The Long 18th, a scholarly blog devoted to 18th-century literature, history, and culture, is conducting a week-long collaborative reading of Simon Gikandi’s award-winning Slavery and the Culture of Taste (Princeton UP, 2011), from May 13-20, 2013. We have been reading approximately one chapter a day, with posts from a variety of eighteenth century literary scholars and historians. Please visit, and consider contributing to the discussion, at http://long18th.wordpress.com/
David Mazella specializes in eighteenth-century British Literature. His first book, a cultural and conceptual history of the “cynic” and “cynicism” in Great Britain, is entitled The Making of Modern Cynicism (University of Virginia Press, 2007). A number of articles related to this research have appeared or are forthcoming from such journals as Eighteenth-Century: Theory and Interpretation and Texas Studies in Literature and Language. He has also published articles on Laurence Sterne, Thomas Hobbes, and George Lillo.