Consuming Passions engages a range of topics involving the treatment of desire, obsession, and appetites as expressed in texts, images, and music in the early modern period. All conference participants will focus on issues related to France, and many will choose to connect France in two or more periods (medieval through the eighteenth century) and/or to make connections between France and other countries. Interdisciplinary in focus, the conference’s broad historical sweep from the medieval period through the long eighteenth century, fosters intriguing topics such as:·
- the passions of literary, religious, and political debates;
- the thirst for knowledge and discovery, including new technologies, the assemblage of ideas from diverse cultures (past and present) in books, collections of precious objects, foreign exploration and trade, and exoticism;
- the changing modes of consumerism and the resources spent in the acquisition of luxury goods;
- the profound marks left by these consuming passions on relations of gender, identity, and class.
- taboos, stigmata, ecstasies
Our goals are 1) to engage scholars in studies that link the four historical periods of French culture together that relate the literary and artistic production to religious, philosophical, scientific beliefs and innovations of this period; 2) to link this vast cultural production in France to that of neighboring European countries; and 3) where appropriate, to link this production to developments in the Americas. Consuming passions, always in the plural, thus speak across historical, disciplinary, and national boundaries to engage some of the most compelling areas of current scholarship.
500-word proposals in English or French due March 1, 2013.Mail toconsumingpassions@outlook.com