Call for Essays on Eighteenth-Century Protest

Yvonne Fuentes of the University of West Georgia and Marc Malin of Randolph-Macon College have issued a call for essays for a scholarly anthology on the topic “Protest in the Long Eighteenth Century.”

This project stems from a panel at the 2018 meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies titled “They Were Warned, and yet They Persisted.” The conference invitation listed examples of popular protest, opposition, and resistance, such as food riots in England, France, and Spain; the Esquilache Riots in Madrid triggered by “new” policies on hats and coats; and the attacks on silk weavers’ looms in Spitalfields, London.

The presentations examined the causes of the protests, as well as the ways in which common artifacts such as poles, trees, drums, conchs, pamphlets, songs, and other alternative media of communication may operated as flashpoints for conflict.

A week before the conference, an editor contacted Fuentes and Malin to discuss expanding the session into an edited volume. Their goal now is to gather a collection of strong academic and research-oriented interdisciplinary essays on the theme. The volume would include between ten and fifteen essays (7,500-8,000 words including notes) distributed in chapters that explore topics such as:

• the myths of placid tranquility
• the contested right of protest
• the legality of and theories on protest
• strategies and goals of protest
• the culture of protest and reaction
• popular protests and unpopular policies
• riots and riot control
• audiences and targets of protest
• allies and coconspirators
• collusion and complicity
• intersectionality
• transatlantic and transnational boundaries
• rural and urban forms of resistance and noncompliance
• verbal and non-verbal means and mediums of protest
• the limits of satire and parody
• food and food prices as cause and means of protest
• clothing, apparel, and fashion as means and provokers of protest
• art, music, dance as forms of protest and resistance
• environmental conflicts and social protest
• common property and communal use of land
• other forms, causes, artifacts, means of resistance

Fuentes and Malin invite authors from diverse backgrounds, fields, and approaches to submit proposals by 31 Aug 2018. Each proposal should consist of a 500-word abstract describing the topic and approach to the overarching theme, and the author’s condensed two-page curriculum vitae. Send that material to both yfuentes@westga.edu and mmalin@rmc.edu with the subject line: “VOLUME ON PROTEST + [your surname]”.