Leisure! Enjoyment! Fun!

INCS 2013 Conference, University of Virginia

March 14-17, 2013

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” It was the age of pleasure. It was the age of atonement. It was any place in the nineteenth century. The scope is global, the approaches, cross-disciplinary. What pleased the palate and tickled the nose? What roused the senses and deepened joy? What thrilled the body and inspired the mind? What did they do besides work? What diversions (respectable or otherwise) did they seek? How did they think about the enjoyments they sought? These are some of the questions to address at INCS 2013, which is devoted to ‘Leisure, Enjoyment, and Fun.’

Consider all forms of enjoyment desired, sought, anticipated, or suppressed. Of course what constitutes enjoyment was widely contested ‘then’ as it is ‘now,’ and just what the relation between enjoyment and happiness is has never been clear. The task we set ourselves this year is an examination of various pleasures, thoughts about fun and leisure, expressions or reports of enjoyment, and what these experiences tell us about the nineteenth century. Definitions of enjoyment are themselves numerous and contrasting, and we will keep the field broad so as to draw a wide catch. Enjoyment may be associated with entertainment, amusement, comfort, satisfaction, happiness, absence of pain, etc. We are interested in how enjoyment is experienced, what function it serves, how it can be legislated or monitored, if it can be exhausted, repeated, repelled, and whether individual enjoyment differs from enjoyment shared.

Topics are not limited to, but might include:

Ambivalence towards . . .
Theories of leisure
Enjoyment, guilt, atonement
License and restraint
Sport, games, and races
Music, music halls, music boxes
Festivals, street entertainments
Pleasure gardens
Illicit fun
Design, fashion, shopping
Gustatory delights
Trade in exotics
Hobbies
Weddings, parties, picnics
Spectacle
Dance
Cartoons, comics, periodicals
Sunday papers and other popular reading
Pets, animal fighting
Experimentation, invention
Gardens and horticulture
Collecting
Museums, exhibitions
Training for fun
Medical Tourism

Deadline: October 1, 2012. For individual papers, send 250-word proposals; for panels, send individual 250-word proposals for each paper plus a 250-word panel description. Please include your name, affiliation, and e-mail address on your proposal. Send questions and proposals to Karen Chase (ksc3j@virginia.edu). Website (under construction): http://incs2013.wordpress.com/