Core Programs, 1991–


2022–23 The Forgotten Canopy: Ecology, Ephemeral Architecture, and Imperialism in the Caribbean, South American, and Transatlantic Worlds
–organized by Stella Nair (UCLA) and Paul Niell (Florida State University)

2021–22: Victorian Apocalypse: The siècle at its fin
–Organized by Joseph Bristow (UCLA), Neil Hultgren (California State University, Long Beach), and Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (University of California, Davis

2020–21: Resituating the Comedia
—organized by Barbara Fuchs (University of California, Los Angeles)

2019–20: Contested Foundations: Commemorating the Red Letter Year of 1619
—organized by Brenda E. Stevenson (University of California, Los Angeles) and Sharla M. Fett (Occidental College)

2018–19: Making Worlds: Art, Materiality, and Early Modern Globalization
—organized by Bronwen Wilson, University of California, Los Angeles, and Angela Vanhaelen, McGill University

2017–18: Becoming Media
—organized by Sarah Tindal Kareem (UCLA) and Davide Panagia (UCLA)

2016–17: Entertaining the Idea: Shakespeare, Philosophy, Performance
—organized by Clark Professors Julia Reinhard Lupton (UC, Irvine), Lowell Gallagher (UCLA), and James Kearney (UC, Santa Barbara)

2015–16: The Frontiers of Persian Learning: Testing the Limits of a Eurasian Lingua Franca, 1600–1900
—organized by Clark Professor Nile Green (UCLA)

2014–15: Explorations, Encounters, and the Circulation of Knowledge, 1600–1830
—organized by Clark Professors Adriana Craciun (UC, Riverside) and Mary Terrall (UCLA)

2013–14: Iberian Globalization of the Early Modern World
—organized by Clark Professors Anna More (UCLA/Universidade de Brasília) and Ivonne del Valle (UC, Berkeley)

2012–13: Moralism, Fundamentalism, and the Rhetoric of Decline in Eurasia, 1600–1900
—organized by Clark Professors Andrea S. Goldman (UCLA) and Gabriel Piterberg (UCLA)

2011–12: Rivalry and Rhetoric in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Envisioning Empire in the Old World
—organized by Clark Professor Barbara Fuchs (UCLA)

2010–11: Cultures of Aestheticism—Before and after Oscar Wilde: The Decadent 1890s
—organized by Clark Professor Joseph Bristow (UCLA)

2009–10: Cultures of Communication, Theologies of Media in Early Modern Europe and Beyond: Theology as Media Theory
—organized by Clark Professors Christopher Wild (UCLA/University of Chicago) and Ulrike Strasser (UC, Irvine)

2008–09: The British Atlantic in an Age of Revolution and Reaction: From Boston to Peterloo and Tea Party to Massacre
—organized by Clark Professors Saree Makdisi (UCLA) and Michael Meranze (UCLA)

2007–08: Spaces of Self in Early Modern Culture
—organized by Clark Professors David Sabean (UCLA) and Malina Stefanovska (UCLA)

2006–07: Imperial Models in the Early Modern World
—organized by Clark Professors Anthony Pagden (UCLA) and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (UCLA)

2005–06: Vital Matters: Eighteenth-Century Views of Conception, Life and Death
—organized by Clark Professors Helen Deutsch (UCLA) and Mary Terrall (UCLA)

2004–05: Structures of Feeling in Seventeenth-Century Cultural Expression
—organized by Clark Professor Susan McClary (UCLA)

  • Genders and Sexualities
  • Culture and the Law
  • Temporalities
  • Performing Bodies

2003–04: The Age of Projects: Changing and Improving the Arts, Literature, and Life during the Long Eighteenth Century, 1660–1820
—organized by Clark Professor Maximillian E. Novak (UCLA)

  • Retrieving the Past
  • Improving the Present
  • Envisioning the Future

2002–03: Braudel Revisited: The Mediterranean World, 1600–1800
—organized by Clark Professors Gabriel Piterberg (UCLA), Teofilo Ruiz (UCLA), and Geoffrey Symcox (UCLA)

