Enfilade

From the Call for Papers:

Boiseries: Decoration and Migration from the Eighteenth Century to the Present
Camden Place, Chislehurst (Kent), 12–13 January 2023

Organized by Lindsay Macnaughton and Laura Jenkins 

Proposals due by 9 September 2022

This conference investigates the cultural and commercial migrations of French eighteenth-century boiseries from their places of production in Paris and the Bâtiments du Roi to the drawing rooms of Britain and the United States.

From an historical perspective boiseries have always, in a sense, been mobile. In the eighteenth century, Paris joiners and carvers travelled to locations outside the city to install panelling, and entire decorative schemes were sent abroad to Germany, Spain, and Latin America. Accompanied by mirrors and tapestries from royal manufactories, these panels disseminated French style in accordance with the diplomacy of the monarch and the desires of foreign courts. Boiseries executed for particular sites but not installed were also sometimes reused elsewhere: failed deliveries and changes in taste during the period from commission to installation occasioned opportunities for buyers, and sets of panelling conceived as complete ensembles were broken up and dispersed for use in multiple locations, or disused altogether. Shifting fashions and continual reallocations of appartements at Versailles set into motion near-ceaseless rotations of décors, including boiseries. And, notwithstanding the legal categorisations of panels, once fixed, as immeubles, removals were negotiated by tenants during their lease of, and on their departure from, urban hôtels.

In the nineteenth century, the pace and directionality of movement changed, as elements of interior decoration began to be acquired for their own merit and eighteenth-century boiseries became the relics of a physically and culturally disappearing French national history as well as the trophies of an international collecting elite. Elements of woodwork, disassembled from demolished châteaux or reproduced in survey drawings and plaster casts, made their way into rooms in Britain and the United States, their proportions and ornament amplified and metamorphosed—to borrow terms used by John Harris and Bruno Pons—to match the pitch of the French Second Empire and later living.

Professional interior decorators and commercial dealers in decorative arts were largely to credit, providing channels by which goods could easily be transported from place to place. However, boiseries also emigrated, as it were, with exiles of the Republic, extending the presence of French style to less-cosmopolitan regions and adding geopolitical to social and architectural concerns.

Camden Place, where the conference will be held, is an English country house whose history and interiors have been shaped by the migration of people and decoration for over 300 years. Home to Chislehurst Golf Club, the Grade II* listed building features architectural elements by the British architects George Dance the Younger (1741–1825) and James ‘Athenian’ Stuart (1713–1788), and played host to the French Imperial court after the fall of the Empire in 1870. French chimney pieces, boiseries from the eighteenth-century Château de Bercy (demolished in 1862), and heavily carved oak panelling are among the elements that make up the house’s many layers, testifying both to the eclectic tastes of its nineteenth-century occupants and to the multifaceted, and multinational, histories of many English country houses.

This conference provides a unique opportunity for cultural historians of France, art and architectural historians, historians of collecting, curators, and heritage professionals to meet in a room reassembled following the landmark Château de Bercy sale (1860) and to meditate on the finer points of its significance in the dispersal of French cultural patrimony.

The organisers invite abstracts for 20-minute papers on topics engaging with, but not limited to:
• The relative mobility (meubles/immeubles) of boiseries in the 18th century
• Collecting, architectural salvage, and markets for boiseries in the 19th and 20th centuries
• Exchanges of taste and culture as a result of political displacement, in particular the influence of French émigrés
• Memory and the material traces of Empire
• Documentary and curatorial challenges posed by collections of boiseries
• The management of architectural heritage in private and commercial spaces today

Confirmed speakers include Dr Lee Prosser (Historic Royal Palaces), Frédéric Dassas (Musée du Louvre), Dr Ulrich Leben (German Ambassador’s residence, Paris), Dr Mathieu Deldicque (Musée Condé, Château de Chantilly), and Dr Tom Stammers (University of Durham).

Some funds will be available to support travel and accommodation for speakers. The conference is generously supported by the University of Buckingham, The Chislehurst Society, and Chislehurst Golf Club as part of a programme of events marking the 150th anniversary of the death of Napoleon III at Camden Place.

Submissions for 20-minute papers (300 words) should be sent to lindsay.macnaughton@buckingham.ac.uk and laura.jenkins@courtauld.ac.uk by Friday, 2 September 2022. We look forward to receiving your abstracts.

