Celebrity / Obscurity : 44^th Annual Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium

October 25-27, 2018, Los Angeles
Scripps College & University of California, Riverside
Manhattan Beach in Los Angeles, California
ncfs2018.ucr.edu

Modern celebrity, it has recently been argued, has its roots in French theater of the Fin-de-Siècle, when a network of participants including playwrights, actors, mass media, and the public converged to create stars and the cultural production surrounding them.  But fame as a trope can also be traced further back, to French and francophone authors and artists of the entire 19th century who represented the construction of, preoccupation with, and lust for notoriety in literature, art, and music. The works of writers, artists, historians, journalists, and critics also bear witness to the period's equal captivation with obscurity and with the dark or dishonorable sides of fame, which could be fueled by the anxiety of being unknown or forgotten, by concealed  “criminal” or inadmissible desires, by the drive to divulge intimate facts or uncover political corruption, among other impulses.

The organizers invite proposals that consider Celebrity/Obscurity through a variety of lenses including, but not limited to:

• Famous lines in literature
• Places and milieux
• Ascents and falls
• Glory and dishonor
• Colonial ambitions
• Public and private
• Anonymity, insignificance
• Writers, artists, historians, journalists, critics
• Social climbers
• Salonnières
• Mistresses and courtesans
• Famous and forgotten trials
• Quarrels  
• Scandals
• Crimes and villains
• Portraits, advertisements, photographs, caricatures
• Trendiness
• The disenfranchised and the marginalized
• Accursed poets
• Wars and battles
• Post-colonial legacies
• Trailblazing and adventurous women

Submissions for individual papers may be in French or English and should be in the form of an abstract (250 words) uploaded here (ncfs2018.ucr.edu) on or before March 15, 2018. For session proposals a separate abstract for each paper should be included.

Organizers: France Lemoine (Scripps College) and Heidi Brevik-Zender (UC Riverside)

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