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. 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!

Disability Studies Caucus

Co-chairs: Annika Mann and Emily Stanback

Digital Humanities Caucus

Graduate Student and Early Career Scholars Caucus

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.

Italian Studies Caucus

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 send an email to izaninicordi@fsu.edu  

Irish Caucus

Pedagogy Caucus

Queer and Trans Caucus

Co-chairs: Jeremy Chow & M.A. Miller (2021-2023)

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 recalibration. 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.

Race and Empire Caucus

Science Studies Caucus

Co-chairs: Al Coppola, Anita Guerrini, and Helen Thompson

Society for Eighteenth-Century French Studies

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.

Theatre and Performance Caucus

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 third year of existence, the TaPS caucus is working on establishing a graduate student paper prize and hosting a performance event at the annual meeting. 

Women’s Caucus 

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.

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