For more information, please visit: boiseriescamdenplace.wordpress.com (coming soon).

With thanks from the organisers: Dr Lindsay Macnaughton (University of Buckingham) and Laura C. Jenkins (The Courtauld Institute of Art).

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Note (added 31 August 2022) — The posting was updated with the new due date, extended from the original deadline of 2 September 2022.

From ArtHist.net:

Terms of Art: Design, Description, and Discovery in Cataloging
Online, The Hood Museum of Art and Dartmouth Research Computing, Hanover, NH, 22–24 February 2023

Proposals due by 31 August 2022

An unusually tagged bronze statue, found in museum storage, “Brought in By Campus Police Oct. 1966” (Photo courtesy Beth Mattison).

Institutions such as museums, libraries, and archives have a mission to preserve, interpret, and disseminate cultural heritage. In addition to new acquisitions for their collections, these institutions must also update the tools with which researchers access and study these holdings, objects, and works of art. Increasingly, stakeholders like academics, educators, and the public treat a collection’s digital representation—its metadata records—as an entry point for discovery. Paradoxically, these web-based experiences meant to expose collections to broad audiences often assume users have specialized knowledge of the terms and processes GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, and Art Museums) institutions use to describe their own work, making them inaccessible to the majority of visitors. Additionally, variation and evolution of language often outpaces or does not align with public understanding. For example, someone interested in 17th-century Dutch art might not know that the phrase “Dutch Golden Age” has colonialist implications and has been removed from many museums’ internal databases. The search language isn’t wrong, it’s just outmoded.

The Hood Museum of Art and Dartmouth Research Computing are organizing a virtual symposium to bring together museums, libraries, and archives to discuss issues of access and ethical vocabularies in cultural heritage. The aim of the virtual conference is to develop the debate about how the language we use to describe collections impacts the communities that create and seek out art. The organizers hope to prompt dialogue on the issues curators and researchers face in trying to maintain equitable and anti-racist progress and research. Additionally, this symposium will emphasize the role of technologists who specialize in user-centered design as critical to promoting equity in information systems. In combining subject-matter specialists and user-centered design technologists, we aim to bridge the communication gap between institutions and the publics they serve, allowing each to educate the other about how they describe collections.

This virtual conference will feature panels, workshops, and roundtables from different institutions around the world. Speakers will be compensated at the rate of $250 per person.

Types of Panels
• Papers, posters, or case studies: 20-minute presentation with 10-minute Q&A
• Roundtables or panel discussions: 45- or 50-minute presentation with 10-minute Q&A
• Extended discussions and workshops: 90-minute participatory session with a 5- or 10-minute break for ideation, brainstorming, cross-pollination
• Other: a session you would like to submit that doesn’t fit the above criteria (prototyping, hackathon/datathon)

Organizers
• Meredith Steinfels, Assistant Director, Digital Platforms, Media, and Archives
• John Bell, Program Director, Data Experiences and Visualizations Studio
• Ashley Offill, Associate Curator of Collections
• Elizabeth Rice Mattison, Andrew W. Mellon Associate Curator of Academic Programming

Application requirements and submission details are available here»

Deadlines
Session submission: 31 August 2022
Approval and feedback: 3–7 October 2022

This conference is made possible by the generous support of the Leslie Center for the Humanities.

From the Call for Papers:

Seminars in the History of Collecting, 2023
The Wallace Collection, London, last Monday of the Month

Proposals due by 30 September 2022

The seminar series was established as part of the Wallace Collection’s commitment to the research and study of the history of collections and collecting, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Paris and London. We are keen to encourage contributions covering all aspects of the history of collecting, including:
• Formation and dispersal of collections
• Dealers, auctioneers, and the art market
• Collectors
• Museums
• Inventory work
• Research resources

The seminars, which are normally held on the last Monday of every month during the calendar year, excluding August and December, act as a forum for the presentation and discussion of new research into the history of collecting. Seminars are open to curators, academics, historians, archivists, and all those with an interest in the subject. Papers should generally be about 45–60 minutes long. Seminars take place between 5.30 and 7pm. The seminars will take place at the Wallace Collection in 2023.

If interested, please send a short text (500–750 words), a brief CV, and indicate any months when you would not be available to speak, by Friday 30 September 2022. For more information and to submit a proposal, please contact:
collection@wallacecollection.org.

