RA at ASECS

ROUSSEAU ASSOCIATION AT THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES (ASECS) ANNUAL MEETING

As an affiliate society of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the Rousseau Association is invited to host a panel at the annual ASECS convention each year. Here is a list of the past RA at ASECS sessions, also viewable below.

2025. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting (Online), April 4-5, 2025

“Rousseau and the Imagination”

This panel features papers exploring the role played by the imagination in Rousseau’s oeuvre. Possible topics include the interrelation between the imagination and world-making, the connection between images and concepts, and the articulation of imagination and temporality. See here for further details on the meeting.

2024. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting (Toronto, Canada), April 4-6, 2024

“Rousseau and the Dupins/Rousseau chez les Dupin”

Chair: James Swenson, Rutgers University

  • Flora Champy, Princeton University
  • Julie C. Hayes, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  • Angela Hunter, University of Arkansas, Little Rock
  • Carole Martin, Texas State University
  • Nathan Martin, University of Michigan
  • Rebecca Wilkin, Pacific Lutheran University

2023. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting (St. Louis, MO), March 9-11, 2023

“Rousseau and Gender”

PANEL 1:

Chair: Masano Yamashita, University of Colorado, Boulder

  • Carol Martin, Texas State University, “La misogynie fonctionnelle de Rousseau: notes sur le Discours de l’économie politique”
  • Mira Morgenstern, City College of New York, CUNY, “Rousseau: Imagination and Sexuality”

PANEL 2:

Chair: Scott M. Sanders, Dartmouth College

  • William M. Burton, University of California, Berkeley, “From Names to Nouns: The Linguistic Origin of Sexual Difference”
  • Maureen Kelly, University of Chicago, “Gender, Desire, and Redemption in Rousseau’s Ribbon Scene”

2022. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting (Baltimore, MD), March 31-April 2, 2022

“Grievances in Rousseau / Doléances chez Rousseau”

Chair: Downing Thomas, University of Iowa

  • Christophe Martin, Sorbonne Université, “Afflictions patientes et douleurs emportées: l’expression sexuée de la souffrance dans La Nouvelle Héloïse”
  • Maureen Kelly, University of Chicago, “Economies of Truth, Culpability, and Pain in Rousseau’s Confessions”
  • Nathan Martin, University of Michigan, “Rousseau’s Grievances: Gluck, Grimm, Rameau”

2021. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting (Online), April 7-11, 2021

“The Strange, the Stranger, the Foreigner in Rousseau / L’étrange, l’étranger chez Rousseau”

Chair: Brigitte Weltman-Aron, University of Florida

  • Johanna Lenne-Cornuez, Sorbonne Université, “L’aimable étranger ou l’étrange citoyenneté d’Émile”
  • Flora Champy, Princeton University, “Estranged Selves: The Ancients’ Look and the Stranger’s Eyes”
  • Rudy Le Menthéour, Bryn Mawr College, “‘Comme dans une planète étrangère: L’aliénation selon Jean-Jacques”
  • Nathan Martin, University of Michigan, “Figures of Alterity in Rousseau’s Writings on Music”

2020. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting (St. Louis, MO), March 24-28, 2020

Canceled and rescheduled due to COVID-19.

2019. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting (Denver, CO), March 21-23, 2019

“Frameworks of Time in Rousseau”

PANEL 1:

Chair: Masano Yamashita, University of Colorado Boulder

  • Martin McCallum, McGill University, “Nostalgia and Memory in Rousseau’s Confessions“
  • Pierre Saint-Amand, Yale University, “Forgetting Time”
  • Fayçal Falaky, Tulane University, “Rousseau’s Stillness or the Politics of the Timeless”
  • Mira Morgenstern, City College of New York, CUNY, “What Time is it in Rousseau’s Polity?”

PANEL 2:

Chair, Fayçal Falaky, Tulane University

  • Patrick Coleman, UCLA, “Rousseau and Discursive Time”
  • Amy Shuffelton, Loyola University Chicago, “Sophie’s Time is Off the Clock”
  • Hina Nizar, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Children’s Time”

2018. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting (Orlando, FL), March 22-24, 2018

“Current Research on Rousseau”

Chair: Ourida Mostefai, Brown University

  • Carole Martin, Texas State University, “Jean-Jacques at the Tuileries: The Place of the Walker in Rousseau’s Dialogues“
  • Masano Yamashita, University of Colorado Boulder, “Rousseau and Pain Management”
  • Jimmy Swenson, Rutgers University, “Editer les Affaires de Corse“

2017. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting (Minneapolis, MN), March 30-April 2, 2017

“Silence, the Implicit and the Unspoken in Rousseau / Silences, implicites et non-dits chez Rousseau”

