The Project
An innovative tool and an interdisciplinary approach
- An open-access digital encyclopedia with a multi-modal search engine
- An international and interdisciplinary project led by the GIS Sociabilités / Sociability since 2017
- An EU-funded project (Horizon 2020-MSCA-RISE) since 2019, promoting staff exchange and intersectoral collaborations
- A digital humanities project managed by an experienced editorial team
- Encyclopedia entries written in English or French by eighteenth-century scholars in various fields (history, art history, literature, philosophy, material culture, linguistics ...) and reviewed by a dedicated committee
- A complementary anthology of texts related to various aspects of sociability and connected to the entries
Bringing academic research on eighteenth-century sociability to a wider audience
- Explore the wide range of topics related to British Sociability from 1650 to 1850 and learn about the circulation of models of sociability that shaped European and colonial societies.
- Discover the collaborative work between academic researchers on primary source material in their respective fields of expertise
- Browse through 200 entries enriched with illustrations, hyperlinks, footnotes and further reading suggestions
- Search by keywords, by alphabetical order or by categories (People, Places, Practices, Concepts, Objects) and sub-categories
- Navigate easily through a dynamic and updatable resource
- Share content with online media and social networks
Latest entries
Conviviality
Coffeehouses
Female friendship in eighteenth-century English literature
The English literature of the long eighteenth century offers abundant portraits of female friendship as a frequent form of sociability among women – sometimes sentimentalised as true spiritual companionship between pure and innocent souls, sometimes demonised as a devious façade for unnatural sexual desire. As opposed to men’s friendships, which centred on socialising in the public sphere, forms of attachment among women were associated with the intimate and the private.
Anthology
As part of its H2020 programme (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions – Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (MSCA-RISE-2018)), the European Commission has granted significant financial support to DIGITENS, the flagship project of the Scientific Interest Grouping (GIS) “Sociabilités/Sociability”.