Please note that we are able to contribute up to the following sums towards speakers’ travelling expenses to present their papers at the Wallace Collection on submission of receipts:
• Speakers within the UK – £100
• Speakers from Continental Europe – £180
• Speakers from outside Europe – £300

From ArtHist.net:

Wastework
Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome, 15–17 March 2023

Proposals due by 15 September 2022

Art students today know the rules: no solvents in the trash, no clay down the drain, and don’t forget to cure that resin before you toss it! Early modern craftsmen had their own rituals of disposal, too—albeit ones driven more by economies of thrift than by environmental regulation or fire safety. This international, interdisciplinary conference invites papers on the materiality, spatiality, and processing of waste in the early modern workshop, broadly conceived. It proposes to examine acts of disposal, displacement, removal, and abeyance—in short, the getting rid of unwanted things—and the consequences these carry for the study of early modern material culture.

Marble dust, scrap metal, broken glass, dried oil… How did the apparent formlessness of this discarded matter—the residues, the shavings, the piles—generate new ideas for forms or find new life through changes in state engendered by slaking, burning, distilling or casting? Who were the actors trading in workshop waste, and how can we map their networks, both local and global? How were materials stored and recycled between artistic acts? What disposal flows led household waste—egg shells, stale bread, stove ash—to enter the space of the studio as artistic material or cleaning product? How did the presence, accumulation and containment of waste—its conduits and repositories—condition the environment and location of the workshop? In research today, how can waste pits be used as sources for both the footprints and layouts of workshops and for the information they provide on technological and stylistic change? More broadly, how is waste archived, and are all archives just waste heaps of history?

We welcome papers that respond to these questions with historical case studies, wider-reaching theorisations, or methodological reflections. While our focus is on practices and spaces of art-making, we also seek contributions from beyond the history of art. Building on the home-economics framework of Simon Werrett’s Thrifty Science (2019); the emerging field of Discard Studies; and histories of pre-industrial recycling by Reinhold Reith and of medieval waste by Susan S. Morrison, this conference will serve as a forum for generating new narratives of waste, thrift, and re-use in the early modern arts that go beyond the well-researched category of spoliation. We foreground waste as the material expression of practices of ordering and classification by which people adjudicated between collection and disposal, wanted and unwanted, salvation and loss. In reimagining the discarded past we intend to test the usefulness of contemporary formulations—secondary product cycles, material fatigue, metabolic flows, sustainability, recycling—while also proposing new typologies and categories. A series of pre-conference visits to local workshops and heritage collections will launch the event. Travel and accommodation costs will be covered for speakers.

This conference is organized by Dr. Ruth Ezra and Dr. Francesca Borgo within the framework of the Lise Meitner Research Group Decay, Loss, and Conservation in Art History at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History. For more information see our webpage. Please send your CV (including current position and affiliation), a 250-word abstract, and paper title to john.rattray@biblhertz.it by 15 September 2022. Proposals will be considered for inclusion in a planned special journal issue on waste in the early modern workshop.

From ArtHist.net, which includes the German version:

Portraiture and the Construction of Identity / Identitätskonstruktion im Porträt
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Kunsthistorisches Institut, 30 March — 1 April 2023

Organized by Helen Boeßenecker

Proposals due by 15 August 2022

Since the 1990s, cultural scholars and theoreticians of postcolonial studies such as Stuart Hall and Homi K. Bhabha have increasingly shaped an understanding of cultural identity that no longer sees identity primarily as something existent and stable, but rather, especially in diasporic contexts, as the (fluid) production of negotiation processes. Processuality, transformation, hybridity thus come into view as important factors of identity formation. As is well known, the cultural construction character of identity has also been emphasized, albeit under different premises, by gender studies. Thus, approaches of feminist theory or gender studies argued that gender identity and gender difference should not be understood as something ‘naturally’ given, but rather emphasized their social construction and performative production—a perspective that was also reflected by gender studies in art history and discussed with regard to the productivity of images.

