Rousseau Association

The Rousseau Association/Association Rousseau, formerly known as the North American Association for the Study of Rousseau, is a bilingual society devoted to the study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Our membership is multinational and interdisciplinary. The Association includes Rousseau scholars from the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Japan. We count among our numbers specialists in history, languages, literature, philosophy, political science, as well as other fields. We welcome members from all disciplines. Members receive a semi-annual newsletter and are eligible to participate in Rousseau Association colloquia, and in panels it sponsors at other professional meetings (e.g. The American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies).

The Association sponsors a colloquium every two years, at locations in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Each meeting is devoted to a specific text or question, and all papers are given in plenary sessions. Our last colloquium was hosted by the LIRE XVIIIème siècle research group at the University of Lyon II, Lyon, France, in late June of 2007. The topic of the colloquium was “Rousseau et les philosophes.” Under an arrangement with the Voltaire Foundation, selected papers from the colloquia are submitted for publication in a volume of SVEC.

If you wish to join the Rousseau Association, please click here for instructions. For 2008, regular dues are US $30; student dues, US $15.00.

Highlights

A volume based upon the 2005 colloquium of the Rousseau Association will be published by SVEC in 2008.  The volume, edited by John C. O’Neal, is titled The Nature of Rousseau’s ‘Rêveries’, and contains essays on the meaning of nature in the work as well as essays on the nature of the work itself.

The Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Geneva has announced a multidisciplinary, international celebration of the tricentennial of Rousseau’s birth in 1712 called 2012 Rousseau for All.  Full information and a call for projects can be found at http://www.ville-ge.ch/culture/rousseau/.  

Next Colloquium

The XVIth Biennial Colloquium of the Rousseau Association will take place at UCLA in summer, 2009. The topic of the colloquium will be “Rousseau’s Legacy.”