Radical Print Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century

The York Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies symposium explores radical print in the long eighteenth century. The symposium will bring together work on newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets, and other forms of print, including graphic representations such as satirical prints, that shaped debates around protest, satire, political reform, and social change across Britain and beyond. It seeks to challenge and expand our understanding of key concepts associated with these debates, such as “radicalism,” “protest,” and “the political”, and that interrogate what counts as print culture. Interdisciplinary approaches are especially welcome, including work from literary studies, history, political theory, visual culture, book and print history, and cultural studies.

York provides a uniquely rich context for these conversations. The city and surrounding region were home to a remarkable network of radical printers and writers in the late eighteenth century, from Christopher Wyvill and the Yorkshire Association, to the Sheffield-based James Montgomery, whose newspapers, periodicals, and prints offer fertile ground for exploring the intersections of print, politics, and literary culture. The conference will build on Jon Mee’s work (Print, Publicity, and Popular Radicalism: The Laurel of Liberty, 2016), which illuminates the role of print in the emergence of popular politics and the culture of radicalism in the 1790s.

We invite proposals for papers, panels, and roundtable discussions for a conference exploring radical print culture in the late eighteenth century, with particular attention to the interplay between regionality, the print trade, partisan identity, and satire. We welcome submissions that address, but are not limited to, topics such as:

• Newspapers, periodicals, and pamphlets as tools of protest and political reform
• Literary strategies in radical publishing
• Regional print networks and political opinion
• Women, gender, and hidden or contested agency in radical print culture
• Print, publicity, and the emergence of popular political consciousness
• Printers as entrepreneurs, agitators, and cultural mediators
• Censorship, legality, and the risks faced by radical publishers
• Satirical prints, caricature, and graphic representations of radical ideas
• Cross-media circulation: the interplay of print, pamphlets, newspapers, and visual culture
• The material culture of radicalism
• The relationship between radicalism, conservativism and reform in radical print culture
• Reassessing the meanings of “radicalism,” “protest,” and “the political”
• Interdisciplinary approaches that challenge conventional definitions of print culture

Please send abstracts of no more than 400 words to Adam Smith at a.smith3@yorksj.ac.uk and Chloe Wigston Smith at chloe.wigstonsmith@york.ac.uk by 15 April.