The planned conference takes the concept of construction in the context of identity as a starting point to newly engage in portraiture and its historical and situational contexts. Although identity has always been an important question in art historical portrait research, the extent to which portraits contribute to the identity constitution of the self and to which identity is not only reproduced but constructed in and through portrait practices has not been sufficiently illuminated so far. More often, the focus has been on questions of individuality, identification, likeness (similitudo), or liveliness, and thus on the relationship of the image to the model and strategies of vivid representation. Following on from more recent contributions, which increasingly ask about the use of portraits within social and cultural practices or are dedicated to strategies of self-fashioning in (self-)portraits, the conference will focus on the question of the construction of cultural and gender identities in portraiture and would like to adopt a decidedly transcultural and transdisciplinary perspective.

The tension between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ will be investigated on the basis of portraits and the question will be pursued as to what role the confrontation with the foreign other plays for one’s own identity construction: Which pictorial means, and staging strategies are used in portraits to show cultural origin and roots, but also cultural difference? How is the relationship between the image of the self and the image of the other expressed in portraits, and what strategies of self-assertion and -staging can be identified? When and where, on the other hand, do assimilations, cultural appropriations, transcultural encounters, spaces in between and hybrid portrait cultures reveal themselves? The question of the construction of cultural identities and the aesthetic means, visual ‘codes’, subversive transformation processes as well as imaginations and projections used in this context will be examined. In addition to body discourses (including the semantics of skin color, tattoos, makeup) and the identity-forming significance of material culture (e.g., textiles, jewelry, armor, weapons), the artistic materials, media, and techniques used also prove relevant, as well as the attributions and practices associated with them, for example with regard to ‘exotic’ materials or the adaptation of ‘foreign’ artistic techniques or styles.

In addition, by exploring portraits and their historical, political, and performative contexts as well as practices of collection and display we want to gain insights into the structures and dynamics of identity formation and -construction: What consciousness do portraits reflect in terms of individuality, collective identities and national affiliations? Do identification and community formation with ‘compatriots’ take place primarily through the nation, region or even city? Are these homogeneous entities, or can plural notions of identity and competing groups rather be identified? What is the relationship between religious confession and identity and to what extent do the dynamics of European identities shift in a global context? Does the mobility of individuals and associated experiences of foreignness or assimilation processes, for example in relation to artists’ journeys, migration and exile experiences, pilgrimage, global expansion, and mission, find expression in portrait practices, so that—to speak with Paul Gilroy—not only roots but routes are inscribed in the portrait?

Furthermore, gender perspectives are to be included in these questions. To what extent do portrait practices produce, stabilize, or undermine gender roles and attributions? In what way can portraits and portrait series express different facets of female, male or queer identities and thus the mutability of gender identities? The conference would like to encourage us not to discuss these questions in isolation, but to link them to questions of cultural identity and ethnicity, taking up perspectives from gender and postcolonial studies. Thus, following on from previous profound research contributions on portraiture from the perspective of gender studies, the interplay of race, class and gender in portraiture will be examined to an even greater extent in order to question power relations and heteronormative, Eurocentric views.

The conference would like to shed light on these research questions across time periods and cultures and thus to adopt a cross-epochal, transcultural or comparative cultural perspective, whereby portraits in all artistic genres and media (painting, sculpture, prints, photography, digital image cultures) can be considered on the basis of case studies. Also, with the aim of promoting methodological reflection, the conference seeks to stimulate an exchange between different disciplines (especially art history, archaeology, African, Asian, and Islamic studies, ethnology).

Please send your abstract (maximum of 800 words) for a 25-minute presentation in German or English together with a short CV to Helen Boeßenecker (h.boessenecker@uni-bonn.de) by 15 August 2022.

From the Call for Papers:

Croisements, Métissages, Trajectoires: Vivre la Révolution des Colonies, 1774–1804
Musée de la Révolution Française, Vizille, 27–29 September 2023

Proposals due by 30 September 2022

L’histoire récente des espaces coloniaux et de leur intégration à la dynamique révolutionnaire a reçu une attention méritée et soutenue ces dernières années. Il n’est désormais plus possible d’écrire l’histoire des Révolutions de la fin du XVIIIe siècle sans intégrer l’héritage colonial de l’Ancien régime et sans comprendre les événements propres à ces espaces qui influencent plus que les métropoles, les grands équilibres géopolitiques de la planète encore prise dans le duel franco- britannique pour l’hégémonie mondiale dans un jeu d’alliances des plus complexes.

