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Conference program

The Early Modern Center of the University of California, Santa Barbara and its affiliates held “Home and World: 1500-1800,” an interdisciplinary conference on the Center’s 2003-2004 theme. This one-day conference explored how these two categories or concepts were experienced and defined throughout the early modern period. The program included nine panelists representing a variety of disciplines as well as the following talks by invited speakers:

• "Locating the Early Modern English Home"
Frances Dolan, Professor of English at UC Davis, addressed how we conceptualize the "early modern English home," considering, for example, whether this phrase can be used to describe the homes of the English in Colonial Virginia.

• “Interior Decoration in the Noble Homes of Late Seventeenth-Century Dauphiné”
Donna Bohanan, Professor of History at Auburn University, examined how nobles in a 17th-century French province used conspicuous consumption and a clearly defined style of interior decoration to (re-)establish, demonstrate, and exercise their public power and social rank.

• "Home and World in 18th-Century Scotland: John Galt's Annals of the Parish"
Toni Bowers, Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, explored the imperial imperatives informing the ostensibly provincial novel Annals of the Parish (1821).

The following University of California, Santa Barbara departments and programs co-sponsored this event with the Early Modern Center:
College of Letters & Sciences (Division of Humanities and Fine Arts), Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, Department of English, Renaissance Studies, Comparative Literature Program, Department of History, Women’s Studies Program, Spanish & Portuguese Department