‘Patriotic Cosmopolitanism; Cosmopolitan Patriotism’. Local loyalties and universal rights since the French revolution
Keynote lecture HLCS Conferentie ‘Europe Contested’, woensdag 22 november, 13:15-14:15, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Erasmusgebouw, E2.53.
There is a long history of tensions between on the one hand particular affiliations to nation, religious faith, locale, landscape, people and race, which are often seen as emotional and affective, and on the other larger aims and values (often transnational as in the European case, sometimes universal) that are not necessarily tied to place and which are seen as abstract and cerebral. These are issues that have vexed contemporary political theorists and philosophers, but which have been salient since the French revolution. This talk takes two historical cases, the one British, the other Italian, to explore the debate about these tensions, and to suggest directions in which the modern debate might develop.
About John Brewer
John Brewer is an internationally acknowledged authority on the history of consumer culture and cultural consumption in the early modern period, and the valuation of culture until the present day. His most famous studies include: The Birth of a Consumer Society, edited with Neil McKendrick and J.H. Plumb (1982); The Consumption of Culture: Word, Image, and Object in the 17th and 18th Centuries, edited with Ann Bermingham (1995); The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (1997); The American Leonardo: a 20th century tale of Obsession, Art and Money (2009). His current research focuses on debates on the values of art since 1500 till the present and on the history of travel, tourism and identity in the 18th and 19th centuries. Emeritus professor of History and Literature at Cal Tech (USA) and former professor of cultural history at the European University Institute Florence, he currently joins the Radboud Faculty of Arts as a HLCS Visiting Fellow in 2017/18.
For information or questions, please contact europecontested2017@let.ru.nl.