Emigré intellectuals, International Networks and the Meaning of the Enlightenment, c 1935 - 1965

The first meeting of the French Early Modern Seminar, co-hosted by the Centre for Global Human Movement, will take place on:

Tuesday 14 November

5pm

Anna Bateson Room, Newnham College

It will be given by Professor Gregory Brown, from the Department of History, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.  Greg is also Senior Research Fellow at the Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford and Editor in Chief of the Oxford Studies in the Enlightenment (OSE), published by Liverpool University Press.

He will talk on 'Emigré intellectuals, International Networks and the Meaning of the Enlightenment, c 1935 - 1965: A global history of the critical edition of Voltaire's Correspondence '

The critical edition of the Voltaire correspondence, published between 1953 and 1965, has long been acknowledged as a cornerstone of scholarship on the eighteenth century, but it also represents a significant conjuncture of the major pillars of interwar and post war cultural history: information management; the circulation of cultural heritage artefacts; international organizations; state scientific and cultural patronage; and the "sea change" of intellectual emigration from Europe to the United States. This paper will explore the ways in which the emergence of Enlightenment studies demonstrates the social and political significance of humanistic scholarship in the post-war moment.  

This will be a great opportunity to consider the role of twentieth-century internationalism in the construction of early modern knowledge and to find out more about publishing opportunities through OSE.