Scope of the Conference
This conference seeks to find an answer to the question of what “the Enlightenment” was and perhaps still is. Since historians started searching for enlightenments other than that of the eighteenth-century French avant-garde, Enlightenment research has broadened to include various national contexts, radical and moderate variants, and also a wide range of disciplines, producing such novel conceptions as the theological or encyclopedic Enlightenment. The presentations examine enlightened ideas, circles, attitudes, and practices, and go beyond disciplinary boundaries and provide a wider picture of the era. The contributors try to find new points of entry to a period that is of highly topical interest but is also burdened with so many, often even contradictory interpretations that one should first establish what Enlightenment one means before starting a discussion. Is the Enlightenment to be qualified as a contest of ideas, a communication process, a developing taste or lifestyle, an empowering culture, or a collection of experiences?

Programme

Friday 22 January 2010
11:30 Member Meeting of the Dutch-Belgian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
12:30 Lunch
13:00 Registration
13:15 Opening: Wiep van Bunge, chair of the Dutch-Belgian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Wiep van Bunge (Erasmus University Rotterdam, NL);
13.30 Announcement of the winner of the essay contest 2008
13:45 Wijnand Mijnhardt (Utrecht University, NL)
In search of the Enlightenment
14.45 Alise van Hecke-Jameson (Ghent University, B)
Enlightenment Authorship: The Case of the Society for the Encouragement of Learning
15.15 Coffee break
15.45 Hanco Jürgens (University of Amsterdam, NL)
How to Study the Cultural History of Change? The Enlightenment Compared with the Sixties
16:15 Peter Clark (University of Helsinki, FIN)
Spaces, Circuits and Short-circuits in the European Enlightenment
17:15 Drinks

Saturday 23 January 2010
9:30 Registration
10:00 David Sorkin (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
Four Characteristics of the Religious Enlightenment
11:00 John Robertson (St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, GB)
Do We Need More than One Enlightenment?
12:00 Coffee break
12:15 Christophe Madelein (Ghent University, B)
The Epic Struggle of the Ancien Regime
12:45 Emiliano Acosta (Ghent University, B)
A Religious Dimension in the Radical Enlightenment? Towards a Definition of the Concept of Radical Enlightenment
13:15 Lunch
14:00 Florian Heyerick (University College Ghent, B)
“Der Tod Jesu” between Bible and Poetry
14:30 Marion Huibrechts (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, B)
‘Enlightened’ Views of the American Continent During the 1780s
15:00 Plenary discussion
15:30 End

Participation Conference
Registration for the conference: www.18e-eeuw.nl or penningmeester@18e-eeuw.nl
Entrance fee Friday 22 January 2010: € 15,- (students and AIO’s € 10,-), entrance fee Saturday 23 January 2010: € 25,- (students, AIO’s € 15,-); entrance fee both days € 40,- (students and AIO’s € 25,-).
The prices are inclusive coffee, tea and lunch.
The participants receive a programme with the abstracts of the presentations after registration in Ghent.

The costs of participation can be transferred to the bank account at least one week before the conference takes place.
For Dutch participants: Girorekening 5533514 t.n.v. Werkgroep 18e Eeuw Utrecht: please mention your name and ‘conference 2010’. For participants from Belgium: Postcheque 000-1714065-75 t.n.v. Werkgroep 18e Eeuw Utrecht: please mention your name and ‘conference 2010’.
Payments by bank account :ING Zakelijk, Financial Plaza, PO Box 1800, 1000 BV Amsterdam, IBAN nummer NL09INGB0005533514, BIC: INGBNL2A: please mention your name and ‘conference 2010’.

Extra service
It is possible to make a hotel reservation in Hotel Gravensteen, Jan Breydelstraat 35, 9000 Ghent (a five minute walk from Het Pand) for a single room with douche and toilet at a special price of € 100,00 per night, incl. breakfast, service and btw, excl. citytax € 2,50 per person per night. If you make your reservation please inform the reservation desk that you are a visitor of the Enlightenment Conference of 22-23 January 2010 at the University of Ghent.
Email: hotel@gravensteen.be