Friday, July 1, 2011

Call for Papers: Law and the Arts in the Long Eighteenth Century

[The following invitation to submit a paper for a panel, entitled "Law and the Arts in the Long Eighteenth Century," at the annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies to be held in San Antonio, Texas, March 22-25, 2012, went out recently over H-Law.  The session appears on pp. 41-42 of the conference's call for papers.]

“Law and the Arts in the Long Eighteenth Century.” Andrew Benjamin Bricker, Dept. of English, Margaret Jacks Hall, Stanford U., 94305; Tel: (415) 832-9133;abricker@stanford.edu

This panel welcomes presentations investigating intersections between law and the arts, broadly conceived, over the course of the long eighteenth century.  A few questions, among many, to consider: How did law and the arts—print and pictorial satire, secret histories, journalism, etc.—interact over the course of the long eighteenth century? How did authors and booksellers, artists and print sellers, journalists and periodical printers skirt laws? For what were individuals maybe unpredictably prosecuted? How did the law develop to target aesthetic practices? How did aesthetic practices respond in turn? How did developments in the law—and especially statutory law: the Printing Acts, the Licensing Acts, the Act of Anne—curb or encourage new methods of composition or the revitalization of old forms? More generally, what was the relationship between law and the arts in the eighteenth century, and how and why did it develop the way it did?