Veiled Cities - Haunted Urban Realities in Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Century Art, Architecture and Material Culture.

'Veiled Cities' puts the spotlight on hidden histories and uncanny cultures of art, architecture and spaces of memory, making the 'Veiled City' a potent site of urban alterity, artistic and cultural re-imagining. Spanning the globe, papers explore a secret Paris and Bruges, to a haunted Nancy and London. They investigate the entangled colonial spaces of Berlin and Dui (India), and shed light on a ludic New Jersey and Mexico City.

Conference Dates:
Thursday 26th and Friday 27th September 2024, Maison Française d'Oxford (2-10 Norham Rd, Oxford OX2 6SE).

Organised by Prof. Juliet Simpson (Coventry University) and Prof. David Hopkin (University of Oxford), in partnership with La Maison Française d'Oxford, Coventry University, (Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities), the University of Oxford (Faculty of Modern History) and Hertford College, Oxford.
Conference Officer, Olivia Garro (Coventry University).

The Conference is free for all participants.
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Programme:

Day 1 (26 September 2024):

9:00- 9:30AM, Registration and welcome by organisers Juliet Simpson and David Hopkin

9:30-11:00AM, 1st morning panel, ‘Uncanny Observers’:
-Vesna Elez, Who is the Old Man in Baudelaire’s “Les Sept Vieillards”?
-Raphaella Serfaty, The Construction of Illegible Urban Space in Honoré Daumier’s Caricatures

11:00-11:30AM, break

11:30-1:00PM, 2nd morning panel, ‘Haunted Cities, Urban Ecstasies’:
-Karl Bell, In Search of Urban Ecstasies: Mystical Desire in Arthur Machen’s London
-Elizabeth Benjamin, The Frosted Veil: Shifting Identities in the Haunted City of Nancy

1:00-2:00PM, lunch MFO

2:00-3:30PM, 1st afternoon panel, ‘Glimpsed Cities in Parables and Poets’:
-Elisabeth Rodini, Through Giggi’s Front Door: Searching for Rome in Parables and Poetry
-Dagmar Thielen, “Mon Coeur pleure d’autrefois…”: Bruges as a Centre for Cultural Memory and Identity in the Work of Fernand Khnopff and Grégoire Le Roy

3:30-4:00PM, break

4:00-5:30PM, 2nd afternoon panel, ‘Colonial Spirits, Entangled Sites’:
-Nuno Grancho, Diu Must Pray. Public and Private Rituals, Performance and Display
-Kavita Peterson, Filling in the Blanks: Excavating Colonial Berlin

5:30PM onwards, wine reception at the Maison Française d'Oxford

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Day 2 (27th September):

9:30-11:00AM, 1st morning panel, ‘Visionary Spaces’:
-Dominik Lengyel and Catherine Toulouse, The Transitional State of Cologne Cathedral in the 19th Century
-Stacie Vos, 116 Cheyne Walk and 31 Bedford Street: Medieval Enclosures in 20th Century London

11:00-11:30AM, break

11:30-1:00PM, 2nd morning panel, ‘Resonating Cities’:
-Juliet Simpson, Uncanny Pilgrimages of Art - Colmar's Liminal Spaces
-Mira Claire Zadrozny, The Veiled City Observed: The Uncanny Temporality of Mid-19th-Century Paris in Adolphe Martial Potémonts Etchings

1:00-2:00PM, lunch break

2:00-3:30PM, 1st afternoon panel, ‘Lucid Cities’:
-Anca I. Lasc, Enchanted Views for Store Windows: The Visual and Material Culture of Prop Making in Turn-of-the Century US
-Maria Blanco, The Cat, the Rooftop, and the Bar: Fin-de-Siècle Mexico City

3:30-4:00PM, final remarks by organisers David Hopkin and Juliet Simpson.

4.00PM: CLOSE OF CONFERENCE