Decentring the flâneur : walking the early modern city (Londres)

DECENTRING THE FLANEUR: WALKING THE EARLY MODERN CITY

Organised by Dr Sussan Babaie - The Courtauld Institute of Art, London 

and Professor Richard Wrigley - History of Art, University of Nottingham 

Supported by Research Forum (Courtauld)

and the Centre for Research in Visual Culture (Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies, Nottingham)

Ideas about the origins and context for the flâneur have been tied to Paris, and viewed through the lens of Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project. While Benjaminian orthodoxy has increasingly been challenged, the association of the flâneur with modernity and European cities has continued to dominate studies of its variant forms. This conference aims to de-centre the concept and expand such critique by identifying and analysing forms of pedestrian observation in the early modern period taking note of the fact that strolling, seeing and being seen—and ‘walking the city’—emerged well before Europe and the 19^th century in urban experiences in cities like Istanbul, Isfahan, Delhi and Beijing.

PROGRAMME

Please note that the conference takes place at The Courtauld’s Vernon Square campus

FRIDAY, November 15, 2019

16:30 – 17:00 Registration 

17:00-17:30 Opening remarks: Sussan Babaie and Richard Wrigley

17:30 – 18:30

Keynote Address: Modalities of urban experience and a lexicon of vision: Walking-viewing early modern Istanbul

Professor Çiğdem Kafescioğlu (Boğaziçi University, Istanbul) 

18:30 – 19:30 Drinks reception

SATURDAY, November 16, 2019, 9:30 – 17:00

9:00-9:30am: Registration

9:30-10:00. Aslıhan Aksoy-Sheridan (TED University, Ankara)

An Ottoman Armenian flâneur in early modern Istanbul: Eremia Chelebi Komurjian capturing the seventeenth-century Ottoman capital    

10:00-10:30. David Karmon (Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts)

Pavements and pedestrian movement in the Renaissance: Venice and Rome

10:30-11:00. Saundra Weddle (Drury University, Springfield, Missouri)

Visualizing and mobilizing sex work on Venice’s canals

 12:00-12:30. Peyvand Firouzeh (University of Sydney)

Walking Yazd: Historicism, urban planning, and imperial connectivity

12:30-13:00. Nuno Grancho (Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, ISCTE-IUL)

Spatial mobility in the early modern colonial city of Diu

14:30-15:00. Marika Takanishi Knowles (University of St Andrews)

A guide to walking in Yoshiwara (1678): Hishikawa Moronobu’s flâneur

 15:00-15:30 Marie Yasunaga (University of Amsterdam)

Exploring urban space of Edo through Hasegawa Settan’s illustrations of Edo Meisho Zue

 16:00-16:30

Concluding remarks: Stephen Whiteman (Courtauld Institute of Art)