J.G. Herder memorably characterized the global relations of his time as a “grand European sponging enterprise.” This conference examined Enlightenment diagnoses and theories of domination and resistance in a global or transnational context along with the contemporary legacies of critically oriented writings of the long eighteenth century.

Conference Program

Friday, Oct. 6

8:30 am Pastries and Coffee

9:00 am Welcome

9:15 am Siep Stuurman (Utrecht University): “Global Enlightenment has a Beginning but No End”

10:30 am Eva Piirimäe (University of Tartu): “Self-Determination of Peoples in the German Enlightenment”

11:45 am Lunch

1:15 pm Jonas Gerlings (University of Göttingen): “Giving Laws to the Rest of the World–Kant and the American Revolution”

2:30 pm David Armitage (Harvard University): “Mary Wollstonecraft and the Invention of the Future”

3:45 pm Coffee Break

4:00 pm Emma Planinc (University of Notre Dame): “After Enlightenment: The Schism of Rights and Regeneration”


Saturday, Oct. 7

9:00 am Alexander Schmidt (Vanderbilt University): “How the Enlightenment Rights of Man became Christian: German Professors and the Origins of Modern International Law”

10:15 am Samuel Moyn (Yale University): “Defending—and Inventing—the Enlightenment at Harvard in the 1950s”

11:30 am Coffee Break

11:45 am Closing Group Discussion

This conference was co-organized by Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow Jonas Gerlings (Marie Curie Global Fellow) and Sankar Muthu (Political Science). This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101022186.