Italian Studies Caucus
Chair: Irene Zanini-Cordi
(izaninicordi@fsu.edu)
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Italian literature and culture in the Long Eighteenth Century emerge from a variety of fields of knowledge and are particularly nourished by art, archeology, music, theatre, religion, philosophy, linguistics, politics, history, medicine, and the sciences. Eighteenth-century Italian literary and cultural history is also intrinsically tied to developments in other European states and beyond, and one of our aims is to shine a brighter light on those rich connections. True to the kaleidoscopic nature and spirit of intellectual curiosity in this period, the Italian Studies Caucus is interdisciplinary and inclusive. We welcome all scholars of the eighteenth century, and we foster intellectual exchange and collaboration. Our objective is to create a lively community and network of scholars engaged in exploring diverse facets of Italian eighteenth-century culture from a spectrum of disciplines and perspectives.
At the ASECS annual conference we regularly sponsor two guaranteed panels and come together socially. No membership is required: if you are interested in being added to our mailing list, please fill out the short Google form below, or send an email to izaninicordi@fsu.edu.
2026 Annual Meeting Sessions
Panel: Eighteenth Century Italy and the “American Experiment” [ID 54]
Panel: Libertinage, Italian Style [ID 55]
Irish Studies Caucus
Chair: Scott Breuninger
(breuningersc@vcu.edu)
2026 Annual Meeting Sessions
Panel: Irish Writing and the Circulation of Ideas in the Early Atlantic [ID 41]
Roundtable: Moving to the “Dark Side” II: Transitioning from Academics to Administration [ID 40]
New Lights Forum
(Previously the Cultural Studies Caucus)
Co-chairs: Jennifer Vanderheyden
(jennifer.vanderheyden@marquette.edu)
Adam Schoene
(adam.schoene@mail.mcgill.ca )
If you would like to join the New Lights Forum caucus, please email the co-chairs or the Executive Director Benita Blessing (director@asecs.org).
2026 Annual Meeting Sessions
Roundtable: Justice and Moral Cupidity: Does greed couched under the guise of morality override Justice? [ID 64]
Pedagogy Caucus
Chair: Linda Troost
(ltroost@washjeff.edu)
The Pedagogy Caucus supports scholarship on current and historical teaching.
If you are interested in being added to the mailing list, please fill out the form below, or email the Pedagogy Caucus Chair or the Executive Director (director@asecs.org).
2026 Annual Meeting Sessions
Poster Session: Teaching the Eighteenth Century
Queer and Trans Caucus
Co-chairs: Ziona Kocher
(zkocher@vols.utk.edu)
Noah Chaskin
(hmchaskin@u.northwestern.edu)
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ASECS’s Queer and Trans Caucus emerged in 2021 out of its former iteration, the Gay and Lesbian Caucus, which was established in 1993. This name change reflects our continued scholastic, political, and pedagogical values as we approach the historical study of sexuality, gender, and desire as plural, porous, ever-evolving categories and metrics that necessitate regular re-calibration. The caucus aims to develop an interdisciplinary approach to the long eighteenth century that re-evaluates the intimacies among categories of gender and categories of sexuality that likewise explore archives that include gender variance and asexual desires. We remain invested in expanding eighteenth-century queer and trans perspectives inside and outside Eurocentric contexts with an eye to cultural and geographic differences that can enrich the study of queerness, transness, and sexuality.
If you are interested in being added to the mailing list, please fill out the form below, or email the Queer and Trans Caucus Co-Chairs or the Executive Director (director@asecs.org).
2026 Annual Meeting Sessions
Panel: We Are Family: Queer Community and Friendship in the 18th Century [ID 35]
Roundtable: “But how can you know?”: Queer and Trans Methodologies in Eighteenth-Century Studies [ID 32]
Race and Empire Caucus
Co-Chairs: Allison Cardon
allison.l.cardon@gmail.com
Peter DeGabriele
pdegab@english.msstate.edu
The annual Race and Empire Graduate Student Essay Prize is due July 15, 2025.
If you are interested in being added to the mailing list, please email the Caucus chair.
2026 Annual Meeting Sessions
Roundtable: Strategic Pedagogies of Race & Empire [ID 28]
Roundtable: The U.S. Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 [ID 29]
Science Studies Caucus
Chairs: Anita Guerrini
(anita.guerrini@oregonstate.edu)
2026 Annual Meeting Sessions
Panel: Revolutionary Science [ID 51]
Roundtable: Philadelphia Funding and Research Resources in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (and beyond!) [ID 53]
Society for Eighteenth-Century French Studies (SECFS)/Société d’études françaises du XVIIIe siècle
Co-chairs: Masano Yamashita
(Masano.Yamashita@colorado.edu) Flora Champy
(fchampy@princeton.edu)
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The Society for Eighteenth-Century French Studies was founded in 1997 to encourage and advance studies and research in eighteenth-century culture in France and all francophone countries.
If you are interested in being added to the mailing list, please fill out the form below, or email the SECFS Co-Chairs or the Executive Director (director@asecs.org).
2026 Annual Meeting Sessions
Panel: La construction des catégories du masculin/féminin au cours du long dix-huitième siècle [ID 11]
Panel: Troubler les Lumières: corps, relation et histoire [ID 31]
Theater and Performance Caucus
Co-chairs: Angelina Del Balzo
(angelinadelbalzo@gmail.com) Francesca Saggini (francesca.saggini@googlemail.com)
General Contact: asecstaps@gmail.com, or reach out directly to our co-chairs
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The Theatre and Performance Caucus aims to bridge disciplines and geographies, bringing together scholars from the diverse fields mentioned above with the goal of deepening our understanding of Restoration and eighteenth-century performance culture through collaboration and the exchange of ideas from different scholarly perspectives and methodologies. Now moving into its fourth year of existence, the TaPS caucus is working on establishing a graduate student paper prize and hosting a performance event at the annual meeting.
2026 Annual Meeting Sessions
Panel: Farce: Why that? Why then? Why now? [ID 26]
Panel: Getting Technical: Practice as Research in 18th-century Performance Studies [ID 27]
Donate to the Theatre and Performance Caucus Graduate Student Essay Prize
Women’s Caucus
Co-chairs: Elizabeth Porter
(lizporter27@gmail.com)
Rachel Gevlin
(gevlinra@vcu.edu)
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The Women’s Caucus grew out of efforts in the mid-seventies to ensure equitable representation of women and women’s concerns within ASECS. In its more than forty-year history, it has served as a forum for discussing topics related to women in the field of 18th-century studies and for evaluating the status of women in the profession.
2026 Annual Meeting Sessions
Panel: Women’s Work and the Age of Revolutions (sponsored by the Women’s Caucus) [ID 47]
Roundtable: The Gig You Didn’t Know Existed [ID 49]