CfP: The Broken Mirror: Christine and the Queens and Global Frenchness (hybrid), Florida SU (October 2022)

The Broken Mirror: Christine and the Queens and Global Frenchness
International Conference, Winthrop-King Institute, Florida State University
20-21 October 2022

Deadline: 31 May 2022

Co-organizers: Martin Munro (Florida State), Denis Provencher (University of Arizona), Barbara Lebrun (University of Manchester), Chris Tinker (Heriot-Watt University)

Contemporary French Civilization published by Liverpool University Press is pleased to co-sponsor this event.

The Department of French and Italian and the College of Humanities at the University of Arizona are also proud co-sponsors of this event.

The co-organizers plan to edit a future special issue of Contemporary French Civilization on the conference theme and hence are looking for a variety of topics for this project.

Born in Nantes in 1988, Héloïse Adélaïde Letissier, known as Christine and the Queens or simply Chris is a star for our times: singer, songwriter, producer, dancer, and choreographer, she flits between roles, just as she does between identities, names, genders, genres, places, and languages. Describing her identity as a “broken mirror,” she exists in fragments, splinters, shards, broken parts that yet constitute a distinctive whole. At once quintessentially French and unremittingly global, she is hugely popular in France and across the world. What is it that drives this success and this global appeal? In what does her originality consist? What does she take from the past and from her influences to create the newness that courses through her work? How do she and her work relate to contemporary ideas of identity and culture? To what extent does she reinvent “Frenchness”?

This conference (in-person and online) seeks to address these questions, and many others provoked by this singular yet plural figure. We welcome proposals for panels and papers on any aspect of Christine and the Queens’ work and life, its reception and significance.
Please submit proposals by 31 May 2022 to: https://www.winthropking.fsu.edu/event/broken-mirror-christine-and-queens-and-global-frenchness

Possible topics may include:

  • Frenchness—to what extent does she redefine/reject it?

  • Language choices—specific uses of French and English, artistic and commercial motivations

  • Mediatization and export strategies

  • Identity

  • Masculinity/femininity

  • Performance

  • Theatre

  • In concert

  • Collaborations, artist as autonomous and part of collectivities

  • As producer

  • Dance and choreography

  • Social Media

  • Podcasts

  • Social class

  • Queerness and intersections

  • Influences: Michael Jackson, Laurie Anderson, Madonna, Desireless, Prince, William Sheller, Mylene Farmer

  • French chanson

  • Contemporaries—her influence, comparisons with other artists

  • Songs as fiction/songwriter as novelist

  • Reception in different places

  • Her work during Covid confinement

  • Musical genres and formats

  • London

  • California

  • Politics

  • The body and realms of memory

  • Theoretical approaches

  • Stardom

  • Fandom

  • Fashion

  • Video art

More information here.

CFP, NewsHelene Heuser