Ces travaux roboratifs et nécessaires, refondant une histoire de la mondialité, ont induit des formes d’appréhension du réel, où les êtres se trouvaient pris dans des logiques de groupes qui les dépassaient ou les entrainaient. Bien souvent leurs positions pouvaient être définies par leur appartenance à un groupe social précis, à une fonction professionnelle acquise ou bien aussi par la couleur de leur peau, autant d’éléments déterminants du statut des individus au sein de conflits mêlant émancipation, lutte de classes, conquête politique.

Le colloque proposé tente une autre approche. Celle des individus, celles des personnes dans leur intégrité propre, dans leurs témoignages d’actrices et d’acteurs d’une période qui voient des bouleversements majeurs transformer leur vie. Il s’agit de retrouver les personnes dans leur complexité et dans leur individualité et tenter d’approcher au plus près leur expérience vécue des révolutions successives qui les surplombent mais dans lesquelles elles se trouvent pleinement intégrées. Comment les personnes accueillent, perçoivent, vivent les formes de catégorisation qui leur sont imposées ou qu’elles reçoivent, ou qu’elles conquièrent ? Que sont les statuts sociaux, les couleurs, les fonctions, les genres, les âges de la vie, les transferts. Comment marquent-ils les existences ?

Partir de la subjectivité des acteurs et des actrices, lorsque les sources le permettent ne revient nullement à refuser l’ensemble du travail effectué pour comprendre les catégories dans lesquelles ils et elles évoluent, mais permet de reposer les questions différemment, d’une histoire au ras du sol, au plus près des personnes.

Ce sont donc les notions de destins historiques, de parcours individuels, de trajectoires personnelles, dans ce monde largement métissé que l’on souhaite interroger, pour rendre toute leur importance au vécu historique et à sa complexité, que l’on peut nuancer au-delà des oppositions binaires et comprendre dans son inextricable difficulté de société violente aspirant à de nouvelles formes de gouvernance pour chacun.

Le cadre chronologique tend à déplacer quelque peu les approches jusque-là classiques, séparant un avant et un après 1789, en intégrant pleinement la France de l’Ancien Régime, à l’avènement de Louis XVI en 1774, qui précède de peu la guerre d’indépendance américaine devenant une Révolution du Nouveau monde, un événement tout simplement inimaginable, impensable au moment où monte sur le trône le petit fils de Louis XV. Le questionnement se poursuit sur une période de trente ans jusqu’en 1804, date de l’indépendance d’Haïti. Ce sont ainsi trois Révolutions qui sont interrogées, si différentes, avec leur chronologie et leur spécificité et en même temps reliées entre elle par le littoral du vaste espace atlantique. Elle ne sont nullement identique pourtant elles dialoguent, s’observent, par les formes politiques qu’elles peuvent prendre, leur volonté de se conclure par une constitution, leur destin adverse de devoir affronter des guerres extérieures et civiles, et l’influence qu’elles ont eu les unes sur les autres en un jeu de miroir complexe.

En ce temps, la France d’Ancien Régime étend ses possessions au-delà des mers aux Antilles (Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe, Martinique), en Guyane, aux Mascareignes (Réunion, Île Maurice). Les Révolutions qui secouent les rivages de l’Océan atlantique, provoquent un impact important en déclenchant des phénomènes politiques qui aboutissent à la fondation d’une république esclavagiste aux Etats-Unis mais aussi à la première abolition de l’esclavage le 4 février 1794, lors de la Première République française.

La particularité des sociétés coloniales est d’être formée de blancs ou réputés tels, de libres de couleur et des esclaves. Ces sociétés sont soumises à la servitude, au préjugé de couleur et à une dépendance étroite à l’égard de la métropole qui se manifeste par le système de l’Exclusif. Le vent de la liberté va bouleverser ce monde. Qu’en est-il de chacun et de chacune en particulier? Est-ce une ambition démesurée que d’essayer de retrouver ces vies pour les raconter dans leur transformation ? N’est-il pas temps, au contraire, d’aborder ces existences pour elles-mêmes et de les appréhender dans leur force, leur fragilité, leur humanité pleine et intègre ?

