2025 CSECS Conference
Trans/Formations: Crossing Borders, Blurring Boundaries
Atlas Hotel, Regina/Oskana, Saskatchewan
15-18 October, 2025
Deadline for Submissions: 31 May 2025
Please send submissions to the Organising Committee: CSECS2025@uregina.ca
The Long Eighteenth Century is marked by a relentless desire to separate, to codify, to establish boundaries and limits. Renaissance models of culture narrowed to systems of classification and surveillance; scientific revolutions worked to order knowledge, to create definitive categories and taxonomies. In the same way, landscapes were marked by enclosures, and by colonial limits and borders, delineating visible signs of land ownership and autonomy, while laying the foundations for “scientific” designations of race and gender.
At the same time, there were efforts to frustrate such easy demarcations. During this metamorphic period, we see tensions between the transformative and the stable, the transgressive and the conforming, the transcendent and the mundane. As the borders of Europe are continually redrawn through violent warfare and colonization, the lines of race, gender, and sexuality are also transforming. Non-European peoples demonstrate intellectual and cultural qualities that help to deconstruct definitions of civilisation. African slaves who become baptised Christians see themselves as on a par with White Christians. LGBTQ+ individuals are more visible than ever, and by 1821, Anne Lister is able to write confidently in her diary: I love and have only loved the fairer sex.
CSECS 2025 invites papers on all aspects of this long century of transition, from sexuality and gender diversity to trans/formations of geography, philosophy, and politics. We’re eager to hear from you about how culture transforms during this era.
In addition to the conference theme, the Committee wishes to emphasise that papers on topics not related to the main theme are still welcome.
We particularly invite papers by scholars of color, LGBTQ+, queer-Indigenous and Two Spirit scholars, disabled and chronically-ill scholars, and sessional/adjunct scholars working under conditions of precarity. We are also open to creative presentations, pedagogy panels, and other radical interventions into the discipline of eighteenth-century studies. Some time will be reserved for online panels, allowing scholars to present remotely.
Keynote Speakers will include:
- Kai Pyle
- Jason Farr
- Ersy Contogouris
The conference will take place on Treaty 4 territory in Regina/Oskana, Saskatchewan/kiskâciwan, at the Atlas Hotel. Attendees can enjoy the green space of Wascana Park, as well as nearby restaurants and cafes downtown. Walking distance (or a short bus ride) to the Mackenzie Art Gallery and Royal Saskatchewan Museum. The Archer Library at the University of Regina also has a small but fascinating collection of eighteenth-century documents, including a copy of Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock, an early printing of Lord Byron’s Manfred, and a narrative of Madame d’Aulnoy from the 1690s.
