VENAL BODIES: PROSTITUTES AND PROSTITUTION IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CULTURE
Co-organised by Dr Ann Lewis (Birkbeck, University of London) and Prof. Markman Ellis (QMUL), with the support of the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies and School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London; and the Faculty of Arts and School of Languages, Linguistics and Culture, Birkbeck, University of London.
Pour le programme (provisoirement) définitif, voir ci-dessous. Pour le bulletin d'inscription, voir:
[Page Fabula associée: appel à contributions]
PROGRAMME
9.30: COFFEE and registration
10.00: PLENARY 1: Prof. Kathryn Norberg (UCLA):
The House on the Rue Saint Fiacre and its Mistress: A Parisian Brothel, 1750-1757
11-12.30: Chair: Dr Julie Peakman
i) Claudine Van Hensbergen (St. Edmund Hall, Oxford):
‘Wherever she goes, we see nothing but her; and if we see her, we see everything': The Many Faces of the Duchess of Mazarin 1646-1699)'
ii) Dr Katherine MacDonald (UCL):
Marie Petit's Persian Adventure (1705-1708): The Eastward Travels of a French ‘Concubine'
iii) Dr Lena Olsson (Lund University, Sweden):
‘A First-Rate Whore': Prostitution and Strategies of Empowerment in the Early Eighteenth-Century
LUNCH 12.30 - 1.30
1.30 – 3.00: Parallel Session (A): Chair: Dr Will McMorran
(i) Dr Tom Wynn (University of Exeter):
Prostitutes and Erotic Performances in Eighteenth-Century Paris
(ii) Prof. Edward Langille (St. Francis Xavier University):
Voltaire's Debt to Fougeret de Montbron: The Venetian Episode, or Prostitution in the ‘Best of all Possible Worlds'
(iii) Dr Olivier Delers (University of Richmond, Virginia):
The Prostitute as Neo-Manager: Sade's ‘Juliette' and the “New” Spirit of Capitalism
Parallel Session (B): Chair tbc
(i) Dr Charlotte Grant (King's College, Cambridge):
Visible Prostitutes: Hogarth and the ‘Harlot's Progress'
(ii) Johanne Bergvist (University of Oslo):
Making a Living by ‘Indecency' in Christiania, Norway
(iii) Prof. Randolph Trumbach (Baruch College and the Graduate Centre City University of New York):
Male and Female Prostitutes and their Clients in Traditional and Modern Sexual Systems in Europe and Asia, before and after 1700
TEA: 3.00-3.30
3.30-5.00: Chair: Prof. Anne Janowitz
i) Dr Mary Peace (Sheffield Hallam University):
Asylum, Reformatory or Penitentiary?: Secular Sentiments vs Proto Evangelical Religion in ‘The Histories of Some of the Penitents in the Magdalen House' (1760)
ii) Dr Megan Hiatt:
Preventing Prostitution: Radical Re-Imaginings of Marriage in ‘Histories of Some of the Penitents of the Magdalen-House' (1759) and ‘Thelyphthora' (1780)
iii) Dr Jennie Batchelor (University of Kent)
Mothers and Others: Sexuality and Maternity in Eighteenth-Century Prostitution Narratives
5-6: PLENARY 2: Prof. Emma Clery (Southampton):
‘Love throws the fences down, and makes a gen'ral waste': Eliza Haywood and the anti-economics of luxury
6.00 - 7.30 Drinks reception
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.