WORLD'S FAIR SYMPOSIUM
SAN FRANCISCO, March 30-April 1, 2005

The Special Collections Library at California State University, Fresno,
home of the Donald G. Larson Collection on International Expositions and
Fairs, 1851 to 1940, announces its upcoming World’s Fair Symposium, to be
held in San Francisco at the Crowne Plaza Union Square Hotel, March 30 to
April 1, 2005. The goal of the symposium is to bring together world’s
fair scholars and graduate students in various disciplines from all over
the world and give them a venue in which to discuss and share their ideas.

Nine sessions covering the breath and diversity of current world’s fair
research will be offered over the two and a half day event. Robert W.
Rydell, one of the leading authorities in the field, will be opening the
symposium with a discussion on “New Directions in World’s Fair
Scholarship.” Vicente Gonzalez Loscertales, the Secretary General of the
Bureau International des Expositions in Paris will be the featured speaker
at the concluding luncheon.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30, 2005

9:00 – 9:05 Welcome and Introduction
Tammy Lau (California State University, Fresno)

9:05 – 9:45 Opening forum: “New Directions in World’s Fair Scholarship”
Robert Rydell, Montana State University

10:00 – 11:30 Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism at Expositions in
the “Motherland”

Alda Blanco (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
“Memory Work and Empire: Madrid’s Phillipine Exposition (1887)”

Lynn Palermo (Susquehanna University)
“Louis Aragon and the 1931 Anti-Colonial Exposition in Paris:
Political or Aesthetic Protest?”

Deborah L. Hughes (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
"Contesting Metropolitan Unity: India, Kenya and the Spectacle of
Colonial Politics, 1923-1925"

12:45 – 2:00 Work in Progress

Noah W. Sobe (Loyola University, Chicago)
“Pedagogies of Attention and Spectatorship: Educational Exhibits at
the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915”

Allison Marsh (Johns Hopkins University)
“The Industrial Tourist at the Fair”

Volker Barth (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
“World’s Fairs: Worlds in Their Own Right”

2:00-3:30 International Expositions: Microcosms of Ethnic and Cultural
Stereotypes

Mae Ngai (University of Chicago)
“Chinese American Culture Brokers and the World’s Fairs, 1893-1915”

Abigail Markwyn (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
“Inviting the Alien: Images and Reality of China and Japan at the
Panama-Pacific International Exposition”

Paul Young (University of Exeter)
“Eating People is Wrong: Monkey Man, Economic Man and the Great
Exhibition of 1851”

3:45 – 5:00 World’s Fairs in Teaching Roundtable

Moderators: Robert Rydell and Eric Breitbart

THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 2005

9:00 – 10:30 War and World’s Fairs: Myth and Propaganda

J.D. Bowers (Northern Illinois University)
“War Fair!”

E. Anthony Swift (University of Essex)
“Selling Socialism: The Soviet Union at the World’s Fairs of the 1930s”

Marco Duranti (Yale University)
“Utopia, Nostalgia and Total War at the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair”

10:45 – 12:15 Identity, Gender and Race in World’s Fair Architecture

T.J. Boisseau (University of Akron)
“’Where Every Woman May be a Queen?”: World’s Fairs as Sites of
Modern and Postmodern Gender-building”

Johan Lagae and Rika Devos (Ghent University)
“Inventing Africa: the Section of the Belgian Congo at the 1935
Brussels’ World’s Fair”

M. Haluk Zelef (Middle East Technical University)
“Representations of Turkish National Identity in Architecture: World’s
Fair Pavilions”

Mabel O. Wilson (California College of the Arts)
"Exhibiting the New American Negro"

1:30 – 3:00 Absence and Presence: Germany and World’s Fairs

Alexander C.T. Geppert (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut, Essen)
“Why Never in Germany? Failed Exposition Projects, Wilhelm II and the
Concept of the ‘Pre-factual,’ 1870-1910”

Christiane Heiser (University of Groningen)
“The German Werkbund goes into Politics, or How Germany Happened to
Participate in the Ghent World’s Fair in 1913”

Jeff R. Schutts (University of British Columbia)
“Finding Refreshment at the World’s Fairs: How Coca-Cola came to
Quench the Thirst of Hitler’s ‘German People at Work’”

3:15 – 4:45 Transformations in World’s Fairs

Angela Schwarz (Universität Duisburg-Essen)
“Designing the World of World’s Fairs: A European-American Joint
Venture”

Mauricio Tenorio (University of Texas at Austin)
Title TBA

J.T. Todd (Drew University)
“The New York World’s Fairs and the Rise and Fall of Judeo-Christian
America”

FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2005

9:00 – 10:30 Design, Technology and New Media: Influences on
World’s Fairs and the Influence of World’s Fairs

Paul Greenhalgh (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design)
“Modernity, Idealism and Style: The Presentation of the Modern at
Victorian World's Fairs"

Michelle Henning (University of the West of England)
“Interactivity and New Media at the International Expositions”

Andreas Fickers (University of Utrecht)
“Presenting the ‘Window to the World’ to the World: Competing
Narratives of Television at the World’s Fair in Paris (1937) and New
York (1939)”

Robert D. Tamilia (University of Quebec at Montréal)
“Technology Transfer, World’s Fairs and the Department Store, 1851-
1900”

10:45- 12:15 A Conversation with the Curators

Tammy Lau (Special Collections Library, California State University, Fresno)
Theresa Salazar (Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)
Patricia Keats (Society of California Pioneers Library)
Ronald Brashear (Dibner Library, Smithsonian Institution)
Susan Goldstein (History Center, San Francisco Public Library)
Inez Cohen (Mechanics’ Institute Library)
David Shayt (National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution)

12:30 Concluding luncheon

Featured speaker: Vicente Gonzalez Loscertales
(Secretary General of the Bureau International des Expositions, Paris)
“Future World’s Fairs and the Future of World’s Fairs”

For more detailed information about the symposium (including the
speakers’ abstracts) or to register for the symposium, please visit
the web site at: http://www.lib.csufresno.edu/extra/wfs2005/.
Any questions should be directed to Tammy Lau at tammylcsufresno.edu or
+1 (559) 278-2595.

--