ASECS at 50: Interview with Lynn Hunt

Abstract

ASECS at 50:Interview with Lynn Hunt Katie Jarvis (bio) and Lynn Hunt Lynn Hunt is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Since earning her Ph.D. in History from Stanford University in 1973, Hunt has written, co-authored, and edited numerous works on French history, gender history, global history, and the history of human rights. She is widely known for her ground-breaking book Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution (1984) and for her continual engagement with new theories and methods. Her most recent book, History: Why it Matters (2018), analyzes truth in history and asks what role the discipline should have in contemporary society. Hunt has served as President of the American Historical Association and has sat on the Board of Directors of the American Council of Learned Societies. Her research has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She received the Nancy Lyman Roelker Graduate Mentorship Award from the American Historical Association in 2010. Katie Jarvis: ASECS began in 1969 while you were in graduate school. From your perspective, what are the most significant ways that ASECS has since changed, and how has the society impacted eighteenth-century studies? Lynn Hunt: I cannot think of a more thriving interdisciplinary society or one that has had more impact on interdisciplinary studies. The reach of ASECS has expanded greatly with the establishment of many regional societies and through its affiliation with ISECS, the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. ASECS not [End Page 547] only gave a home to scholars who crossed disciplinary boundaries (and who were therefore sometimes regarded as not quite true to their disciplines); it encouraged many of us to think in more interdisciplinary ways. In my own field of history, this prompting has had many salutary effects because when I was a graduate student some fifty years ago, historians did not consider literature, theater, or art to be historical documents that might have as much significance as police records or diplomatic correspondence. As a consequence, eighteenth-century studies have been at the forefront of new developments in many different humanities disciplines. Jarvis: What ASECS conferences, articles, journal volumes, or other initiatives stand out in your memory? Hunt: I do not think so much in terms of specific conferences or publications, but rather of the growing interest in gender and the impact of slavery and other forms of global connection which appeared very early on in ASECS conferences and in the pages of Eighteenth-Century Studies. Jarvis: Over the past four decades, what trends in eighteenth-century studies have you found the most invigorating? Hunt: The insistence on considering gender relations, the impact of slavery and race more generally, and the effects of global interconnection (especially empire and colonization) have influenced every field in the humanities. These interests have meant that scholars in literature and art history have become much more interested in historical context but these interests have also changed the way historians think of their field. It is hard to overstate the influence of these interests on the way we currently think about eighteenth-century studies. We now take them for granted, but often a long struggle was required to get them accepted as valid subjects of scholarship and therefore of interdisciplinary inquiry. ASECS played a key role in making this happen. Jarvis: What questions remain under-explored in eighteenth-century studies? Which current topics or questions hold great potential for our field? Hunt: Human-animal relations and environmental questions are just coming into their own now and they will have an influence for many years to come, and the interest in gender, race, and global interactions is certainly not about to dissipate. But given how interests shift over time, scholars may well return to some traditional fields with new approaches and questions. Diplomatic history, for example, has been transformed not just by the interest in global connections but also by gender and race. The role of women in diplomatic affairs in the eighteenth century has long been obscured by the relentless focus on official documents and records of leading male participants. Now scholars are discovering...