A Note from the Editors

This 50^th volume of Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture also marks the 50^th anniversary of the founding of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS). As is usual on such occasions, the Society took some time to reflect upon its past. Three of those reflections are included here. But most of the attention at ASECS's 50^th Annual Meeting in March 2019 and at the meetings of its affiliate and regional societies that academic year (during which the original versions of all of the contributions to this volume were presented) was devoted to considering the present and future of eighteenth-century studies. That present and that future certainly have their challenges, and those challenges have only been amplified by recent events: this volume went into production amidst a global pandemic (which has claimed the life of one of our contributors), the world's accompanying slide into severe economic recession, and the most far-reaching—and we hope, effective—campaign for racial justice in a generation, which has prompted some necessary and overdue self-scrutiny among humanists about their relation to structural inequities. The economic, environmental, and political difficulties facing us are considerable.

However, as the contents of this volume amply demonstrate, this is nonetheless an exciting time for scholarship. New questions are being asked; new methods are being developed; new archives are being explored. At the same time, old questions and familiar texts are being revisited in ways that productively unsettle what we thought we knew. Our task is to press still harder and push still further. What the next half century will hold is, of course, unknown. But if we can build upon and extend the kinds of important, often exhilarating scholarship on offer here, then the future of eighteenth-century studies is secure, at least as an intellectual enterprise, and that, in turn, might yet help repair the world. We've been warned many times about overestimating the social utility of our work. In moments of crisis like the present, it's perhaps equally important that we not underestimate it.

This volume also marks a change in the editorial personnel of Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture. The contents and arrangement of this volume reflect the insight and judgment of Eve Tavor Bannet. We have merely shepherded her vision into production. We would like to thank Eve and her Associate Editor, Roxann Wheeler, for their service to the field and for their generosity and guidance in the transition. Whatever further advances we are able to make will be profoundly indebted to what they have passed on to us.

Here's to another fifty years!