—a conference organized by Sebouh D. Aslanian, University of California, Los Angeles; Matthew Kadane, Hobart and William Smith Colleges; and Naomi Taback, Temple University

 

In Honor of Margaret Jacob

co-sponsored by UCLA Department of History

Mobility and all that it entailed does not figure as an analytical category in the prodigious body of scholarship created by Margaret Jacob, though it is certainly implied in much of her work from her earliest explorations of the unexpected connections between Newtonianism and Protestant theology, to her pioneering work in the transnational history of science, radical Enlightenment, freemasonry, and industry, much of it based on British, French, Belgian and Dutch sources, and finally in her more recent study of cosmopolitanism, Strangers Nowhere in the World. 

The conference brings together scholars working on novel forms of knowledge and identity forged during the early modern age at the confluence of increasing mobility both in Europe and the larger world beyond. The speakers have worked with some of these insights presaged in Jacob’s scholarship but developed them in their own distinctive fashion to help shape religious, cultural, commercial, and transnational history in the twenty-first century. Rather than looking to celebrate past accomplishments, the conference aims to take stock of present trends in scholarship and suggest new paths for the future.

Image
Job Adriaensz. Berckheijde
The Old Exchange of Amsterdam
Haarlem, circa 1670
Wikimedia.org

Speakers
Sebouh D. Aslanian, University of California, Los Angeles
Guillaume Calafat, Institute for Advanced Study
Vincenzo Ferrone, University of Turin
Margaret Jacob, University of California, Los Angeles
Matthew Kadane, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Jesse Sadler, Independent Scholar
Catherine Secretan, Centre national de la recherche scientifique
Jacob Soll, University of Southern California
Naomi Taback, Temple University
Francesca Trivellato, Yale University

9:30 a.m.
Morning Coffee and Registration

10:00 a.m.
Political Economies and Worlds of Sociability
Moderator: Lynn Hunt, University of California, Los Angeles

Vincenzo Ferrone, University of Turin
“The Epistemological Roots of the New Political Economy: Modern Science and Economy in the First Half of European Eighteenth Century” 

10:45 a.m.
Jacob Soll, University of Southern California
“Aristocratic Utopianism meets Colbertist Reform in the French Enlightenment: Fénélon, Boulainvilliers and the Circle of the Duc de Bourgogne”

11:30 a.m.
Coffee Break 

11:45 a.m.
Naomi Taback, Temple University
“‘It is upon all accounts calculated for our benefit’: Anglican Conceptions of Sociability in the Early Eighteenth Century”

12:30 p.m.
Closing Remarks
Margaret Jacob, University of California, Los Angeles

1:00 p.m.
Program concludes