Call for Papers | Eighteenth-Century Research Seminar, Edinburgh
From the ECRS website:
Eighteenth-Century Research Seminars
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Edinburgh, January–April 2017
Proposals due by 21 November 2016
The Eighteenth-Century Research Seminar (ECRS) series invites proposals for twenty-minute papers from postgraduate and early-career researchers addressing any aspect of eighteenth-century history, culture, literature, education, art, music, geography, religion, science, and philosophy. The seminar series seeks to provide a regular inter-disciplinary forum for postgraduate and early-career researchers working on the eighteenth century to meet and discuss their research.
ECRS will take place at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) in Edinburgh on a fortnightly basis from January to April 2017. Each seminar will consist of two papers, one from a University of Edinburgh-based researcher and one from a researcher based in another higher education institution, followed by a drinks reception. Non-University of Edinburgh speakers’ travel expenses will be reimbursed up to £100. Abstracts of up to 300 words along with a brief biography and institutional affiliation should be submitted in the body of an email to: edinburgh18thcentury@gmail.com. The closing date for submissions is Monday 21 November 2016.
ECRS is supported by the Eighteenth-Century and Enlightenment Studies Network (ECENS) of the University of Edinburgh.
Exhibition | Amazons of the Revolution
The exhibition blurb, as translated by Julia Douthwaite, author of the blog A Revolution in Fiction:
Amazons of the Revolution: Women in the Turmoil of 1789
Amazones de la Révolution: des femmes dans la tourmente de 1789
Musée Lambinet, Versailles, 5 November 2016 — 19 February 2017
Curated by Martial Poirson
Fish-wife, soldier-girl, rioter, fire-starter, criminal, madwoman… these are some of the pejorative labels used to describe the women who joined the revolutionary struggle in 1789. Cloaked in suspicions regarding their lack of femininity, the so-called Amazons of the Revolution have long been used as a scapegoat for things that went wrong. This exhibit brings together a unique group of objects, art-works, and rare writings from the archives to reveal the dark fantasies projected onto revolutionary women, from the 1790s to our day. In a time when categories of gender are finally being understood as a confining cultural construct, this exhibit is particularly useful, for it demonstrates without a doubt that the ‘national novel’ behind the French State has always relied on the contributions of women—either as victims, unwelcome meddlers, or even murderers—to justify the revolutionary past.
In history books as in the popular media, the gendering of revolutionary violence has helped rationalize brutality, and keep it out of sight, so that the pantheon of national heroes and narratives remains untarnished. This exhibit pays homage to the extraordinary women whose political efforts led to the guillotine–Charlotte Corday, Olympe de Gouges, Théroigne de Méricourt, and Manon Roland—but it also highlights the contributions of the unsung heroines behind famous events as well as those women who fought to restore the rule of Crown and Church. The women of this exhibit performed all kinds of duties–from reporting on Tribunal proceedings in coded messages knitted to their confederates (as in the terrifying tricoteuses of Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities)–to meekly submitting to the gallows, as martyrs of their faith—yet all are worthy of our time and attention. With a collection spanning the centuries as well as the gamut of visual media (engravings, sculptures, paintings, video games, cartoons, and mangas), this exhibit has something to offer all ages.
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Readers interested in the topic may find useful the first chapter, “From Fish Seller to Suffragist: The Women’s March on Versailles,” in Julia Douthwaite’s The Frankenstein of 1790 and Other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary France (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012), recently published in French as Le Frankenstein français et la littérature de l’ère révolutionnaire.
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Le visiteur de la Salle du Jeu de Paume, après avoir lu sur les murs les noms des représentants du Tiers-Etat aux Etats généraux de 1789, ne manque pas de se faire une remarque : aucun nom ou visage de femme ne figure dans ce berceau de la République ! Pourtant, chacun sait combien les femmes ont compté dans le déroulement des événements révolutionnaires.
C’est à ces quelques femmes d’exception que rend hommage l’exposition Amazones de la Révolution, présentée par le Musée Lambinet. Poissarde, femme-soldat, émeutière, incendiaire, criminelle, aliénée… Ces stéréotypes esquissent le portrait à charge de la combattante révolutionnaire, usurpant attributs de la masculinité et codes de la virilité. Ils occultent les sévices exercés sur des femmes désignées comme bouc émissaires et contribuent à les évincer de la sphère publique. Objets, oeuvres et archives qui en attestent font apparaître les fantasmes engendrés par la violence des femmes, tout en soulignant leurs échos contemporains.
Cette exposition explore les zones d’ombre de l’historiographie et les présupposés du « roman national », mettant en lumière le rapport des femmes à la violence des événements révolutionnaires et leur implication—victimes ou bourreaux—dans la brutalité des événements. Tout en faisant place aux femmes d’exception telles que Charlotte Corday, Olympe de Gouges, Théroigne de Méricourt ou Manon Roland, elle met en perspective les figures collectives de la Révolution et de la Contre-Révolution. Des Tricoteuses aux Merveilleuses, des insurgées aux suppliciées, des allégories aux caricatures, toutes ont imprégné la culture à travers les siècles, tant dans la gravure, la peinture, la sculpture ou les arts décoratifs que dans le cinéma, le jeu vidéo, la bande dessinée ou la publicité.
Cette exposition a pour ambition de proposer des éléments de compréhension de l’émancipation contrariée des femmes au cours de la séquence historique qui s’ouvre en 1789 : elle leur donne une visibilité nouvelle tout en les excluant de la sphère politique, au motif, précisément, de leur participation active aux événements.
Enfilade 
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