Events
Upcoming Events
In-Person Lecture: Lauren Kopajtic, Fordham University, "Rhetorical and Literary Style from Adam Smith to Jane Austen”
Monday, 13 October 2025 @ 5:00 pm (refreshments at 4:30 pm)
Location: The Center for British & Irish Studies, Norlin Library, M549,
Sponsors: The Center for British & Irish Studies and the 18th- & 19th-Century Studies Network
Abstract:
Adam Smith is still widely considered an economist first and a moral philosopher second, but he first made his name as anintellectual with a series of public lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. Smith's interest in rhetoric and the literary arts persisted throughout his life and career, and while he never finished the planned "philosophical history of all the different branches of Literature, Philosophy, Poetry, and Eloquence" (and ordered the unfinished manuscript to be destroyed after his death), he regularly revised, added to, and fine-tunedhis first published work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). This paper examines TMS as a literary and philosophical work, seeking to answer the following questions:What rhetorical forms does Smith employ? To what purpose does Smith put these forms? What are the limitations of these forms and how might they fail? I suggest that one of the techniques Smithanalyzes and employs, indirect internal description, is a precursor of the free indirect style that Jane Austen perfected in her novels. Concluding with examples from Austen, Smith, Sterne, and Equiano, I consider the relation between literary form and genre and argumentative purpose.
Lauren Kopajtic is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. She specializes in eighteenth-century philosophy, with a focus on David Hume, Adam Smith, Rousseau, Jane Austen, and Mary Wollstonecraft. In addition to publishing articles on sympathy, self-control, education, and other core topics in moral philosophy, she is also dedicated to engaging with genres, forms, and figures that are not standardly considered in philosophical work. Dr. Kopajtic is also theEditor of the Journal of Scottish Philosophy, and the Director of the Center for the Study of Scottish Philosophy.
Questions? email labio@colorado.edu
A Reading by Marcia Douglas on Tuesday, 21 October 2025 @ 12:30 pm in The Center for British & Irish Studies, Norlin Library, M549
THE JAMAICA KOLLECTION OF THE SHANTE DREAM ARKIVE: being dreamity, algoriddims, chants & riffs(New Directions, 2025)
Douglas’s latest book explores themes of loss, survival, and deliverance and reimagines the cultural memory of the African diaspora through an immersive storytelling, richly layered with drawings and notes on flora, fauna, and natural phenomena.
Marcia Douglas is the author ofThe Marvellous Equations of the Dread: A Novel in Bass Riddim,Notes from a Writer's Book of Cures and SpellsandMadam Fateas well as a poetry collection,Electricity Comes to Cocoa Bottom.Sheis a College Professor of Distinction and the Associate Chair for Creative Writing at the .
Free and open to the public.
Lunch will be served. To register: emailcbis@colorado.edu by Monday, October 13. Provide the name(s) of attendees, and list any dietary restriction.
Questions? emailcbis@colorado.edu
Past Events
2024
Tuesday, October 29, 2024, 5 PM (In Person)
"Reconciliation Is Not revenge, or, What is the Sound Made by a Roaring Mouse?"
Lecture by award-winning visual contemporary artist, author, and professional speaker
Location: Center for British & Irish Studies Room, Norlin Library (M549), CU Boulder (campus map)
Reception 4:30 - 5:00 pm.
In 1867 Canada was formally established through a Constitution as a nation state within the British Empire. In 2024, for the first time in history, a government adhered to the Canadian Constitutional dictate and formally withdrew sovereign claims to Crown title over Indigenous territories. Why, after 157 years and without a single gunshot, would a small Indigenous Nation secure such a unique victory? This talk will be an examination of applied strategies, and will also examine these strategies through the lens of the artworks: how does scale at both mural and at the page provide opportunities to examine distortion and sovereignty? How, practically, does the sovereignty of page scale counteract control over the Ethnomythic? This talk will offer the argument that in times of collapse, the page-scale narrative can alter the mural/monumental scale.
Free and open to the public.
Wednesday, October 16, 2024, 5 - 6 pm (online)
Information Session on the Graduate Grants offered by the the Center for British & Irish Studies
Featured speakers:
- Catherine Labio, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Center for British & Irish Studies
- Hannah Blanning (English), Ogilvy Travel Fellowship Recipient (2024)
- Sarah Brown (Political Science), Conference Travel Grant Recipient (2024)
- Edem Dotse (Critical Media Practices), Ogilvy Travel Fellowship Recipient (2024)
- Wesley Leffingwell (Music), Conference Travel Grant Recipient (2024)
Thursday, February 29, 2024, 11 am MST, 6 pm GMT (Online)
Nic Watts & Sakina Karimjee on Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History
UK-based artists Nic Watts andSakina Karimjee discuss their acclaimed graphic novel adaptation of CLR James’s play on the Haitian Revolution and its leader, Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History (Verso, 2023).
Free and open to the public.
This event is co-sponsored by the 18th- & 19th-Century Studies Network.
Thursday, 15 February, 2024, 7 pm, CU Boulder Main Campus (In Person)
"The Jane Austen Playlist: Music and Prose of Jane Austen," Recital-Presentation by Laura Klein
This lecture and recital will explore music in Austen’s life, including works from one of her handwritten music manuscripts and a recently discovered volume of music inscribed with her signature. It will also uncover fascinating connections between her music and her best-loved novels.
