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The conference will commence
Thursday 2 October with a reception (featuring
heavy hors d'oeuvres) at 6:30 pm followed by a
plenary panel at 7:30 pm, open to the general
public. "The Lisbon Earthquake:
Overviews" will feature Charles James of the
Earthquake Engineering Research Center (U of Ca,
Berkeley) and Russell Dynes of the Disaster
Research Center (U of Delaware).
Both Friday and Saturday will
have a full schedule of panels from 8:30 am to
5:30 pm. As usual, we will have an exhibit of
books in the field by our members--if you want
your book on display, bring a copy or two with
you to sell or ask your publisher to send a
copy--along with order forms--to the conference
organizer.
Our plenary speaker on Friday
evening after the banquet will be Professor
Robert Markley of the University of Illinois
(Champaign-Urbana), who will speak on links
between Europe and Asia in the eighteenth
century. He is editor of the journal Eighteenth
Century: Theory and Interpretation, one of
the authors of the DVD Red Planet: Scientific
and Cultural Encounters with Mars (U of
Pennsylvania Press), and author of the (more
traditionally formatted) forthcoming book The
Far East and the English Imagination: Fictions of
Eurocentrism (Cambridge UP). His talk will
also be open to the general public.
Saturday will feature Marie
McAllister's presidential address at lunch. In
the evening, the Aural/Oral Experience will
attempt an abbreviated production of John Gay's
famously satirical musical The Beggar's Opera
of 1728. Whether nature or artistry will prevail
in this pick-up production remains to be seen.
Peter Staffel is the one to contact if you wish
to participate as a singer, actor, or song
stylist (pstaffel@earthlink.net).
On Sunday, after the
conference has officially ended, we will visit
Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural marvel,
Fallingwater (optional).
Those who have uncovered
exciting material during summer research may wish
to speak briefly (5-10 minutes) at the informal
session entitled Current Research; or Adventures
in the Archives. Inquiries should go to Jim May
by 15 September (jem4@psu.edu).
Others may wish to bring
assignments to share at the teaching roundtable
(discussion topic for this year: teaching
research methods in undergraduate 18th-century
courses).
Graduate students are
eligible to compete for the Molin Prize for best
paper delivered by a graduate student attending
EC/ASECS. Contact Linda Merians (lemeria@aol.com) for requirements.
All giving papers or chairing
panels must be members of EC/ASECS ($5 students,
$10 regular members; $15 joint membership).
Contact Linda Merians (lemeria@aol.com) about joining.
The University of Pittsburgh at
Greensburg is a small, modern, tasteful
campus on the southeast edge of Greensburg,
Pennsylvania, about 30 miles east of
Pittsburgh. The buildings sit amid 213 acres of
woods, fields, and streams in a suburban valley
at the foot of the Allegheny Mountains.
Greensburg is the seat of Westmoreland County,
the first English-speaking county west of the
Alleghenies. It contains the fine Westmoreland Museum of
American Art and numerous restaurants,
hotels, and bookstores within three miles of the
campus.
For those who wish to
explore the area, Pittsburgh lies a short drive
to the west: home of the Carnegie Museums (Art, Natural
History, Science, and Andy Warhol), and the Strip District, for the foodies
among you. Thirty miles to the south of
Greensburg lies Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd
Wright’s famous fusion of art and nature (we
plan to organize an excursion there). Fifteen
miles beyond that is Wright’s Kentuck Knob, and, in a more
18th-century vein, Fort Necessity
Battlefield and General
Braddock’s Grave. Fifteen miles to the east
of Greensburg is the charming town of Ligonier,
home not merely to many antique stores and polo
clubs but also to Fort Ligonier, a full
reconstruction of the mid-18th-century fort.
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The summer duck by
Mark Catesby (1684-1749)
Anonymous French engraving of
the earthquake.