More than 100 scholars from the United States, England; France, and Italy will gather Feb. 25-27 at UNLV to discuss "The Society of Spectacle."
The conference is a meeting of the Western Society for 18th Century Studies, an interdisciplinary organization that looks at the 18th century from a variety of viewpoints.
One presentation, a lecture by Thomas Kavanagh of the University of California, Berkeley, on "Cards and Culture in Eighteenth-Century France," is open to the public free of charge. That presentation, which is part of the University Forum lecture series, will take place at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 25 in the auditorium of the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Natural History.
To attend the other sessions, it is necessary to register for the conference. This may be done by calling UNLV's Department of Continuing Education at 895-3394.
Professor Ronald Paulson of Johns Hopkins University will be the keynote speaker at the conference. His talk, "Hogarth and the Spectacle of the Jew," will take place at the evening banquet on Feb. 26.
Among the many topics to be discussed at the conference are:
- "Jane Austen: Subversion, Satire, and Society."
- "Irish Politics: Spectacles, Performances, Histories."
- "The Muse of Music, Theater, and Dance."
- "Women, Revolution, and the Novels of the 1790s."
- "Spectacle in Theater and Ordinary Life."
To register for the conference, call Continuing Education at 895-3394.
For other information about the conference or the organization, call UNLV English professor and society president Tim Erwin at 895-3437.
