I am soliciting papers for the following panel:
"Regulating the Borders of Decency: The Discursive Limits of Sex and Gender in the 18th Century"
The purpose of this panel is to investigate the ways in which the social and moral category "decency" -- variously defined by Johnson as "propriety of form," "modest," and "not obscenity" -- informs the period's construction of sex and gender. The panel will explore what many critics have noted as the increasing amount of discourse regarding the categories of sex and gender throughout the eighteenth century. The panel, however, will differ from recent considerations in that this moderator hopes to question further the terms of the debate by focusing on this trio of associated terms, and by encouraging the consideration of representational strategies found in a wide variety of texts and genres. In particular, the panel will address discursive strategies invested in regulating sex and gender by means of this category of "decency" and will interrogate the ways in which sexual otherness is constructed as a cause of, in the words of one 1723 treatise, "Frightful Consequences" for the person in question and for "society" as a whole.
The deadline for proposals is September 15, 1996.
Tita Chico
Department of English
New York University
19 University Place, Room 200
New York, New York 10003
tel: 212-998-8800
e-mail: mvc5302@is.nyu.edu