Enlightenment Decentred: Networks, Media, Practices

Date: Wednesday 30 September to Friday 2 October
Venue: Magdalen College 

A conference co-organised by Anita Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin) and Avi Lifschitz (Oxford), supported by the John Fell OUP Fund, University of Oxford, and the Division of International Affairs, Freie Universität Berlin 

 

WEDNESDAY, 30 September

9.00 Welcome & Introduction Anita Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin) & Avi Lifschitz (Oxford)

9.15 Session 1

Avi Lifschitz (Oxford), Paris – Potsdam – Lausanne: the incomplete rehabilitation of Emperor Julian 

Mónica Bolufer Peruga (European University Institute, Florence), Caracas – London – Istanbul: cosmopolitanism and patriotism in the life and readings of an Enlightened, revolutionary criollo

11.15 Session 2

Eun-Jeung Lee (Freie Universität Berlin), Rome – Beijing – Seoul: a knowledge network and its media, 1644–1783 

Nicola Miller (University College London), A methodology for intellectual independence: Enlightened strategies for modern knowledge in Guatemala, 1790s–1820s 

13.30 Session 3

Chenxi Tang (University of California, Berkeley), Europe – the Sinosphere: the Eurasian Enlightenment in two keys

Brian Young (Oxford), An English Enlightenment from Lausanne and Göttingen to St Petersburg and Pennsylvania: Gibbon and Bentham in Venturi’s shadow

 

THURSDAY, 1 October

9:15 Session 4

Anita Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin), Oviedo – Polling – Parnassus: alternative routes to an Enlightened ars critica

László Kontler (Central European University), Eger – Vienna – Rome: Catholicism and improvement across borders in the Enlightenment (1750s–90s)

11.15 Session 5

Alicia Montoya (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen), Making the Sephardi Jewish Enlightenment in the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic 

Dmitri Levitin (Oxford), Pierre Bayle: global history as Christian apologetics. Rotterdam – St. Andrews – Paris – Göttingen – Calcutta 

14.15 Session 6

Shiru Lim (Leiden), When the nomads met the naturalists: knowing and narrativizing the steppe from the Volga to the Amur 

Damiano Bardelli (Oxford), Florence – Châlons – Basel: Enlightenment projects of poor relief

16.15

Tom Wynn (Voltaire Foundation, Oxford) The Voltaire Foundation: an introduction 

 

FRIDAY, 2 October

9.15 Session 7

Jonas Thorup Thomsen (Oxford) & Olivier Higgins (Oxford) , Berlin, Copenhagen and beyond: educational reform, public Enlightenment, and authority 

John Robertson (Cambridge), Enlightenment by comparison: Scotland and Naples revisited and continued 

Richard Whatmore (St. Andrews), John Pocock’s decentred Enlightenments 

 

12.00 Concluding discussion