#ASECSat50 Highlights

This year was my eight time at the annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and I think I can say confidently that it was one of my favorites. It was held in Denver from March 22-24, 2019 at the Grand Hyatt Downtown, just two blocks away from the 16^th Street Mall, with beautiful views of the Rockies from the 38^th floor reception rooms.

The View

For me, one of the highlights of the scholarly side of things was George Haggerty’s panel on “Queer Sites,” on Friday, March 23 at 11:30am. Presenting on the session were Caroline Gonda, Chris Roulston, Stephen Shapiro, and Fiona Brideoake—basically, a power session. One of the things I love most about ASECS is the fact that at any given moment, I can be in the same room with several people whose scholarship has been crucial to forming my own ideas. Caroline, Chris, and Fiona, as well as George, have published wonderful works on doing queer readings of eighteenth-century texts and persons, and they have influenced my projects immensely. It was a delight to hear the panelists discussing sites of queerness in the eighteenth century.

Caroline presented on Strawberry Hill and the damning ways in which Anne Damer’s presence there has been minimized or ghosted by current curators—as if Terry Castle’s “Apparitional Lesbian” had been published just yesterday rather than 25 years ago. Chris presented on Anne Lister and Eliza Raine and their time at a boarding school for girls in York, thinking about how the boarding school becomes a frame narrative for reading Lister’s later relationships with women. Stephen presented on gay male cruising grounds in Paris, especially the Tuileries, and how arrest reports for sodomy can tell us a lot about the class and power relations between wealthy men who solicited sex for money from lower-class men. Finally, Fiona told us all about A La Ronde, an ornamental cottage in Devon that I really really want to visit now. It was the home of two cousins, Jane and Mary Parminter, who resisted pressures to marry and eventually even created a spinster colony for impoverished unmarried women. Fascinating!

Other highlights from the conference included: meeting the witty and multi-talented Stephen Guy-Bray and hearing him recite Latin like a boss; hearing Rivka Swenson describe Cupid as a “bro god”; learning from Hannah Chaskin that Charlotte Lennox’s character in Euphemia moves her friend’s portrait from room to room so she’s never without her (queer much!?); being inspired by John Beynon to think about Aphra Behn’s History of the Nun as campy (does he know about our forthcoming issue from ABO journal on eighteenth-century camp??? I hope you all do!); listening to

Annual contribution to #ASECSshoes

Declan Kavanagh in a Q&A remind us that heterosexuality has a history—an inspiring idea and important to remember!; learning from John Tatter about Stowe and its gardens which I totally want to visit now; reading aloud part of “Mira’s Picture” for Erin Drew’s presentation on the non-feminine, anti-patriarchal female body; finding out from Leah Benedict that electricity is sexy by the end of the #c18; rethinking the linguistic aspects of disability/abnormality/deviancy in the eighteenth century with Rebecca Shapiro and Kevin Joel Berland; and hearing Declan’s talk on the poetics of impairment in libertine poetry.

Not to toot my own horn, but the session I was on, “Queer Swift,” was also pretty great. Jeremy Chow made us re-think Gulliver’s Travels through simian representation and queer lactation; Julia Ftacek reminded us that we cannot neglect our trans students when teaching embodied texts like “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” and Abby Coykendall pushed against “queer” Swift to ask “Is Gulliver straight?” (answer: not really!). I presented on queer abjections in Swift’s excremental poems—though for ISECS I’m thinking a touch of camp might be in order to round out this analysis.

Aside from the academic side of things, ASECS is great for alternative types of socialization, and Friday and Saturday night provided ample opportunities for that. Friday night took several of us to Charlie’s in Denver, a very campy gay dance club with a Western theme. Shirtless cowboys roamed the rooms with trays of Jell-o shots; seven foot tall drag queens stalked through the club, eventually performing for an avid crowd (damn those girls got some mad flexibility!); and the DJ mixed top 40 with country western and hip hop while we danced and danced. It was an epic night to enjoy queer kinship with several folks from the gay and lesbian caucus and their allies.

Saturday night was ASECS Karaoke at Voicebox Denver, organized by the superlative Gena Zuroski, the karaoke queen. Out of the 800 ASECS attendees, I would hazard a guess to say at least 100 of them showed up at one point or another to belt out tunes, socialize, and relax after three full days of conferencing. It’s hard to explain if you don’t like karaoke, but the mood was jubilant, relaxed, and very campy. When you’re singing karaoke, it doesn’t matter if you’re a grad student or a full professor: you’re there for the diva performance: everyone sings along with you because you’re all in it together.

I will stop there. I would say “see you next year,” but this year, I can say: “See you this summer!” ISECS Edinburgh, here we come!