Consuming Passions
St Louis (USA - 3-6 oct. 2013)

Consuming Passions engages a range of topics involving thetreatment of desire, obsession, and appetites as expressed intexts, images, and music in the early modern period. Allconference participants will focus on issues related to France,and many will choose to connect France in two or moreperiods (medieval through the eighteenth century) and/or tomake connections between France and other countries.

Interdisciplinary in focus, the conference’s broad historicalsweep from the medieval period through thelong eighteenth century, fosters intriguing topics such as :
? the passions of literary, religious, and political debates;
? the thirst for knowledge/discovery, including newtechnologies, the assemblage of ideas from diversecultures in books, collections of precious objects, foreignexploration and trade, and exoticism;
? the changing modes of consumerism and the resourcesspent in the acquisition of luxury goods;
? the profound marks left by these consuming passions onrelations of gender, identity, and class;
? taboos, stigmata, ecstasies.

500-word proposals in English or Frenchdue March 1, 2013