For this seventh International Symposium on Staging America, we invite scholars to explore the various ways in which American bodies have been staged and represented throughout history and through various media. From P.T. Barnum’s freak shows to modern-day tattoo conventions, from Carson McCullers’ and Flannery O’Connor’s grotesque characters to twenty-first century sideshows, bodies have always been a source of both attraction and repulsion. The fascination triggered by deformities – whether natural or self-inflicted – reveals as much about Americans’ conceptions of normality, hence of identity, as it does about the nature of the body itself.

Argument

From P.T. Barnum’s freak shows to modern-day tattoo conventions, from Carson McCullers’ and Flannery O’Connor’s grotesque characters to twenty-first century sideshows, bodies have always been a source of both attraction and repulsion. The fascination triggered by deformities – whether natural or self-inflicted – reveals as much about Americans’ conceptions of normality, hence of identity, as it does about the nature of the body itself.

While self-harm, such as scarifications, may be the external expression of mental illness, body modifications, such as tattoos or piercings, may be seen as artistic expressions, but also as political statements. Similarly, if the body is the manifestation of a person’s identity, it also becomes the incarnation of the nation’s foreign policy in the case of wounded or mutilated veterans.

Bodies may be objectified and subjugated, becoming “docile” in enclosed spaces such as schools, hospitals, or prisons, according to Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish. Yet bodies may also become powerful political tools. From the bondage of African slaves to the raised fists of Black Panthers, from the plight of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man to the communion of thousands during the March on Washington, African-Americans’ fight toward emancipation and civil rights has been characterized by the use of bodies as weapons of civil disobedience. Longing for recognition as full-fledged American citizens, 1960s students also considered bodies as political instruments that had to be “put on the line” while, at the same time, women aimed at taking control of their bodies, hence of their lives, in order to reach emancipation and liberation.

Programme 

Thursday March 17 – Conference Room of the Campus Library

9 a.m. – Coffee and welcome

9:30-10:30 a.m. – Plenary I

• Audrey Goodman, Georgia State University: “From Fugitive Poses to Photographic Storytelling: Native Women Retell their Visual Histories”

Chair: Nathalie Massip, Université Nice Sophia Antipolis

10:30 a.m. – Coffee break

11 a.m.-12 p.m. – Staging American Bodies and/in Photography

Chair: Nathalie Dessens, Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès

• Kelly Dennis, University of Connecticut: “The Obscene Homeless Body in Documentary Photography”
• Meredith Zaring, Georgia State University: “Arresting American Bodies: William Faulkner’s Literary Study of Eadweard Muybridge”

12-2 p.m.: Lunch

2 p.m.-4:30 p.m. – Staging American Bodies and/in Literature and Pop Culture

Chair: Christian Gutleben, Université Nice Sophia Antipolis

• Candice Lemaire, Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté: “‘All the soul-and-body scars’: Robert Frost’s Synecdochial Geography of Pain”
• Hélène Gaillard, Université Nice Sophia Antipolis: “Singing and Painting the Body: Walt Whitman and Thomas Eakins”

3 p.m. – Coffee break

• Mathieu Guiglielmi, Université Nice Sophia Antipolis: “Beauty and the Beast: The Quest for the Perfect Body in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho”
• Claude Chastagner, Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier 3: “Happy Bodies. Staging Happiness in Pharrell Williams’s 'Happy' and Other Recent US Music Videos” 

Friday March 18 – Conference Room of the Campus Library

9 a.m. – Coffee and welcome

9:30-10:30 a.m. – Plenary II

• Wendy Harding, Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès: “Spectacle Lynchings / Textual Responses”

Chair: Matthew Roudané, Georgia State University

10:30 – Coffee break

11 a.m.-12 p.m. – Staging American Bodies and/in Drama

Chair: Matthew Roudané, Georgia State University, Atlanta

• Sarah Dyne, Georgia State University: “‘It’s so queer — in the next room’: Docile/Deviant Bodies, Performativity, and Spatiality in Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour”
• Emeline Jouve, Université Champollion, Albi: “Hybrid Bodies on the Intermedial New York Scene”

12-2 p.m. : Lunch

2 p.m.-5 p.m. – Staging American Bodies: Politics, Memorialization, Representation

Chair: Anne Stefani, Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès

• Céline Geffroy, Université Nice Sophia Antipolis: “The Metamorphosis of the Ghalincha. Cross-Dressing and Inebriation in the Bolivian Andes”
• Nathalie Massip, Université Nice Sophia Antipolis: “Staging Native American Bodies: Sports Mascots and Cultural Appropriation”

3 p.m.: Coffee break

• Tiphaine Duriez, Université Nice Sophia Antipolis: “Bodies in Motion and Citizenship: The ‘Internally Displaced Person’ in Colombia, a Community of Exiles”
• Thibaud Danel, Université Nice Sophia Antipolis: “Bodies of War and Memory: Remembering the Korean War in the United States”

4:30 – Roundtable “Reflexions and Perspectives”

Contact: Nathalie Massip, MCF civilisation américaine – UFR LASH, Université Nice Sophia Antipolis – nmassip@unice.fr 

Comité d'organisation et scientifique

• Nathalie Massip, Université Nice Sophia Antipolis
• Tiphaine Duriez, Université Nice Sophia Antipolis
• Yaël Pouffary, Université Nice Sophia Antipolis