  • Braudel Revisited: The Mediterranean World, 1600–1800
  • Economy and Society in the Early Modern Mediterranean
  • Religion, Conflict, and Popular Culture
  • Cultural Transmission in the Mediterranean World
  • Aural and Visual Cultures in the Mediterranean

2001–02: History, Theory, and the Subject of Rights, 1640–1848
—organized by Clark Professors Kirstie McClure (UCLA) and J. G. A. Pocock (Johns Hopkins University)

  • Diverse Subjects: Entities/Affects/Rights
  • Inside/Outside Constitutionalisms: Rights/Revolutions/Empires
  • Opposition, Dissent, and Revolutionary Sympathies: Origins of the British Left, 1770–1800
  • Writing Rights: Literatures and Public Spheres

2000–01: Culture and Authority in the Baroque
—organized by Clark Professors Massimo Ciavolella (UCLA) and Patrick Coleman (UCLA)

  • Space: Direction and Discovery in the Expanding World
  • Together Apart: Communion, Community, and Concealment
  • Poetry and Wonder

1999–2000: The Global Eighteenth Century: The Four Corners of the Earth
—organized by Clark Professor Felicity Nussbaum (UCLA)

  • Racial and Sexual Intermixture in Africa and the New World
  • Mapping the Eighteenth-Century World
  • From China to Peru: Orientalism and Exoticism Revisited
  • Homosexuality in the Eighteenth Century
  • Eighteenth-Century Islands

1998–99: Oscar Wilde and the Culture of the Fin de Siècle
—organized by Clark Professor Joseph Bristow (UCLA)

  • Writings: Attributions, Editions, and Revisions
  • Wilde Stages: Productions, Traditions, Appropriations
  • The New Wilde Criticism: Aesthetics, Politics, Sexuality
  • New Perspectives on the Avant-garde and the Fin de Siècle
  • Sexual Controversies of the Fin de Siècle

1997–98: Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern Europe and America
—organized by Clark Professor Richard H. Popkin (UCLA)

  • Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern Period
  • Catholic Millenarianism from Savonarola to Eighteenth-Century Jansenist Thinkers
  • Millenarianism among English Protestant Thinkers, 1600-1800: Science, Liberal Politics, Philosemitism, and Millenarian Thought
  • Continental Millenarianism
  • Millenarianism and Revolution

1996–97: New Directions in the Study of Early Modern Culture and Society
—organized by Clark Professor Hans Medick (Max-Planck-Institute für Geschichte, Göttingen)

  • Personality and the Construction of the Self
  • Outsiders: From the Periphery to the Center
  • Beyond Elias? Court Society: The Center as Symbol and Locus of Power
  • The Challenge of Microhistory and Its Macrohistorical Responses
  • Nature and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe
  • Deformity, Monstrosity, and Gender, 1600–1800

1995–96: Challenge of the Enlightenment
—organized by Joyce Appleby (UCLA), Carlo Ginzburg (UCLA), Anne Mellor (UCLA), Maximillian Novak (UCLA), Gary Nash (UCLA), Theodore Porter (UCLA), and Peter H. Reill (UCLA), Hans Bödeker (Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte, Göttingen), and Istvan Hont (Cambridge University)

1994–95: Life Studies: Autobiography, Biography, and Portrait in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
—organized by Clark Professors Patrick Coleman (UCLA), Jill Kowalik (UCLA), Jayne Lewis (UCLA)

1993–94: American Dreams, Western Images: Mapping the Contours of Western Experiences
—organized by Clark Professors Valerie Matsumoto (UCLA) and George Sanchez (UCLA)

1992–93: Constructing the Body in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Its Forms, Representations, and Regulation
—organized by Clark Professors Anne K. Mellor (UCLA), Sara Melzer (UCLA), and Kathryn Norberg (UCLA)

1991–92: Society and Culture in Early Modern Europe Society

  • Mozart’s Music: Text and Context
  • Themes and Oppositions in the Rococo
  • Civility, Court Society, and Scientific Discourse: Reframing the Scientific Revolution