1) Barbara Abrams (Suffolk University, Boston)

2) Nora Baker (University of Oxford)

3) Marion Bailly (Rennes 2)

4) Rori Bloom (University of Florida)

5) Gregory Brown (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) – KEYNOTE (Thur)

6) Mathieu Brunet (Aix-Marseille Université)

7) Logan Connors (University of Miami)

8) Cyril Frances (Lyon 3)

9) Anaïs Guittonny (University of Limerick)

10) Nina Kushner (Clark University)

11) Ann Lewis (Birkbeck, University of London)

12) Jenny Mander (University of Cambridge) – KEYNOTE (Friday)

13) Dario Nicolosi (Université Paris-Sorbonne)

14) Síofra Pierse (University College Dublin)

15) Lucille Raynal (University College Dublin)

16) Kristine Wirts (University of Texas)

17) Masano Yamashita (University of Colorado Boulder)

Speakers’ biographies

Barbara Abrams (Suffolk University)

Barbara Abrams is Professor of French and Women’s and Gender Studies and Director of the Global and Cultural Studies Program at Suffolk University, Boston. Her publications include a multi-graph project titled: Reframing Rousseau, Hebrew Bible, hospitality and modernity, and her new project: ReSisters: Forensic Storytelling and Anti-Monarchical Epistolarity.

Nora Baker (University of Oxford)

Nora Baker is a fourth-year PhD student in Early Modern French at Jesus College, University of Oxford. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in French and Italian at the University of Galway and spent a year at the Université de Toulouse II – Jean Jaurès as part of the Erasmus programme.

Marion Bally (Rennes 2)

Ancienne élève de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, agrégée de lettres modernes et actuellement doctorante à l’université de Rennes 2, Marion Bally prépare une thèse d’inspiration sociocritique sur le chevalier de Mouhy, romancier de la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle, sous la direction de Florence Magnot-Ogilvy.

Rori Bloom (University of Florida)

Rori Bloom is associate professor at the University of Florida.  In addition to articles and essays, she has authored two books: Man of Quality, Man of Letters: The Abbé Prévost between Novel and Newspaper and Making the Marvelous: Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, Henriette-Julie de Murat, and the Literary Representation of the Decorative Arts.

Gregory Brown (Institution University of Nevada, Las Vegas)

Gregory S Brown is Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he teaches on European and World History of the early modern and modern periods. He is also Senior Research Fellow at the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford, where he is general editor of the Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment. He is the author of two books on 18th-century intellectual culture, a synthesis on Eighteenth-Century Europe, and many articles at the juncture of intellectual, cultural and literary historiography of the Enlightenment and French Revolution. He is currently working on two projects, an intellectual and institutional history of the emergence of "Eighteenth-Century Studies" in the 1940s through 1960s, and an historical analysis of the correspondence network of Beaumarchais, on which his talk for this conference is based.

Mathieu Brunet (Aix-Marseille Université)

Mathieu Brunet est maître de conférences à l’université d’Aix-Marseille, spécialiste de littérature française du XVIIIe siècle. Auteur de L’Appel du monstrueux. Pensées et poétiques du désordre en France au XVIIIe siècle (Louvain: Peeters, 2008) et de Marivaux entre les genres. Le corps, la parole, l’intrigue (Revue Malice n°5, 2015), il a également publié différents articles sur Marivaux, Diderot et Rousseau

Logan Connors (University of Miami) 

Logan Connors is Professor of Modern Languages & Literatures at the University of Miami (FL), where he is also a Cooper Fellow in the College of Arts & Sciences. His research interests include French & Francophone theater from 1650 to 1815, revolutionary studies, performance studies, and cultural history.

Cyril Francès (Lyon 3)

Cyril Francès est Maître de conférences en Littérature du XVIIIe siècle à l’Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3. Ses domaines de recherche recouvrent principalement le libertinage, les Mémoires d’Ancien Régime et l’écriture de l’histoire.

Anaïs Guittonny (University of Limerick)

Anaïs entame sa sixième année de doctorat de littérature française du 18e siècle à l’Université de Limerick en Irlande. Sa recherche s’intitule : « L’Amazone, une utopie ? Étude de sociétés de femmes dans la littérature masculine du XVIIIe siècle en France ». 

Nina Kushner (Clark University)

Nina Kushner is associate professor of history at Clark University. She is author of Erotic Exchanges: Elite Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century France (2013), and coeditor of Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century France (2014), French Histories of Sexuality from the Enlightenment to the Present (forthcoming, 2023), and Bloomsbury’s Cultural History of Prostitution (forthcoming).

Ann Lewis (Birkbeck College)

Ann Lewis is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Birkbeck, University of London.  Her research focuses on eighteenth-century literature and culture, and text/image relations, especially illustration and she has published widely in these areas. She is currently working on a monograph focusing on the figure of the prostitute in eighteenth-century French literature.

Jenny Mander (University of Cambridge)

Jenny Mander is Professor of French Intellectual History and Intercultural Dialogue at the University of Cambridge.  She is also Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement.  Her research connects the 'rise' of the modern European novel with European colonial and commercial expansion and also aims to reconsider the historical place given to eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers in contemporary philosophy.  Alongside many articles and chapters, recent publications include a critical edition of book X of Raynal's Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Centre International d'étude du XVIIIe siècle, 2020), and two edited volumes: Transnational Perspectives on the Conquest and Colonization of Latin America (Routledge, 2019) and Raynal's Histoire des deux Indes. Colonialism, Networks and Global Exchange (Voltaire Foundation, 2015).  

Dario Nicolosi (Sorbonne Université)

Dario Maria Nicolosi a soutenu une thèse en littérature française intitulée « La tragédie française du XVIIIe siècle et le mythe grec ». Il a publié plusieurs articles sur ce sujet et il est actuellement post-doctorant auprès du Centre ObTIC de Sorbonne Université, où il s'occupe de réseaux intertextuels au XVIIIe siècle.

Síofra Pierse (University College Dublin)

Síofra Pierse is Head of UCD School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics and Associate Professor in French and Francophone Studies. She is author of Voltaire Historiographer: narrative paradigms within the SVEC series at the Voltaire Foundation, Oxford. She has edited a number of books, including The City in French Writing and The Dark Side of Diderot, co-edited with James Hanrahan, Trinity College Dublin and most recently, Turmoil: instability and insecurity in the eighteenth-century francophone text, co-edited with her PhD student Emma M. Dunne. She is currently finishing an overdue book: her reference guide to Voltaire's life and works for Rowman and Littlefield. She continues to work on 18thc narrative doubt and on female francophone authors, and she is fascinated by the subject of her paper for this conference: Ekaterina Dashkova.

Lucille Raynal (University College Dublin)

Lucille Raynal is a third year PhD student in SLCL, UCD. In January 2020, she started to write a thesis entitled “Eighteenth-Century Professional Women: Writing her Space” under the guidance of Síofra Pierse. She examines the specificity of the eighteenth-century francophone female space across a variety of different genres and authors. 

Kristine Wirts (University of Texas)

Kristine Wirts serves as Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley, where she teaches courses in European and world history.  Her current research examines the lives of working women living in the canton of Vaud during the eighteenth century.  

Masano Yamashita (University of Colorado)

Masano Yamashita is associate professor of French at the University of Colorado Boulder. She published a book titled Jean-Jacques Rousseau face au public: problèmes d’identité (2017, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2017). Her current research focuses on accidents, chance and inequality in eighteenth-century France.