Enfilade

From ArtHist.net:

Hunting Troubles: Gender and Its Intersections in the Cultural History of the Hunt
Flüchtige Identitäten: Jagd als Schauplatz geschlechtlicher Phantasien
Online, Bremen, 12–14 May 2022

Proposals due by 31 December 2021

Hunting has always been an arena of gender fantasies. Its function as a social practice and aesthetically orchestrated event far outweighed its significance in terms of food procurement or defense against wild animals—this was not only the case in European cultural history. The pursuit and killing of animals were above all an area where physical, cognitive, and social superiority were demonstrated. Hunting therefore created and reinforced images of the ‘masculine’ as well as the ‘feminine’. Countless ancient myths focus on male heroes whose political and sexual violence is linked to images of the hunt. At the same time, however, hunting is not always and unquestionably associated with masculinity. The same myths are also populated by hunting women—such as the Greek goddess Artemis, her nymphs Daphne, Kalisto and Echo, and mortals such as Atalante, who, after gaining access to a male hunting party through her lover, decisively wounds the Calydonian boar. Later on, in the Minnelieder songs of the Middle Ages, lovers engage in an erotic chase during which the role of the hunter and the hunted seem—at times—interchangeable. And the carefully orchestrated portraits of early modern princesses in hunting costumes bear as much witness to the subversion of gender roles as the (self-) representations of colonial huntresses since the nineteenth century.

As a symbol and technique that—in itself—seemed to gesture towards asymmetrical power structures, hunting has always served to naturalise gender difference and binarity. However, hunts and their representations always seem to open up spaces in which gender and other boundaries are not only established and consolidated, but also unsettled and blurred. Both the young man Leukippos in the ancient myth who disguises himself as a woman in order to gain access to the virgin nymph’s hunting party and the male animal in Ernst Jünger’s short story “Die Eberjagd” (“The Boar Hunt”) (1952) that is, at the moment of the kill, are transformed and can be read as ‘female’. There is an—albeit temporary—ambiguity of gender boundaries, a floundering, which seems—if not inevitably but repeatedly—to go hand in hand with the principal liminality of the hunting situation and its stagings.

These ambivalences of hunting as a cultural and symbolic practice as well as its aesthetic (literary, artistic, performative) stagings are the starting point of the conference and the publication project, which is designed to give an extensive overview of the interrelations between gender and the hunt in European cultural history. From a historical as well as intersectional perspective, we wish to examine how the interplay between actual hunting and its representations reinforced and/or destabilized certain gender images. The focus will be on the following intersecting approaches:

Hunting practices
What role did different hunting practices and their stagings play in the construction of gender identities? When and why were which hunting practices considered specifically ‘male’ or ‘female’? Which historical caesurae inform the history of gender images when it comes to hunting: are there historical constants, epochal changes and regional differences that can be identified?

Men’s Worlds
Which concepts of masculinity have been produced through the practice and representation of the hunt? Which customs, techniques and laws made hunting an effective means of demonstrating and narrating virility? Are these narratives tied to specific artistic genres? How were notions of gender difference naturalised through hunting? Which homoerotic constellations did hunting produce and sublimate?

Women on the Hunt
Which concepts of femininity were produced through hunting, its performance and aesthetic representation? Under what social and political conditions could women reinterpret hunting semantics or subvert heteronormative relations? Are narratives of female hunting bound to certain artistic genres, genres, etc. or excluded from them, and, if so, why? What needs (or fears) were expressed by narratives of mythical female hunters and the omnipresence of Artemis/Diana in images, buildings or festivals of hunting?

Female, Male, and Other Animals
How did the relationship to wild or domestic animals such as horses and dogs affirm or subvert heteronormative gender notions? How was the pronounced sexual dimorphism reflected – especially in cases where the larger females were the preferred hunting animals, such as in the case of the goshawk or sparrowhawk? Which role did the gender of hunted animals play in empathic descriptions of the hunter’s desire and identification with the pursued animal?

Intersectional Perspectives
To what extent is the relationship between ‘human’ and ‘animal’, ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ as well as ‘foreign’ and ‘familiar’ in literary and artistic representations of hunting gendered and to what extent is this subject to historical change? In which constellations did hunting as a technique of demonstrating superiority in terms of gender, class and race reach its limits? Did hunting also produce non-binary (gender) constellations and/or transcultural situations? To what extent are these also partly intertwined with the transgression or consolidation of social boundaries?

