Call for Paper Proposals

Women, Bourgeois Femininity, and Public Space
in 19th-century European Visual Culture

Temma Balducci and Heather Belnap Jensen, editors

We invite proposals for a collection that considers representations of
bourgeois women in public spaces/roles over the long nineteenth century in
Europe.

It is tantamount to scripture that nineteenth-century women, particularly
of the middle and upper classes, were associated with the interior spaces
of the home. Art historical accounts of such women have codified the
notion of the „Angel in the House“ and focused on the visual culture
representing domesticity and private life. While the recent volume The
Invisible Flâneuse: Gender, Public Space and Visual Culture in
Nineteenth-century Paris (Manchester 2006) has gone some way toward
challenging such conventional assumptions, our volume is premised on the
notion that the descriptor „flâneuse“ does not adequately capture the
myriad positions available to European women vis-à-vis the public sphere.
There remains much to be said on the topic.

This project is spurred by Janet Wolff’s admonition that rather than
theorizing the „impossible“ flâneuse, scholars should instead focus on
researching women’s actual lives in the city, along with revisionist
scholarship that challenges traditional assumptions regarding the
public/private divide. To that end, the editors seek submissions that
engage with the concrete details of bourgeois women’s activities outside
the home across the spectrum of nineteenth-century European culture and as
registered in visual culture. What venues and mechanisms facilitated
women’s participation in the shaping of public culture? In what ways do
their activities help to alter longstanding conventional notions of public
space? Of modernity? Of femininity? Of masculinity? From a historiographic
standpoint, what is the continued lure of the separate spheres ideology
for art historians<feminist or otherwise?

We encourage and wish to present multiple theoretical frameworks and
perspectives. Please send a 400-word proposal and a CV as electronic
attachments in MS-word to

Temma Balducci (tbalducciastate.edu) and
Heather Belnap Jensen (heather_jensenbyu.edu)

by January 31, 2010.

The deadline for completed essays will be August 31, 2010.