A selection of the most exciting current work in eighteenth-century studies.

Focusing on the fraught ways in which communities are defined, volume 51 of Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture showcases groundbreaking research in all of the disciplines that constitute eighteenth-century studies. An article by Aaron Santesso and David Rosen intervenes in the current debates over "critique" by excavating a theory of ethical reading embedded in liberalism. In a similar mode, Jesslyn Whittell reads Christopher Smart's Jubilate Agno as a "stuplime" forerunner to contemporary experimental poetry.

Considering communities that emerge around artworks, Aaron Gabriel Montalvo examines Joseph Highmore's Pamela paintings for the ways in which they inculcated new forms of moral spectatorship, while Stacey Jocoy shows how Robert Burns's ballad collections manipulated both tunes and lyrics in order to fashion a new vision of Scottish culture.

Renee Bryzik finds that asymmetrical friendships in eighteenth-century novels helped unravel ideological prejudices shaped by settler colonialism. Nathan D. Brown presents a history of sweetness that goes beyond Caribbean plantations by reassessing the hopes placed upon maple sugar. Meanwhile, Dario Galvão argues that Buffon distinguished humans from animals by virtue of the former's capacity for domination, and Noel Chevalier focuses on the ways in which pirates served as monstrous stand-ins for commercial corruption.

This volume of SECC also includes contributions from Li Qi Peh, Maximillian E. Novak, and Judith Stuchiner that explore Daniel Defoe's thinking about individualism, community, and religious instruction. The volume concludes with a cluster of short essays responding to the methodological challenges posed by Daniel O'Quinn's Engaging the Ottoman Empire.

Contributors: Nathan D. Brown, Renee Bryzik, Katherine Calvin, Noel Chevalier, Zirwat Chowdhury, Ashley L. Cohen, Angelina Del Balzo, Lynn Festa, Douglas Fordham, Dario Galvão, Stacey Jocoy, Aaron Gabriel Montalvo, Maximillian E. Novak, Daniel O'Quinn, Li Qi Peh, David Rosen, Aaron Santesso, Judith Stuchiner, Charlotte Sussman, Jesslyn Whittell