Chair: Mira Morgenstern, City College of New York, CUNY

  • Laurel E. Zeiss, Baylor University, “‘These silences, thus filled’: Rousseau, Opera, and Musical Debates”
  • Adam Schoene, Cornell University, “Mute Eloquence: Silence and the Passions in Rousseau’s Julie“
  • Patrick Coleman, UCLA, “What Rousseau Doesn’t Say About the Nation”

2016. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting (Pittsburgh, PA), March 31-April 3, 2016

“Rousseau and Diderot: Collaboration and Conflict in the Enlightenment”

PANEL 1:

Chair, Carole Martin, Texas State University, San Marcos

  • Chloe Edmondson, Stanford University, “Rousseau and Diderot: Pillars of the Paradox of the Passions”
  • Laurence Marie-Sacks, French Embassy in the US / CRLC Paris-Sorbonne, “Becoming ‘passionate in cold blood’: Rousseau and Diderot on Acting”
  • Brigitte Weltman-Aron, The University of Florida, “Passion and Theater in Rousseau and Diderot”

PANEL 2:

Chair, Ourida Mostefai, Brown University

  • Maria Gullstam, Stockholm University, “Spectators in Dialogue: Rousseau, Diderot, and the Theatre”
  • Carole Martin, Texas State University, San Marcos, “From Portratiture to Self-Portrait in Diderot’s and Rousseau’s Promenades”
  • Pierre Saint-Amand, Brown University, “Cantate du Méchant”

2015. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting (Los Angeles, CA), March 19-21, 2015

“Themes from Smith and Rousseau”

Chair : Ourida Mostefai, Brown University

  • Hina Nazar, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Rethinking Autonomy: Rousseau and Adam Smith”
  • Masano Yamashita, University of Colorado Boulder, “The Spectacle of Poverty in the Moral Theories of Rousseau and Smith”
  • Adam Potkay, The College of William & Mary, “Pity and Gratitude in Rousseau and Adam Smith”

2014. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting (Williamsburg, VA), March 19-22, 2014

“New Approaches to Rousseau”

Chair: Carole F. Martin, Texas State University

  • Thomas Spittael, Ghent University, “Advertising Rousseau on the London Book Market: Eighteenth-Century Translations of the Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts”
  • Patrick Coleman, UCLA, “Rethinking Civil Religion”
  • Blaise Bachofen, Université de Cergy-Pontoise, “Entre homme ‘absolu’ et homme ‘relatif’ : les modalités ambiguës du rapport à autrui”

2013. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting  (Cleveland, Ohio), April 5-6, 2013

“Rousseau’s Emile”

PANEL 1:

Chair: Byron R. Wells, Wake Forest University

  • Mary Trouille, Illinois State University, “The Paradox of Sophie and Julie: Discontinuities in Rousseau’s Views on Women’s Education”
  • Kristine Jennings, Binghamton University, State University of New York, “Educating Empfindsamkeit: Rousseau, Women, and the Novel in Eighteenth-Century Germany” 
  • Karen Pagani, University of Texas at Austin, “Reconciling (and) Subjective Identity in Les Solitaires” 

PANEL 2:

Chair: Byron R. Wells, Wake Forest University

  • Preea Leelah, Oberlin College, “Rousseau Against the Philosophes and the Church: Understanding Emile’s Religious Education” 
  • Gabor Gelleri, National University of Ireland, Galway, “Emile et l’art du voyage’: Rousseau and the Apodemic Tradition” 
  • Roger Mathew Grant, University of Oregon, “Rousseau’s Solfège Polemic”
  • Avi Lifschitz, University College London, “The Language of Signs: How to Persuade Without Convincing”

2012. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting (San Antonio, Texas), March 22nd-24th

“Rousseau at 300”

Chair: Byron R. Wells, Wake Forest University

  • Mira Morgenstern, The City College of New York, “Un/Civil Religion? Belief and Alienation in Rousseau”
  • Zeina Hakim, Tufts University, “L’Examen critique de l’Histoire chez Rousseau”
  • Lee Maclean, Carleton University, “Desire, Decision, and Faculty: Rousseau’s General Will as a Form of Will”
  • Tali Zechory, Harvard University, “Doubting Thomas, Knowing Jean-Jacques: Visual and Tactile Perception in Rousseau’s Dialogues”

2011. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting (Vancouver, BC). Friday March 18th, 9.45-11.15 a.m.

