The goal of Impressions from Paris is to revisit the artistic, literary and journalistic contributions of French and expatriate women from different parts of the world, as they flocked to Paris during the interwar years (1925-1940). The overall principle lies in the inclusion of painters, visual artists, filmmakers and writers from diverse international and national backgrounds.

The volume will explore the possibilities presented in a modern literary and artistic history while building on previous scholarship. The idea for this project was inspired by two books and one documentary film: Shari Benstock Women of the Left Bank. Paris 1900-1940 (Texas University Press, 1986) and Andrea Weiss Paris was a woman. Portraits from the Left Bank (Harper SanFrancisco, 1995), which in turn produced an eponymous film (Greta Schiller/Andrea Weiss, 1996). These works highlight the community of women artists, editors and writers during the interwar years in Paris. There is scholarship in the area, although most of it is scattered in single monographs, crossing various genres, and various languages, from popular comic strips, to fiction, biographical studies, cultural histories as well as scholarly artistic and literary studies. The field is further invigorated by recent publications but not necessarily part of the focus such as Mary McAuliffe, Paris on the Brink. The 1930s Paris of Jean Renoir, Salvador Dali, Simone de Beauvoir, André Gide, Sylvia Beach, Léon Blum and their friends (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2018), and Michèle Fitoussi, Janet (JC Lattès, 2018).

The list of authors and artists that may be included but not limited to these are Doria Shafik, Françoise Gilot, Irène Nemirovski, and May Birkhead, Janet Flanner, Anaïs Nin, Djuna Barnes, Josephine Baker, Sonia Delaunay, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Sylvia Beach, Andrée Viollis and Gisèle Freund.

Contributors will be asked to contribute original essays of 6000 words each, with a bibliography and short bio. Please send a 600-word abstract and short bio to Dr. Sylvie Blum-Reid. University of Florida: sylblum@ufl.edu or seablum@gmail.com

Proposal for abstract by August 1st; and pending approval, final essay submissions by December 15, 2020.

Please find below the call for article proposals for the next issue of George Sand Studies: “Romans fantastiques, contes, légendes, fantaisies.” Please submit 500-word proposals to Isabelle Naginski (isabelle.naginski@tufts.edu) and Anne Marcoline (marcoline@uhcl.edu) by December 15, 2019.

Details here: Special Issue of George Sand Studies, vols. 39-40 (2020-2021).pdf

 

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

WIF Studies

Special Issue 2022

“Tu es drôle pour une fille”

Funny Women in French, from the Salon to Youtube 

For a special volume of Women in French Studies (2022), we seek contributions that investigate the humor of women of French expression since 1789.  We wish to explore the cultural archive for signs of women’s creative use of humor since the Revolution and the Napoleonic Code and track it through today’s digital age.  Against a tradition of reception that treats women as the unlaughing at which men laugh, this volume aims to demonstrate and reflect on the multiple humorous forms and practices of women of French expression and on their place in what Alain Vaillant calls “la civilisation du rire.”

It has been 20 years since Humoresques devoted a special issue to the question in Armées d'hmours : rires au féminin, where co-editor Judith Sandor Stora wrote that “l’étude de l’humour féminin en France commence à peine.”  In 2012, the Canadian journal Recherches féministes took up the mantle with its special issue “Les voies secretes de l’humour des femmes” but left the door open for a volume on the humor of women of French expression. 

The need for such a volume has become all the more compelling since the Humoresques volume. Along with novelists of all stripes, women are laughing: in the press and in cartoons, in street art, on the little and big screen, on the radio, and on the stage. Blanche Gardin won the Molière prize for humor in 2018. Franco-Ivoirien stand-up Shirley Souagnon travels to Reunion to conduct humor workshops.  The Internet explosion allows women unmediated access to a global public. Greater visibility and increased numbers, though, have not changed the fact that funny women still pose a problem. In 2014, French Youtuber and humorist Natoo (Nathalie Odzierjko) published a vlog called “Les femmes et l’humour” in response to a viewer’s back-handed compliment, “Tu es drôle pour une fille.” Natoo’s five-minute vlog deliciously skewers the perennial stereotypes about women and humor, calling to mind 19^th- century journalist Delphine Gay de Girardin’s witty nose-thumbing to would-be detractors in her weekly newspaper column from the July Monarchy. 

Submissions that explore any region of the French-speaking world and any creative practice using humor (taken in its largest sense to include the comic, the satiric, the ironic, etc.). within the historical parameters are welcome.  

Trans-national and historical perspectives most welcome.

Possible areas of inquiry: 

*literary humor

*performance (art, music, one woman shows, etc.)

*cartoons and comic strips, 

*radio

*television

*cinema

*digital cultures.  

Abstract of 250-300 words in English or in French requested by November 4, 2019. 

Please send proposals to Cheryl Morgan (cmorgan@hamilton.edu)

Notice of acceptance by December 15, 2019. 

Full manuscript due by June 10, 2020.

Manuscripts will go through blind peer review.