Visions: The Dance Most of All: Envisioning an Embodied Eighteenth-Century Studies

The editors introduce this special issue of ABO, highlighting the work of the authors included in the issue. The introduction draws on recent scholarship re-visioning the work of the long, “undisciplined” eighteenth century, arguing for an eighteenth-century studies that embodies our intersectional identities and honors the experiences of bodyminds surrounding texts and authors, as well as the bodyminds that interact with those texts in the present. Throughout the years, scholars have demonstrated that there is no single vision of what eighteenth-century scholarship is or should be, but rather multiple visions. This introduction urges scholars to consider how an eighteenth-century studies that focuses on embodied experience can and should respond to present-day issues of racial inequity, sexism, ableism, heteronormativity, and other forms of systemic oppression which remain deeply rooted in the structures of power of the long eighteenth century. Revising our ideas of what is possible, what is visible, what is required of us as teacher-scholars remains our foremost task.