Rousseau Association

The Rousseau Association/Association Rousseau, formerly known as the North American Association for the Study of Rousseau, is a bilingual society devoted to the study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Our membership is multinational and interdisciplinary. The Association includes Rousseau scholars from the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Japan. We count among our numbers specialists in history, languages, literature, philosophy, political science, as well as other fields. We welcome members from all disciplines. Members receive an annual newsletter and are eligible to participate in Rousseau Association colloquia, and in panels it sponsors at other professional meetings (e.g. the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies).

The Association sponsors a colloquium every two years, at locations in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Each meeting is devoted to a specific text or question, and all papers are given in plenary sessions. Our last colloquium (June 2009) was held at the University of California, Los Angeles, under the sponsorship of the UCLA Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies, on the topic of Rousseau’s Legacies / Les Fortunes de Rousseau. The next colloquium will be held at the University of Bristol, UK, in summer 2011.

If you wish to join the Rousseau Association, please click here for instructions. For 2009, regular dues are US $40.00; student dues, US $20.00.

Highlights

Rousseau and l’Infâme. Religion, Toleration and Fanaticism in the Age of Enlightenment, edited by Ourida Mostefai and John T. Scott, has just appeared (March 2009). The volume, based on the Oxford Colloquium of the Rousseau Association, is published by Rodopi (Amsterdam and New York). For full details and ordering information, click here.

A volume based upon the 2005 colloquium of the Rousseau Association was published by SVEC in March, 2008.  The volume, edited by John C. O’Neal, is titled The Nature of Rousseau’s ‘Rêveries’, and contains essays on the meaning of nature in the work as well as essays on the nature of the work itself.

The Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Geneva has announced a multidisciplinary, international celebration of the tricentennial of Rousseau’s birth in 1712 called 2012 Rousseau for All.  Full information and a call for projects can be found at http://www.ville-ge.ch/culture/rousseau.

Forthcoming Events

2010. Rousseau Association panel at ASECS (Albuquerque, NM, March 18-21, 2010): Rousseau and Romanticism / Rousseau et le romantisme. Organizer: Prof. Philip Knee, Université Laval, Québec.
2011. Bristol (UK) colloquium: Rousseau’s Republics / Les républiques de Rousseau. Organizer: Prof. Christopher Bertram.
2012. Rousseau Tricentenary Conference. Organizer: Prof. James Swenson, Rutgers University.
2013. Colloquium at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC. Organizer: Prof. Byron Wells.