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Venal
Bodies: Prostitutes and Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century Culture
4
April 2009
Stewart
House Room STB3/6, IGRS, University of London
Co-organised by
Prof. Markman Ellis (School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of
London) and Dr. Ann Lewis (French Department, School of Languages, Linguistics
& Culture, Birkbeck, University of London) with the support of the Centre
for Eighteenth-Century Studies and School of English and Drama, Queen Mary
University of London; and the School of Languages, Linguistics and Culture,
Birkbeck, University of London.
Prostitutes, and
prostitution, were notoriously visible in eighteenth-century culture, a
visibility that was amply reflected in political and cultural discourses. The
period witnessed important transformations in the representation of
prostitution, offering contrasting accounts of the prostitute as a criminal
agent of corruption or as a subject of social violence. Commonly understood as
an index of the moral temperature of society, the perceived increase in
prostitution in the major cities of Europe invited diverse interpretations and
responses. Prostitutes in eighteenth-century texts and images mediated a range
of central Enlightenment arguments and anxieties relating to sex, love,
marriage and the family, concerns about disease and depopulation, luxury and
social displacement, and the phenomenon of urbanisation. As a visible sign of
the sexualised female body, the prostitute was also a point of convergence for
debates on the feminisation of culture.
For details on the
programme and registration see http://igrs.sas.ac.uk/index.php?id=251
Flo Austin
Institute
Administrator
Institute of
Germanic & Romance Studies
School of Advanced
Study, University of London Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
Tel: 020 7862 8677;
fax 020 7862 8672
NB
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some delay in responding to your email