Over on Matt’s blog I had asserted that while “it would be great if there were an active eighteenth-century blogging community,” I didn’t think this was going to happen any time soon. Then I realized that for all I know, there are other eighteenth-century scholars out there blogging away. A couple of searches on Google seem to confirm my original assumption, though. I did come across some interesting mentions of the eighteenth century, however, in discussions of blogging.

I’m not sure that this Fresh Air commentary from Geoff Nunberg gets blogging right, but his connection to the origins of the novel struck me as interesting:

There’s something very familiar about that accretion of diurnal detail. It’s what the novel was trying to achieve when eighteenth-century writers cobbled it together out of subliterary genres like personal letters, journals, and newspapers, with the idea of reproducing the inner and outer experience that makes up daily life.

Sometimes the most interesting stuff comes through my email.

NSF Antarctic Artists & Writers Program
http://www.nsf.gov/od/opp/aawr.htm

The Antarctic Artists & Writers Program provides opportunities for scholars in the humanities (painting, photography, writing, history, and other liberal arts) to work in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. These visitors will be able to make observations at U.S. Antarctic Program stations and research camps and in wilderness areas. The purpose is to enable serious writings and the arts that increase understanding of the Antarctic and help document America’s Antarctic heritage.

The National Science Foundation funds and manages the U.S. Antarctic Program, which is devoted mainly to scientific research and education in support of the National interest in the Antarctic. The programís research and support infrastructure enables access to much of the Antarctic region.

The deadline for receipt of applications at the National Science Foundation is 4 June 2003. This deadline is for work in the Antarctic during the 2004-2005 austral summer. Applications will not be accepted before 1 May 2003.

In early 1993, I was sitting alongside Dave Liss in Bob Sattelmeyer’s graduate class in American Romanticism. Dave needed a roommate, and I needed a place to live, and within a few weeks I was living in the Candler Park (roughly speaking) neighborhood of Atlanta. Conversations with Dave are probably the reason I became interested in the eighteenth century to begin with. Later, while working on his Ph.D. at Columbia University, Dave decided that he’d rather write a novel than a dissertation, and so he did. In fact, following the success of his first book, Dave’s second novel is out just this week. It’s called The Coffee Trader.

These books are really fun reads, particulary (I suspect) for people who enjoy historical fiction. It’s not a genre I’m usually drawn towards, but I like these two novels a lot.