A conference organized by Margaret Jacob, University of California, Los Angeles; Gianni Paganini, Università del Piemonte Orientale; and John Christian Laursen, University of California, Riverside.

Co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of History; Università del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli; and Centro di Ricerca della Accademia dei Lincei, Rome.

This conference explores philosophical writings that circulated clandestinely in the early modern era—a corpus of some 250 texts in some 2,000 manuscript copies. At its most radical, the clandestine philosophical tract remained rigorously anonymous. These tracts offered a rationalist criticism of philosophy and religion, drawing on classical and Renaissance alternative traditions while providing critical readings of mainstream texts to bring out their errors and ideological sleight of hand. Many of the ideas expressed in the manuscripts emerged in print in the works of Voltaire, Hume, d’Holbach, and Diderot. The conference examines how these manuscripts enable a reading of European intellectual history beyond the official professions of faith promoted by the schools and established authors.

RSVP at http://www.1718.ucla.edu/events/heterodox-underground/

Speakers

Jeffrey D. Burson, Georgia Southern University

Sabrina Ebbersmeyer, Københavns Universitet

Karen Hollewand, University of Oxford

Jonathan Israel, Institute for Advanced Study

John Christian Laursen, University of California, Riverside

Inger Leemans, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Whitney Mannies, University of California, Riverside

John Marshall, Johns Hopkins University

Gianni Paganini, Università del Piemonte Orientale

Winfried Schröder, Philipps-Universität Marburg Maria

Susana Seguin, Université Paul-Valery Montpelier III

Rienk Vermij, University of Oklahoma