I — Sources et méthodologie

Dans un premier temps il s’agit de s’interroger sur les façons d’approcher ces destins si différents. Des communications pourront être proposées sur les sources utilisées pour écrire l’histoire des personnes dans les colonies en Révolution. Correspondance administrative, actes notariés, journaux personnels, correspondances privées, ouvrages imprimés sont les sources habituellement utilisées. Est-il possible d’en dresser une typologie ? De les repérer dans les fonds publics ou privés? Avec quelles précautions méthodologiques peut-on les employer ? D’en inventer d’autres ? À partir du repérage de ces sources et de leur dépouillement pour retrouver les destins individuels comment faire pour repenser la nature des phénomènes révolutionnaires dans les colonies ? Peut-on parler de révolutions coloniales, de révolutions dans les colonies, de colonies à l’ère des révolutions ? Comment l’étude des personnes et de leurs traces peut-elle aider à mieux concevoir une histoire globale ?

II — Trajectoires

Il s’agira de voir comment la Révolution a été reçue par des femmes et des hommes dans les colonies, mais aussi par les originaires des colonies qui vivaient sur le sol français. Certaines figures comme Julien Raimond et Vincent Ogé sont connues, mais le groupe des libres de couleur est particulièrement actif à Paris de 1789 à 1794 et nécessite encore de nouvelles études. Comment ces femmes et ces hommes mobilisent-ils le langage de la Révolution et notamment le langage des droits ?

Les communications pourront porter sur des trajectoires d’individus ou de groupes en Révolution ou en Contre-révolution. La question des récits de vie, sous la forme de biographie ou de portrait à des moments particuliers d’une existence ou de fragments de vie proposés permettraient de donner corps à l’enquête en croisant des trajectoires croisées, affrontées, adversaires mais aussi alliées, amies également. Un puzzle d’existences juxtaposées peut rendre compte d’une réalité complexe connectée, inter-sectionnelle. Il s’agirait clairement de remettre en valeur la notion de récit de vie dans une logique interprétative large des interactions entre colonies, dans les colonies et dans les métropoles.

III — Représentations

Du législateur célèbre à la plus inconnue des esclaves, l’ambition serait de dresser un ensemble de portraits qui donnerait à voir la chair et le sang de ces histoires incarnées par tant de personnes différentes. Quelle représentation la France a-t-elle de ses colonies ? Des tableaux célèbres comme le portrait de Belley (Girodet), député de Saint-Domingue à la Convention ou de Madeleine (Benoist) représentent des personnes issues des colonies. La Révolution engendre-t-elle une nouvelle représentation des individus ? Cette section peut se diviser en deux sous-parties. Le colloque entend s’ouvrir à des spécialistes de littérature et d’histoire de la littérature ainsi qu’à des historiens de l’art.

A. Littérature
Théâtre, romans… comment la fiction s’empare-t-elle des destinées entre les océans, sur les océans et quelle image façonne-t-elle des personnes dans des métropoles qui perçoivent largement ces espaces soit comme sauvages, soit comme exotiques, soit comme des espaces lucratifs, soit comme des espaces dangereux, autant d’images qu’un Victor Hugo écrivant Bug-Jargal peut véhiculer ou que madame de Duras peut décrire avec tant de finesse dans Ourika.

B. Histoire de l’art
Comment la peinture, le dessin, la sculpture se sont-ils emparés de la représentation des corps et des espaces antillais et tout particulièrement de ceux des métisses ou des noirs, par-delà le portait de Belley devenu plus que célèbre deux cents ans plus tard ! Quelles sont les possibilités de représenter les visages, l’histoire sur les corps ? Ou tout simplement les portraits des protagonistes connus ou moins connus qui ont retenu l’attention des artistes. En somme, ce colloque se propose de replacer l’individu au cours de cette histoire des révolutions des métropoles et des colonies entre 1774 et 1804 et tenter une nouvelle perception et écriture de cette histoire encore en chantier.

Comité d’organisation
Hélène Puig, Alain Chevalier, Frédéric Régent et Pierre Serna
helene.puig@isere.fr, Frederic.Regent@univ-paris1.fr, Pierreserna@wanadoo.fr

Comité Scientifique
Esther Bell, Hélène Cussac, Gusti Gaillard-Pourchet, Bernard Gainot, David Geggus, Olivier Meslay, Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, Jean-Pierre Sainton, Bertrand Van Ruymbeke .

