Chromatic Encounters: Experiencing Colour from Early Modern Literature to Modernism

Chromatic Encounters wishes to take the significance of colour in literature beyond the universalizing symbolism which has dominated many approaches to colour so far. Our international speakers will look at the specifics (cultural, historical, material, geographic, political, sensorial, racial and environmental…) of the experience of colour within and surrounding the literary space/text.

These questions will help us to see how colour can challenge our understanding of literature by taking it beyond the book/page:

• How do literary texts envisage and represent colour and its material forms?
• How does colour, in the guise of illustrations or additions to a text, influence processes of reception and remediation?

Since the pioneering work of Michel Pastoureau and John Gage in 1990s, colour studies have grown into a wide interdisciplinary field, embracing new research trends, from gender-focused to environmental and post-colonial approaches. Following the recent ‘material turn’ in the humanities, chromatic materiality is also being discussed by an ever-increasing number of disciplines. Literary studies, however, have so far lagged behind. Indeed, with the exception of the illustrated text, the difficulty of reading colour is that it is not there, the black-and-white page necessarily invoking it by absence or abstraction.

The conference Chromatic Encounters aims to create a dialogue between literary and colour studies by exploring the experience of colour in literature written in English. It builds on the expertise developed by the CHROMOTOPE team (Sorbonne Université, CNAM and the University of Oxford) during the past five years. The main objective of the ERC project CHROMOTOPE was to study what happened to colour in the 19th century – a period when the art of ‘chromographia’ seems to have taken on a new dimension following the invention of a wealth of new synthetic dyes for which new names had to be devised.

The conference broadens the historical scope of the project, going back to the age of print which marked the dawn of modernity and radically changed the experience of reading, and up to the age of modernism in the early 20th century. Within this broad time framework, ‘Chromatic Encounters’ seeks to interrogate how literature provided a stage for the shifting relationship between colour and changing concepts of the modern.

Organisation

• Anne-Valérie DULAC, maîtresse de conférences en études élisabéthaines, Sorbonne Université
• Stefano EVANGELISTA, professeur de littérature, Faculté d’anglais de l’Université d’Oxford
• Stella GRANIER, doctorante du projet ERC CHROMOTOPE, Sorbonne Université
• Charlotte RIBEYROL, professeure de littérature britannique du XIX^e siècle, Sorbonne Université
• Julie LEGANGNEUX, manager de projets européens et communication scientifique, Sorbonne Université

Intervenantes et intervenants

• BARNARD Leonor-Jo, University of Oxford
• BLACHER Rosie, Kingston University
• BRUGNETTI Michele, Sapienza University of Rome
• CHOUDHURI Suchitra, University of Glasgow
• DIXON Joyce, University of Edinburgh
• DUBOIS Arnaud, CNRS
• DULAC Anne-Valérie, Sorbonne Université
• DUNSTAN Angie, Queen Mary University of London
• EELS Emily, Université Paris Nanterre
• EVANGELISTA Stefano, University of Oxford
• GADOIN Isabelle, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
• GALLAND Nora, Université de Bretagne Occidentale
• GASKILL Nicolas, University of Oxford
• GRAYBURN Rosie, University of Delaware
• HEWITSON Madeline, University of Birmingham
• KOO Gwenda, University of Cambridge
• LAURENT Béatrice, Université Bordeaux Montaigne
• LOSKE Alexandra, The Royal Pavilion, Brighton
• LOISON-CHARLES Julie, Université de Lille
• LU Mimi, University of Sidney et University of Oxford
• MAXWELL Catherine, Queen Mary University of London
• MENTZ Steve, St John's University
• POWELL Lucy, University of Oxford
• RAYCHAWDHURI Anita, University of Houston Downtown
• RIBEYROL Charlotte, Sorbonne Université
• RIPOLL Elodie, Universität Trier
• RONETTI Alessandra, Sorbonne Université
• SAADA Gabriel, Sorbonne Université
• SABATIER Armelle, Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas
• SIMONINI Giulia, Technische Universität Berlin
• STAGG Robert, Texas A&M
• TAYLOR David, University of Oxford
• TEDONE Melissa, University of Delaware
• WINTERBOTTOM Matthew, Ashmolean Museum

Partenaires de l'événement

Cet événement est organisé en collaboration avec l'European Research Council, l'Oxford University et le Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM).

28 juin
CNAM
amphithéâtre Abbé Grégoire

292, rue Saint-Martin 75003 Paris