2nd Les Historiennes Series – Portable Privacy: Nineteenth-Century Women and the Spaces of Reading
Friday, March 19, 6:00 – 7:15 pm, via Zoom, with Dr. Kathryn Brown
Why are there so many images of women readers in late nineteenth-century French painting? Was a book in female hands merely a form of decoration designed to highlight the reader’s beauty? Can images of women readers tell us something about the lives and reading practices of real women or are they simply fictions that reinforced nineteenth-century prejudices about female intellect and emotions?
Explore the answers to these questions with Dr. Kathryn Brown of Loughborough University, UK, the author of Women Readers in French Painting 1870—1890. The lecture will examine the social preconditions of reading practices in France from the 1870s to the 1890s and show how images of women readers addressed political anxieties that arose from the spread of literacy throughout different social classes. The paintings of Cassatt, Degas, Manet, Monet, Morisot, Renoir, Tissot, and Toulmouche will come alive for us in a new way!
Limited to 30 participants. Cost: 10€50
Register at dev.aaweparis.org/les-historiennes/
