CALL FOR PAPERS

Panel: The Modern French Interior and Mass Media
58th Annual Meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies
The University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California and
Omni Hotel in downtown Los Angeles
March 22-24, 2012

This panel invites papers that focus on the relationship between mass media and the modern French interior, broadly defined (mid-18^th century to mid-20^th century, private and public). Since the mid-18^th century, a new interest in the modern and comfortable interior, removed from the world of power, staged a gradual dislocation of private life away from the court at Versailles and into the city. New patrons and new living spaces inaugurated an unprecedented interest in new building techniques, fashionable tendencies in interior decorating, and new modes of social interaction. With the 19^th century, techniques of representing the modern interior witnessed an extraordinary development, enhanced by advances in photography, techniques of color reproduction, and photo-mechanical printing processes. Architectural drawings were complemented by visual representations of the modern interior in prints, books, illustrated journals, collection and store catalogues, photographs, exhibition guidebooks, and even film. The variety of media employed in representing the modern interior blurred the boundaries between spectacle and privacy, collecting and decorating, the fine and the decorative arts, the domestic and the commercial spheres. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

·         Visual and textual narratives of the spectacular or the tasteful interior

·         The modern interior and technologies of reproduction

·         Transposing the modern interior from paper to a three-dimensional entity

·         Gender and spatial practices as mediated through representational techniques

·         Privacy and publicity in the modern interior

·         Mass media and consumption for the home

A one-page abstract and short C.V. (one page, including contact information) should be submitted to Anca I. Lasc ([log in to unmask]).

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: July 01, 2011

Anca I. Lasc
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Art History
University of Southern California
[log in to unmask]
(213) 926-0990