Bio: Laura Klein, M.M., NCTM, pianist, educator, and musicologist, is a PhD precandidate in Musicology at CU Boulder, where her focus is on the music in the Austen Family Music Books. She has performed in the US, Canada, Austria, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom in venues such as Avery Fisher Hall, Carnegie Hall, Wiener Musikverein, Boettcher Concert Hall, and Jane Austen’s House as a Reimagine Resident.
This event is sponsored by the Center for British & Irish Studies, the 18th- & 19th-Century Studies Network, and the Department of Musicology, College of Music.
2019
The Precinct of St. Paul's in Early Modern London
Professor Roze Hentschell, Colorado State University
Thursday 14 November, 2019
Time: 5:00 PM
British and Irish Studies Room (M549), 5th floor Norlin Library
Professor Hentschellis the author ofThe Culture of Cloth in Early Modern England: Textual Constructions of a National Identity(Ashgate, 2008) andhas recently completed a monograph entitled"St Paul's Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture: Spatial Practices," which is under contract with Oxford University Press.
"Addiction in the Archives"
Rebecca Lemon, University of Southern California
POSTPONED
British and Irish Studies Room (M549), 5th floor Norlin Library
Professor Lemon is the author ofAddiction and Devotion in Early Modern England(Pennsylvania, 2018),King Richard III: Language and Writing(Arden, 2018) andTreason by Words: Literature, Law and Rebellion in Shakespeare's England(Cornell, 2006)
"The Wall in the North (of England) or Shakespeare and 'The Office of Wall'"
- Professor Adam N. McKeown, Tulane University
- Tuesday2 April at 5:00 pm
- British and Irish Studies Room (M549), 5th floor Norlin Library
- Professor McKeown is the author ofFortifications and its Discontents from Shakespeare to Milton: Trouble in the Walled City(Routledge, 2019) andEnglish Mercuries: Soldier Poets in the Age of Shakespeare(Vanderbilt, 2009)
2018
New Histories for the Age of Shakespeare
- Many leading historians present thei research onrecent developments in the history of Elizabeth I and James VI and I.
- November 17, 2018
- download conference program here
"The Political Education of Young William Shakespeare"
- Glyn Parry, Professor of History, Roehampton University
- November 16, 2018
"Justice and Political Society in David Hume's Second Enquiry"
- Ryan Patrick Hanley, Mellon Distinguished ProfessorofPolitical Science, Marquette University
- March 1, 2018
2017
"Brexit andthe Future of the EU"
- FeaturedProfessor Robery Geyer, University of Lancaster
- Center for British and Irish Studies, Norlin Library M549
- Wednesday, September 13, 2017
2016
Shakespeare's First Folio, on Tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library
- CU Art Museum
- August 9-31, 2016
2012
The Rake's Progress - Stravinsky, Hogarth, Hockney, Auden, and Kallman: A Multidisciplinary Conference
- Keynote:- “The Tapering Perspectival Vice of Hockney’s Bedlam”
- October 26-27, 2012
Related Events:
Hockney andHogarth: Selections from the CU Art Museum's Collection of British Art
- September 7 - October 27, 2012
- CU Art Museum
- Curated by Lisa Tamiris Becker, Director, CU Art Museum and Catherine Labio, Associate Professor of English,
Lecture by Frédéric Ogée
- Professor of English Studies at the Université Paris-Diderot (Paris 7), France, and a world-renowned expert on William Hogarth
- September 20, 2012
CU Opera:The Rake's Progress
- an opera in English by Igor Stravinsky, libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman
- October 26 and 28, 2012
2010
"Writing Ireland"
- A free talk by author Frank Delaney
- September 29, 2010
The Next English Renaissance: New Directions in Early Modern Literary Criticism
- September 24, 2010
The Tudors Conference
- Keynote Speaker Michael Hirst, creator of the Shotwime seriesThe Tudorsand screenwriter forElizabethandElizabeth: The Golden Age
- February 3-4, 2010
Fifth Annual CBIS Gathering of Scholars: "Britain and India"
- January 22, 2010
2009
"Circular Referral and Alterity: The Three Ladies in Coriolanus and What They Can Tell Us"
- Yasunari Takada, Chair of the Department of Cultural Representations and visiting scholar at Yale as a guest of their Alumni Association, University of Tokyo
- November 16, 2009
"Fictional Settlements: Footnotes, Metalepsis, Imperial Design"
- Elaine Freedgood, Department of English, New York University
- November 13, 2009
"On the Promise of Peace: Kant's Wartime and the Tremulous Body of Philosophy"
- David Clark, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University
- September 4, 2009
2008
Internationally Renowned Visiting Scholars (Fall 2008)
- Dr. Professor Christoph Bode (Department of English, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
"The Discursive Subject in British Romanticism" - Dr. Nicholas Roe (School of English, University of St. Andrews, Scotland)
"John Keats, Benjamin Haydon and the Elgin Marbles"
Fourth Annual CBIS Gathering of Scholars: "Fashion Thoughts"
- Fall 2008
"Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, and the Lyrical Ballads of 1797-1798"
- Jacqueline Labbe, Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
- Fall 2008
2007
Third Annual CBIS Gathering of Scholars: "Questions of Affect: Emotion and Sensation"
- Fall 2007
Comparative Literature Graduate Student Conference
- February 23-34, 2007
2006
Second Annual CBIS Gathering of Scholars: "The Future of Romanticism"
- Summer 2006
2005
First Annual CBIS Gathering of Scholars: "Two Centuries of Things"
- Fall 2005