Locating Empire: Seduction, Domination, and Revolt in the French Cultural Reach
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Friday, October 6
Call for Papers
The Ph.D. Program in French at the City University of New York invites paper proposals for its annual student conference. This year's conference will be held on Friday 6 October and will focus on: “Locating Empire: Seduction, Domination, and Revolt in the French Cultural Reach.” Papers should be 15-20 minutes in length.
As kingdom, empire, and republic, France has exerted exceptional international cultural and political power. But why France, and what is unique about the (often contested) French influence? According to Michel Foucault: “Power is not an institution, it is not a structure, it is not a certain force with which some are gifted: it is the name that has been lent to a complex strategic situation within a given society.”
Working from this standpoint and within the current global context, this conference will explore the French power to entice, seduce, and dominate. How and why do nations and cultures submit to, resist, or revolt against French strategies of power? From the internal construction of France itself to the Americas, Africa, and Asia, what are the implications of French successes and failures, and what are the limits of the French cultural reach?
Proposals for papers from all historical periods and disciplines are welcome. Papers may be either in French or in English.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Exploration and conquest
Constructing the nation- Confrontation, appropriation, and resistance
- Religion, territory, and political relativism
France and the Americas- Flora and fauna: Possession, domestication, classification
- Food and cultural consumption
- The French stage: Performing the French/France performing the Other
- Destabilizing empire: Revolution and revolt
- Economic imperialism
- Defending cultural relevance
- Incorporating the exotic
- Constructing bodies: Conformity and difference
- Fashion and cultural identity
- Language