Approaching the Enlightenment “from below” opens up interesting possibilities that build on the rethinking of the historical phenomena in ways that Peter Reill, Margaret Jacob, Saree Makdisi and others at UCLA have already begun to explore. Rather than exploring Enlightenment themes through canonical texts or a relay race of “great thinkers,” this conference seeks to explore the Enlightenment through everyday practice and social interaction, through the press, clubs and societies, scientific lectures, and other multiple forms of social mediation. This relocates the Enlightenment in the culture of the period, opening up the question of whether groups of society that were themselves condemned by some as ignorant, passionate, superstitious, and even irrational affiliated themselves with it.