We are delighted to announce the Call for Papers for LAPASEC 2027. The Landau-Paris Symposia on the Eighteenth Century (LAPASEC) series focuses on the literature and culture of the British Isles of the period, but it is also open to topics relating to the British colonies, France, Germany, and further afield. Attendance is free, and for those in the early stages of their academic careers, we are seeking to subsidise conference costs. We invite 20-minute papers in English, French or German, with a discussion time of 10 minutes.
The conference theme hinges on idleness and industry within 18th-century discourses in Britain and beyond. Idleness as the absence of work and industry as the absence of idleness shaped social, cultural and moral values that dictated behaviour, trends, politics and economic systems. William Hogarth’s series of engravings titled “Industry and Idleness”, the primary inspiration of the conference theme, is a homiletic expression of a Protestant work ethic that, at first glance, valorises assiduity and condemns indolence. However, it is not without ambiguities. The moral rhetoric around industry and idleness can be further traced in eighteenth-century texts belonging to various genres such as conduct books, religious tracts, autobiographies, or novels. The geographical scope of this conference extends to the British Empire. While stereotypes such as the “lazy, violent, brutish African” that originated in precolonial European travel literature never went away, the colonial world functioned as a site of extraction of labour and luxuries.
Submission deadline: 20 May 2026
Notification of acceptance: 20 June 2026
A 500-word proposal and a short bio-bibliographical presentation should be sent to the organising committee: lapasec_essen@uni-due.de
Conference languages are English, French and German. Proposals in any of the three languages are welcome.