Enfilade

From Bath Spa University:

Georgian Pleasures
Holburne Museum, Bath, 12–13 September 2013

Proposals due by 30 April 2013

Pleasure is the object, duty and the goal of all rational creatures.
–Voltaire

This interdisciplinary two-day conference jointly sponsored by takes the diversity of the experience of Georgian Pleasures as its theme and invites new and established academics, period performers and musicians to come together for a lively cross-disciplinary conversation exploring the conceptualization and practice of pleasure globally in the long eighteenth century. Georgian pleasures were myriad. Some were exclusive — specific to certain classes, ages or genders —others were inclusive and/or overlapping. High life or low life, licit or illicit, private or public, domestic or commercial — there were pleasures to suit all tastes and circumstances. This conference aims to explore what it was that people of the period enjoyed and what we, as academics, re-enactors and period performers, can learn about society and culture from a better appreciation of pleasure, Georgian-style. The conference will take place in Bath’s recently refurbished Holburne Museum, itself the centre-piece of Sydney Gardens, the last of Bath’s famous Georgian Pleasure Gardens.

We welcome proposals (approx. 200 words) for individual papers or individual/group performances. Panels of three papers with chair and commentator are also welcome. All proposals should be sent to the Centre for History and Culture at Bath Spa University (email historyandculture.bsu@gmail.com) by 30th April, 2013.

Potential themes include:

• Alehouses to Almacks: the pleasures of high / low life
• Urban and rustic: the pleasures of location
• Leisure, pleasure and consumption: the delights of the spa
• Female and male: gender and pleasure
• Pleasures of the imagination: music, theatre, opera & the arts
• Dangerous and illicit pleasures
• Continental pleasures
• Spas

Conference sponsors:
Centre for History & Culture, Bath Spa University: Dr Roberta Anderson, Dr Elaine Chalus, Dr Matthew Spring
Regional History Centre, University of the West of England: Dr Steve Poole

For further information, contact historyandculture.bsu@gmail.com