--pour le français, veuillez voir le lien--

45th annual Nineteenth-Century French Studies colloquium
Enchantment/Disenchantment

Hosted by Florida State University and The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art

Keynote Speaker: Anne Verjus, National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Université de Lyon

The conference theme, Enchantment and Disenchantment, is inspired by the event's location. Myths of Florida typecast the state as a land of enchantment, entertainment, and Disneyfication. One of Florida's primary Gulf coast cities, Sarasota offers an eclectic blend of high culture and popular entertainment. Now part of the Florida State University, the Ringling Museum and the Ca’ d’Zan were built by the circus magnate, John Ringling, whose business claimed to deliver the 'Greatest Show on Earth.' This location offers an opportunity to look back on the nineteenth-century origins of spectacles of technology and fantasy as well as the (dis)enchantment that they can provide.

The 2019 colloquium will explore how nineteenth-century France was a time of confrontation between the age-old enchantment of faith, magic, and tradition, and the modern lure of rationalization, science, and innovation, leading to what Max Weber called the "disenchantment of the world." The nineteenth century is also a period of developing technologies and economies of popular entertainment. Along these lines, we can explore enchantment as a reward system that delights and inspires, or an enthrallment that constrains and inhibits. Enchantment can be a visceral experience of spectacle or one that plays with the simulacra of illusion.

We invite contributions on topics including but not limited to the following:

Illusion and disillusion
Fairy tales and féeries
Fascination and attraction
Magic, superstition and occultism
Phantasmagoria and Technologies of enchantment (magic lanterns, diorama, panorama, cinema, sound recording)
Enthrallment and constraint
Suspension of disbelief
Science of enchantment
Delight and rapture
Seduction and temptation
Magnetism and gravitation
Glamor and charisma
Propaganda and truth to power
Circus thrills
Revival-style architecture
Economies of enchantment
Expositions universelles

Submissions for individual papers or sessions may be in French or English and should be in the form of an abstract (250–300 words) uploaded to our submission portal available on the conference website (http://ncfs2019.fsu.edu). The deadline for all submissions is March 15, 2019. For session proposals, abstracts for each paper should be uploaded separately.

For more information, please visit http://ncfs2019.fsu.edu

Organizers
Aimée Boutin et Lauren Weingarden, Florida State University
ncfs2019fsu.edu