“Rousseau’s Republics / Les républiques de Rousseau”

Chair: Ourida Mostefai, Boston College

  • Marie-Hélène Huet, Princeton University, “Losing Rome”
  • Jacques Berchtold, Université de Paris-Sorbonne, “Le thème républicain dans les Confessions”
  • Michael Winston, University of Oklahoma, “Rousseau’s Classical Republicanism: Sparta as Model Polity”
  • Rudy Le Menthéour, Bryn Mawr College, “Le spectre de Sparte: la dénaturation républicaine selon Rousseau”

2010. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting  (Albuquerque, New Mexico)

“Rousseau and Romanticism / Rousseau et le romantisme”

Chair: Philip Knee, Université Laval

  • Benjamin Storey, Furman University, “Admiration and Suspicion in the Thought of Rousseau”
  • Debra Channick, University of California, Irvine, “Eloquent In(ter)vention: Mme de Staël’s ‘Ardent Emulation’ of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Spectacle”
  • Zev Trachtenberg, University of Oklahoma,“Playing at Authenticity: Rousseau on the Self in Nature”

2009. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting (Richmond, Virginia)

“Rousseau’s Legacies”

Chair: Byron R. Wells, Wake Forest University

  • Grace G. Roosevelt, Metropolitan College of New York, “Rousseau’s Legacies to Environmentalism: The Uses of Emile for a Theory of Sustainability”
  • Julia Simon, University of California, Davis, “Rousseau’s Contribution to Folk Music: Discovering Ethnomusicology”
  • Mira Morgenstern, City University of New York, “Where Are We? Rousseau and Location”
  • Jason Robles, University of Colorado at Boulder, “Rousseau and Civic Education: Making Citizens from Men”

2008. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting
(Portland, Oregon), March 27 – 30, 2008

“Rousseau’s Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles”

PANEL 1:

Chair: Byron R. Wells, Wake Forest University

  • Christopher Bertram, University of Bristol, “Spectators versus Citizens: Participation and Republican Solidarity in the Letter to d’Alembert”
  • Melanie Holm, Rutgers University, “Virtual Experience and Virtual Fraternity: Rousseau’s Readerly Epistemology”
  • Ourida Mostefai, Boston College, “Ecriture parisienne et écriture genevoise dans la Lettre à d’Alembert”
  • Brigitte Weltman-Aron, University of Florida, “Truth and
    Truthfulness in the Lettre to d’Alembert”

PANEL 2:

Chair: Byron R. Wells, Wake Forest University

  • Fayçal Falaky, New York University, “L’Utile et l’agréable in Julie: Rereading the Lettre à d’Alembert through Rousseau’s Epistolary Novel”
  • Angela Hunter, University of Arkansas, Little Rock, “Invito
    Spectatore: The Spectator and the Will to Love in the Lettre à
    d’Alembert sur les spectacles”
  • Jeffrey Leichman, Yale University, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s
    Political Esthetics : Le Paradoxe du républicain”
  • James Swenson, Rutgers University, “The Rural Community and the City-State: On the Sociological Basis of Modern Republicanism”

2007. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting (Atlanta, Georgia)

“New Directions in Rousseau Studies:  Thérèse Levasseur, the Other Woman of the Enlightenment”

Chair: Ourida Mostefai, Boston College

  • Marie-Paule Laden, San Francisco State University“Thérèse Levasseur, Germaine de Staël et Isabelle de Charrière: une question de style.”
  • Jennifer Jones, Rutgers University, “Thérèse écrivaine. ”
  • Respondent:  Julia Simon, UC Davis

2006. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting  (Montréal, Canada), March 30-April 2, 2006

 “Rousseau and the Encyclopedia Project”

Chair: Byron R. Wells, Wake Forest University

  • Alan Rauch, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, “Building the Encyclopaedic Man: Rousseauian Ideas in the English Enlightenment”
  • Nathan Martin, McGill University, “Rousseau, Rameau, Condillac and ‘Harmonie’”
  • Alexander Bertland, Hastings College, “Beyond the Odor of Tobacco: Rousseau’s Defense of Geneva’s Cercles as a Statement to D’Alembert about Productive Conversation”

2005. The Rousseau Association at ASECS Annual Meeting
(Las Vegas, Nevada), March 31-April 3, 2005

“The Discours sur l’inégalité After 250 Years”

Session 1: Rereading the Discours

Chair: Ourida Mostefai, Boston College

  • Jeremiah Alberg, State University of West Georgia, “The Scandal of Origins”
  • L. Rick Sorenson, Assumption College, “Who Does Rousseau Think He Is?”
  • Daniel Cullen, Rhodes College, “Being a Citizen: From the Discours to the Social Contract”

Session 2 – The Influence of the Discours

Chair: Ourida Mostefai, Boston College

  • Julia Simon, UC Davis, “On the Unpopularity of the Question of Inequality”
  • Mira Morgenstern, Kingsborough Community College, “Rousseau and the Culture Wars: The Question of Inequality”
  • Wing Sze Leung, University of Chicago, “Rousseau’s Ethics and His Theory of Nature”