ASMCF–SSFH Postgraduate Study Day 2019

Entre les couleurs et les visibles prétendus, on retrouverait le tissu qui les double, les soutient, les nourrit, et qui, lui, n’est pas chose, mais possibilité, latence et chair des choses​.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ​​Le Visible et l’invisible​​ (1964)

What we do not see is as important as what lies on the surface. Cultures and societies are moulded by tensions between dominant powers and marginalities, centres and peripheries – between those who are visible, and those individuals, bodies, or groups who are hidden or driven from view. Twenty-first-century scholars are increasingly seeking to probe norms of cultural visibility and bring to light the invisible, in order to explore their coexistence and codependence.

This Study Day aims to bring together the next generation of postgraduate scholars to share reflections, tensions, and hesitations, and to consider methodological approaches to navigating ‘the invisible’.

We invite proposals for ​20 minute papers in English or French ​​that reflect on ​visibility and/or invisibility from across French studies, focusing on the period 1789 to the present. This includes but is not limited to French and francophone history and society, literature, politics, linguistics, film and visual cultures, philosophy, critical theory, and other disciplines.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

• Hide and seek
• Disability, neurodivergence, bodily otherness
• Queerness and LGBTQ identities
• Gender
• (Post)colonialism, (de)colonialism
• ‘Footnotes to history’
• Museums and archives
• Power and revolution
• Collectives, communities and renegades
• Inside/outside
• Acts of memory
• Under the skin
• Surface tension
• Performance and performativity
• Frames, framing, the ​hors-champ
• Norms and normativity
• The nonhuman
• Prisons, schools, and hospitals
• Exile(s)
• Sound and vision
• Architecture, design, urban planning
• Eyes wide shut
• Hidden messages, hidden tongues
• Subliminal

Abstracts of no more than 250 words, either in English or in French, should be sent to frenchpg2019@gmail.com​. ​Submissions should be received by 9AM UK time on 12 January 2019.

Call for Flash Presentations

We welcome proposals from MA and early PhD students ​​for flash presentations of their research lasting ​no longer than 5 minutes and limited to ​one PowerPoint slide​​. The research in question can cover any topic relating to the study of France.

Please email ​frenchpg2019@gmail.com​ to indicate your interest.

The Study Day will include professional development panels and an opportunity to engage with senior academics from other institutions. It is generously funded by the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France ​(​ASMCF​) and the Society for the Study of French History ​(​SSFH)​ ​, and is supported logistically this year by our hosts at All Souls College. Attendance is free but we ask that all attendees become members of one of the two societies before or on the day. Travel reimbursement will be made available for speakers.

Organising Committee​: Emily Hooke (Southampton, SSFH), Anaïs Pedron (QMUL, SSFH), Alison Marmont (Southampton, ASMCF) and Madeleine Chalmers (Oxford, ASMCF).