SIMA GODFREY LECTURE

“The Empire of Fashion in 19^th-century France”

May 15, Wednesday, at 6:30 in room 4202

Sima Godfrey teaches in the Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies at the University of British Columbia. From 1999- 2007 she changed hats to establish and direct the Institute for European Studies at that university, where her interests quickly shifted to questions of cultural identity. She has published widely on the usual suspects of 19^th-century French literature, including Balzac, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Gautier, Mallarmé, Maupassant, Nerval and others.  For the past decade she has focused on aspects of modern French cultural history, most notably the concept of fashionability in 19^th-century France —  the research for which has inspired her talk. Along the way, however, she has also published on Concrete Poetry (on poetry and architecture in France), Product Placement in French literature, the representation of North American First Nations in French cinema, and most recently, on the Crimean War in French Cultural Memory, a project she is calling “La Guerre de Crimée n’aura pas lieu.”

Professor Godfrey’s talk is designed to accompany the “Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity” exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A reception will follow