Call for Papers:

The Viennese Café as an Urban Site of Cultural Exchange

A two-day conference organised by the Viennese Café and Fin-de-siècle
Culture Research Project, to be held at the Victoria and Albert Museum and
Royal College of Art, London on October 17th and 18th 2008.

As today, the cafés of fin-de-siècle Vienna were an important component of
modern city life, an extension of both home and workplace. Cafés were as
much to do with intellectual and social interaction as with procuring
refreshment. This conference will focus on the complexities of the
Viennese café as an urban space in order to better understand wider
questions about Viennese modernism. Through its focus on the café, the
conference aims to redefine our understanding not only of the arts in
Vienna, but also of modernity more generally.

The conference encourages a cross-disciplinary approach to subjects and
welcomes proposals for papers from scholars and practitioners in any field.

Possible topics include, but are not restricted to:

• The complex inter-relationships between urban modernity and artistic
modernism in relation to the Viennese café.

• The Viennese café as a liminal space: public and private, ‘high’ and
‘low’ culture.

• The café as a site for consumption: coffee and commerce.

• Contrasts and comparisons between the Viennese café and the café
cultures of other world cities.

• The café as a site for performance.

• The café as a designed space: interrelations between modern design,
society and fashion.

The Viennese Café and Fin-de-siècle Research Project is funded by the Arts
and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and is based at the Royal College
of Art and Birkbeck, University of London. www.rca.ac.uk/viennacafe

We invite abstracts of 400 words to be submitted electronically to Dr
Charlotte Ashby charlotte.ashbyrca.ac.uk

The deadline for submissions is 15th January 2008

________________

Dr Charlotte Ashby

Research Curator, Vienna Café Project
Design History
Royal College of Art

Kensington Gore
London SW7 2EU

+44 (0)20 7590 4193
+44 (0)7790 580 125

www.rca.ac.uk/viennacafe