For these and related questions, we especially ask for suggestions for topics in literature, art and cultural studies, history, and other fields. To submit send a 250-word abstract for a 20- or 30-minute paper (English/German) and a short bio to Dr. Laura Beck (laura.beck@uni-bremen.de) and Prof. Dr. Maurice Saß (Maurice.Sass@alanus.edu) before 31 December 2021. Please name one of the approaches above (hunting practices, men‘s worlds, etc.) to which you would assign your proposal. Partial reimbursements of travel and/or stay may be offered. After the conference we would like to publish the results in an anthology as soon as possible.

Schedule
Deadline for submissions: 31 December 2021
Applicants will be notified by 10 January 2022
Date of the conference (online or presentational in Bremen, Germany): 12–14 May 2022
Deadline for submission of manuscripts: 1 November 2022

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Note (added 13 January 2024) — The conference was part of the activities of the Cultural History of the Hunt research network (Netzwerk Jagdgeschichten).

After Magdeleine Horthemels, Burial of Nuns at the Abbey of Port-Royal-des-Champs (Musée de Port-Royal des Champs).

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From the Call for Papers:

Women and Religion in Eighteenth-Century France: Ideas, Controversies, and Representations
In-Person and Online, Queen Mary, University of London, 24 June 2022

Organized by Marie Giraud and Cathleen Mair

Proposals due by 21 January 2022

In the decades since Peter Gay argued that religion occupied no place in the French Enlightenment, scholars including Dale Van Kley, Suzanne Desan, and Mita Choudhury have shown how religious beliefs and controversies informed philosophical ideas, political practices, social relations, and cultural identities in eighteenth-century France.

Owing to this scholarship, it has also become clear that women of faith—from the Jansenist nuns forcibly removed from Port-Royal to the Carmelites guillotined during The Terror—played an important role in French social, cultural, and political life in the period. Representations of convents took on new and urgent meanings amidst mounting political and financial pressure on the Ancien Régime. Influential women on the peripheries of religion were instrumental in the dissemination of controversial beliefs and new philosophical ideas, like the Protestant salonnière Mme Necker who hosted celebrated writers and academicians at her home and Mlle de Joncoux, known as l’invisible, who devoted her life to defending the nuns of Port-Royal. In the revolutionary period, nuns challenged the suppression of religious orders while Catholic women became symbols of resistance in the religious riots of the late 1790s.

Drawing on new approaches and sources, this interdisciplinary workshop will consider the identities, controversies, ideas, experiences, and representations of religious women in eighteenth-century France. What role did these women play in the political and intellectual culture of the Ancien Régime and the French Revolution? How did they and their supporters or enemies navigate a period of extraordinary social change and political upheaval? In what ways did they adopt, challenge, or subvert the religious canon, cultural norms, and societal conventions as the understanding of religion, politics, and power shifted rapidly throughout the eighteenth century?

We invite proposals for twenty-minute papers from scholars in History or related disciplines such as Art History, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Literary Studies, and Theology. We especially welcome proposals from graduate and early career researchers. Proposals for papers may wish to consider the following themes:
• Devotional and liturgical practices
• The circulation of religious ideas, books, and objects
• Representations of women religious in art, literature, and material culture
• Education
• Charity and nursing
• Interdenominational relations
• The relationship between religious orders and the state
• Marriage and motherhood
• Popular and lay religion
• Emotions and bodies

To apply, please email your abstract and a brief bio to m.s.giraud@qmul.ac.uk and c.i.mair@qmul.ac.uk by 21 January 2022. Abstracts should be no more than 250 words for papers of 20 minutes in length. Please specify whether you would prefer to present in person or online. The symposium will take place in hybrid format, meaning speakers can attend in person or virtually via Microsoft Teams. The symposium will be free to attend and all speakers will be invited to dinner. Travel grants will be available to support PhD and ECR scholars speaking at the workshop. For more information, please visit the symposium website.

Keynote Speaker: Professor Mita Choudhury (Vassar College)