From the Call for Papers:

Revolutionary Speeches, Speeches about Revolutions: A Comparative Study of Revolutionary Eloquence in France and in the United States
Paris Nanterre University, 16–17 March 2023

Organized by Hélène Parent and Augustin Habran

Proposals due by 31 October 2022

“The eulogy for this American hero should be delivered by the most eloquent mouths,” Fontanes affirmed in the funeral oration he gave for George Washington in the temple of Mars on February 9, 1800. The revolutionary American hero and first president of the United States, who died in December 1799, was frequently used as a reference by the orators of the French Revolution from all political camps as a tool for various rhetorical strategies. Indeed, as they looked for founding myths and heroes that would suit the new nation, that was not founded from scratch, French revolutionaries kept convoking models from other times and spaces. The example of Washington perfectly illustrates this outstanding circulation of references. He was first celebrated in the United States as a modern Cincinnatus; and this myth was then reclaimed by French orators who had themselves been educated to classical culture.

It is this dynamic circulation of references and rhetorical and political models between these two spaces (the United States and France) at the time of their respective revolutions that this symposium aims at studying. We will focus more particularly on the representations and the founding myths that allowed for the emergence and definition of concepts including the nation, the political figure (as an ideal orator) and the people in political speeches. Furthermore, the way these two revolutionary events also became myths, symbols or models shall be analyzed through the study of their representations in literature and art more generally (painting, theater, cinema, etc.) from the time they occurred until today. As far as the American Revolution is concerned, we shall focus on the period spanning from the Declaration of Independence in 1776 to the ‘Revolution of 1800’, Thomas Jefferson’s election, that provided the ongoing debate over the very nature of federalism in the early republic with a temporary solution. Regarding the French Revolution, we shall consider the period spanning from the General Estates of 1789 to the suppression of the Tribunat, last deliberative assembly of the Empire, in 1807.

The study of these partly concurrent periods of democratic establishment will be carried out through the prism of the notion of eloquence, being defined here both as whatever has to do with the political speech per se (deliberative eloquence, parliamentary notably) and as the spaces where the latter circulates by means of imitation, repercussion or parody of the rhetorical forms and codes of the oratory genre: newspapers, essays, pamphlets, founding documents, etc.

The committee invites proposals that may address—but not limited to—the following questions:

1. The imaginary figures, symbols and models convoked in political speeches, laws, essays or newspapers of the French and American revolutions may be studied. Particular attention shall be paid to proposals allowing for a comparative perspective that will highlight the circulation of references between the two spaces (how the French Revolution reappropriates specific symbols of the American Revolution for instance) or potential similarities in the apprehension of symbols or models in both spaces. Besides the content, the question of style may also be addressed: What language(s), what style(s), what stylistic device(s) are used to express these imaginaries? What vision(s) of the ideal orator (and of the “political figure”) emerge(s) with the birth of these modern democracies? What is a representative of the people? How is this figure theorized and represented (and therefore, how is the “people” theorized and represented)? All these questions shall be addressed in the light of a striking paradox: How can one affirm inventing something new (a nation, a political regime) while using models and symbols from the past? How were those models adapted and transformed?

2. The question of the multiplicity of eloquence should also be tackled: in contrast with the parliamentary eloquence developed in dominant political spheres, where, how and through which figures does popular and minority eloquence emerge? (the eloquence of the people versus that of the elites; the eloquence of women, of African Americans, of Native Americans, etc.)

3. Ex post representations of public speaking in its plurality and of its diverse practitioners may also be studied: how are the great figures of both revolutionary periods (the Founding Fathers in the United States, the orators of the French Revolution, the figures of popular/minority eloquence, etc.) themselves turned into models or deterrents through their later (positive or negative) representations in literature and art until today? How do revolutions become new myths through the narratives developed around them? Here again, the comparative perspective will be favored.

Proposals in French or English (about 300 words) with a short bio should be sent before 31 October 2022 to Hélène Parent (hparent1404@gmail.com) and Augustin Habran (augustin.habran@gmail.com). Communications may be delivered in both French and English during the symposium.

Organizing Committee
Hélène Parent (Ph.D. in French Literature, CSLF, Paris Nanterre University) and Augustin Habran (Associate Professor of American History, REMELICE, University of Orléans)

Discours des révolutions, discours sur les révolutions: Une étude comparée de l’éloquence révolutionnaire aux États-Unis et en France

Held at Paris Nanterre University, on Thursday, 16 and Friday 17, March 2023, this symposium is part of the Dire / montrer l’éloquence, 1750–1850 project (University Paris Lumière – Paris Nanterre / Paris 8, 2021–2023).

