Enfilade

I just stumbled across this CFP this morning; unfortunately, the deadline for submissions is today. [Note: the due date has been extended to 12 April]

Recycling Luxury and Waste in the Long 18th Century: The ‘Afterlife of Used Things’ in Britain and France
Université Paris Diderot, 22-23 June 2010

Proposals due by 12 April 2010

The 2010 conference on the afterlife of used things in the long 18th century will expand on the 2009 ‘cycles of novelty’ symposium, which had explored some of the many aspects of recycling in particular in relation to art and literature. This year’s conference will focus on recycling in relation to social, economic and material practices in the long 18th century and will broaden its geographical boundaries to include France.

We invite participants to study the versatile practices of recycling and refashioning that shaped the eighteenth-century world of goods with particular emphasis on the double question of waste and luxury. Thus the refashioning of old objects into new desirable ones, the thriving second-hand market often fuelled by the luxury trades and the problem of “waste management” in societies characterized by increased opulence are among the questions that the conference will seek to explore. The management of resources (both natural and man-made), their scarcity and their uses will also be central to the conference and we welcome papers exploring the topography or geographical circulation of goods and resources involved by practices of recycling. We also hope to somewhat chart the processes of valuation/devaluation and re-evaluation through which both fashionable luxury objects and discarded material went through and invite contributors to submit papers focusing on the cultural uses and values of objects/materials along the various stages of this process.

Conference papers can be in English or in French. We are in contact with several publishers to get a selection of papers from this year’s and last year’s conferences published. This publication will be in English. Please send your proposals (max 300 words) to the organisers by 12th April 2010 at the following addresses:
ariane.fennetaux@univ-paris-diderot.fr
amelie.junqua@u-picardie.fr

Organisers:
Ariane Fennetaux, Université Paris-Diderot, Paris 7
Amélie Junqua, Université de Picardie Jules Verne
Sophie Vasset, Université Paris-Diderot, Paris 7

History in Travel Narrative, 1589-1826
Paris, Sorbonne nouvelle, 11-12 December 2010

Proposals due by 15 June 2010

Joint conference organised by PRISMES (CREA XVIII, Epistémè), Sorbonne nouvelle, and CIERL, Québec

This conference will examine the representation of history in travel narrative. A European’s perception of countries and peoples with no ‘history’ is not the same as that of ‘civilised’ nations. What model of historical change do travel narratives project—history as a decline from some mythical or mythicised origin, cyclical history, history as the unfolding of a providential design, as progress? The evolution of those categories over the period considered will be investigated; this period stretches from 1589, which saw the publication of Richard Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, to 1826, when William Ellis’s Narrative of a Tour through Hawaii came out.

What is the influence of historiography at any given time on the representation of history as experience in travel literature? How does travel narrative validate its status as historiography? From a more anthropological viewpoint, does the discovery of new or different spaces or places shape the perception and construction of time? Is there any interaction between the conception of space and that of time, between the depiction of spaces and that of time, especially of the time needed for the evolution of manners, customs and institutions which differ from those familiar to the traveller? Does this entail a relativisation of time? How does a European (or Europeanised) nation’s past constrain the analysis of the fabric and customs of the areas visited? Is the historicisation of lived experience limited? What is the impact of measuring instruments on this experience and the account thereof. Those are some of the questions which will be addressed in this conference. Voyages from and to Great Britain will be of particular, but not exclusive, interest.

Please send proposals—200-250 words—for papers not exceeding 30 minutes before 15 June 2010 to Isabelle Bour (Isabelle.Bour@univ-paris3.fr), Line Cottegnies (Line.Cottegnies@univ-paris3.fr) and Thierry Belleguic (Thierry.Belleguic@lit.ulaval.ca).