Workshop at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Bad Homburg v.d.H.
Organisation: Prof. Dr. Frederike Middelhoff, Associate Professor of Modern German Literature with a focus on Romanticism Studies
The era of revolutions (ca. 1770–1820) – linked to slave revolts, civil uprisings and wars of independence in Europe as well as the European colonies of North, Central and South America – had a lasting impact on the political scales, social configurations, philosophical ideals and artistic works in and beyond Europe. Until the twentieth century, the era was primarily perceived as “heroic” and progressive, considering, for example the emergence of republican constitutions and humanitarian innovations. However, the age of revolutions also had contingent and violent downsides connected to the approximately 350,000 people who were forced to emigrate in view of the socio-political upheavals or were persecuted as supposed “Jacobins.” These connections have only recently been systematically related to one another in historical research and examined within the horizon of a new research paradigm that illuminates the epoch of the revolutions as a transatlantic age of refugees and emigrations (see, among others, Diaz 2021; Pestel 2019; Jansen 2018; Jasanoff 2010).
The desideratum of a systematic research into the history of revolution as a history of exile raises questions regarding theoretical foundations, methodological approaches. and source materials. The workshop aims to approach these questions by bringing historiographical perspectives on the motives, manifestations and consequences of banishment and expulsion in the age of revolutions into conversation with research in the history of literature and art that is reflected in cultural studies. In literary studies, important work has already been done on the modes of representation of refugees connected to the revolutions as well as the forms and functions of literary reflection on political exile in German-, French-, English- and Spanish-speaking countries (cf. among others, Eppers 2018; Stabler 2013; Estelmann/Müller 2011; Benis 2009; Mauizio 2009; Wiley 2008; Köthe 1997; Zimmermann 1984). Studies in the history of art have been devoted to the staging of emigration and expulsion in painting as well as to the potentials and limits of art in political exile around 1800 (see, among others, Ribbner 2022; Walczak 2019; Schnetzler 1996; Kohle 1992). However, so far, aesthetic interferences and narrative parallels between literature and the visual arts have rarely been considered with regard to their artistic confrontations with emigration around 1800. To which extent the stories of expulsion and exile told via literary texts, illustrations, genre paintings and portraits has helped to shape both perceptions of refugees and the history of emigrations is yet to be determined. This begs the more profound and yet open question whether these hi/stories of exile should be systematically included in historical research on migration.
The workshop aims to make theories, methods and research questions from history, literary and visual studies productive for interdisciplinary research on emigration and exile around 1800. It aims to fathom the roles fiction and aesthetics of expulsion and banishment played in the age of revolutions and which narratives, image programmes, topoi and affect regimes were condensed into stories of emigration and exile. Exemplary analyses from literary studies, the history of art and the historical sciences are welcome and should both reflect on their methodological approaches to writing the history of revolutions/emigrations and contextualise their source material sufficiently to ensure an interdisciplinary discussion. Equally invited are proposals that develop theoretical and meta-theoretical approaches to interdisciplinary research on the age of emigrations. The thematic focus of the proposals will be on “banishment” and “expulsion” in the context of the revolutions in the Atlantic region between 1770 and 1820, the legal, discursive, aesthetic and affective dimensions of which are to be explored in the workshop for a history of emigrations around 1800.
The following questions may be relevant (although the list is far from exhaustive):
- How were banishment and expulsion discussed in politics, (legal) science, literature and art around 1800, or how were they presented narratively and aesthetically? How do the first-person documents of the refugees themselves relate to this?
- Which actors are involved in the stories of banishment and expulsion? Who is spoken about/heard/overlooked/made (in)visible and how?
- Which figurations (e.g. refugee; displaced persons; émigrés; emigrant; counter-revolutionaries etc. vs. administrative officials; personnel of state organs/institutions etc.) are recognisable in research materials and how do these figurations relate to certain logics of affect (stigmatisation, victimisation, anonymisation etc.) and other economies of reception control?
- Which traditions (topoi, motifs, intertexts, iconographic traditions, etc.) are used for the aesthetic modelling of banishment, expulsion and flight and what function can be attributed to these aesthetics?
Abstracts for talks of max. 30 minutes should be sent to middelhoff@em.uni-frankfurt.de by 09 December 2022. Please provide an abstract of max. one DIN A4 page and short biobibliographical information (preferably in one single file). Accepted paper proposals will be notified by the end of the year.
The workshop will take place at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of the Goethe University in the Villa Reimers in Bad Homburg v. d. Höhe; travel and accommodation costs for participants will be covered. Conference languages are German and English; a publication of the contributions is planned.
Works Cited
Benis, Toby R., Romantic Diasporas: French Émigrés, British Convicts, and Jews, New York 2009.
Diaz, Delphine, From Exile to Refugee: Toward a Transnational History of Refuge in Early Nineteenth-Century Europe, in: Yearbook of Transnational History (2021), 1–26.
Eppers, Arne, “Goethes geflüchtete Frauen: Dorothea und Iphigenie: Rekonstruktion fiktiver Migrationserfahrungen,” in: Goethe-Jahrbuch 135 (2018), 71–88.
Estelmann, Frank, Olaf Müller (Eds.), Exildiskurse der Romantik in der europäischen und lateinamerikanischen Literatur, Tübingen 2011.
Jansen, Jan C., “Flucht und Exil im Zeitalter der Revolutionen: Perspektiven einer atlantischen Flüchtlingsgeschichte (1770er–1820er Jahre),” in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 44/4 (2018), 495–525.
Jasanoff, Maya: Revolutionary Exiles: The American Loyalist and French Emigre Diasporas, in: David Armitage, Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Hg.): The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760–1840. Basingstoke 2010), 37–58.
Kohle, Hubertus, “Antike modern: Jacques Louis Davids Stil im Exil,” in: Thomas W. Gaehtgens (Ed.): Künstlerischer Austausch/Artistic Exchange. Akten des XXVIII. Internationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte, vol. 1, Berlin 1992, 175–183.
Köthe, Regina, Vor der Revolution geflohen. Exil im literarischen Diskurs nach 1789, Wiesbaden 1997.
Mauizio, Isabella, Risorgimento in Exile. Italian Emigrés and the Liberal International in the Post-Napoleonic Era, Oxford 2009.
Friedemann Pestel, “The Age of Emigrations: French Émigrés and Global Entanglements of Political Exile,” in: Laure Philip, Juliette Reboul (Eds.): French Emigrants in Revolutionised Europe: Connected Histories and Memories. Cham 2019, 205–231.
Ribner, Jonathan P., Loss in French Romantic Art, Literature, and Politics, New York 2022.
Schnetzler, Ursula. ‘Fortgerissen durch sich ...’: Johann Caspar Lavater und Johann Heinrich Füssli im Exil, in: Martin Fontius, Helmut Holzhey (Eds.): Schweizer im Berlin des 18. Jahrhunderts. Berlin 1996, 69–86.
Wiley, Michael: Romantic Migrations. Local, National, and Transnational Dispositions. Basingstoke 2008.
Walczak, Gerrit: Artistische Wanderer: Die Künstler(e)migranten der Französischen Revolution. Berlin, München 2019.
Zimmermann, Harro, “Die Emigranten der Französischen Revolution in der deutschen Erzählliteratur und Publizistik um 1800,” in: Francia 12 (1984), 305–354.