[1] Louis de Fontanes, Éloge funèbre de Washington, prononcé dans le temple de Mars le 20 pluviôse an 8 [9 février 1800], Paris, Henri Agasse et Dupont, an VIII, p. 13.

[2] Voir par exemple Denis Lacorne, « Mémoire et amnésie : les fondateurs de la république américaine, Montesquieu et le modèle politique romain », in Revue française de science politique, N° 42-3, p. 363-374, ou encore Garry Wills, Cincinnatus : George Washington and the Enlightenment, New York, Doubleday, 1984.

[3] Voir Hélène Parent, Modernes Cicéron. La romanité des orateurs d’assemblée de la Révolution française et de l’Empire (1789-1807), thèse de doctorat soutenue à l’Université Paris Nanterre le 12 octobre 2020, 704 p.

[4] Par exemple, la Déclaration d’Indépendance, les constitutions, le Code civil, les journaux révolutionnaires, les Federalist Papers, etc.

Giovanni Paolo Panini, Préparation du feu d’artifice et de la décoration de la fête donnée sur la place Navone à l’occasion de la naissance du Dauphin, 30 Novembre 1729, 1729 oil on canvas, 42 × 98 inches (Paris: Musée du Louvre , 415)

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From ISECS:

International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS / SIEDS)
16th International Congress for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Rome, 3–7 July 2023

Proposals due 15 September 2022 and 31 January 2023

The Congress of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS / SIEDS) is the world’s largest meeting of specialists on all aspects of the eighteenth century, and takes place every four years. Recent ISECS congresses have been held in Montpellier (2007), Graz (2011), Rotterdam (2015), and Edinburgh (2019). The 16th ISECS Congress will be held in Rome, Italy, from Monday, 3 July to Friday, 7 July 2023. It is organized by the Italian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Società Italiana di Studi sul Secolo Diciottesimo – SISSD) and hosted by Sapienza Università di Roma and Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata.

While proposals for papers, panels, and roundtables on any topic relevant to the long eighteenth century (1670–1830) are warmly welcomed, we particularly invite contributions that address the Congress theme: Antiquity and the Shaping of the Future in the Age of Enlightenment.

In the 18th century, a new interpretation of the past radically innovated the dominating view of and approach to tradition. The legacy of antiquity was always there as shared memory, but the critical and analytical attitude that characterised 18th-century culture also transformed its relationship with antiquity, which was renegotiated and modernised. Indeed, the 1700s witnessed a reconstruction of the foundations of knowledge, considering not only the different forms of knowledge itself, but also the individual and his/her existence in the present. This change created a major break with the past and laid the groundwork for the new patterns of thought and expression that have developed in the subsequent ages and continue to do so, up to the present day. They build for the future, but in creative dialogue with a vanished Antiquity. The challenge that the Congress is to face lies precisely in the capturing of the deep sense and meaning of this transformation, which involves all branches of knowledge and can be approached from different perspectives and with different methodologies.

The programme will include theme-related keynote lectures, panels, round tables, and paper presentations. The congress languages are English, French, and Italian. As a first step in the scientific organization of the Congress, the online Call for Panels and Round Tables is now open from 30 April 2022 until 15 September 2022.

Please submit a proposal through https://www.isecs-roma2023.net. Panel organizers are asked to supply (1) a title, (2) a brief description of the theme of the proposed panel, and (3) a list of the panelists along with a title and abstract of their contributions. Panels have a duration of one and a half hours, and should consist of 3 to 4 speakers (depending on the amount of discussion time the panel organizer wants to provide). It is also possible to submit a panel proposal without panelists or only partly filled with panelists. A list of the accepted panels will published on the congress website before October 15.

When the online Call for individual Papers is open (from 15 October 2022 until 31 January 2023), it will be possible to submit proposals either for an already accepted open panel (i.e. a panel with fewer than 4 panelists) or for new panels to be set up by the congress organizers on the basis of the paper proposals received and selected.

Roundtable organizers are asked to supply (1) a title, (2) a brief description of the theme of the proposed round table, and (3) a list of the contributors to the round table. Please note that Panel organizers will be allowed to submit a proposal for a paper to be read in another panel if they do not contribute a paper to the panel they are chair of. Roundtable organizers and contributors will be allowed to submit a proposal for a paper anyway.