This weekend I attended the Western Society for French
History conference (WSFH). It was my first time at “the Western,” and I enjoyed
it very much. I decided to go to this
conference instead of ASTR (American Society for Theatre Research) partly
because it was closer to home and partly because it forced me to work on a
project that I should be preparing to publish as an article. I presented on
eighteenth-century Parisian brothel plays, with a specific focus on the
relationship between prostitutes and police as represented in three plays. My
panel was called “Arresting Exchanges: Constructing Identity in Police
Archives.” It was a bit chaotic to start because the program indicated that we
had been assigned to the same room as a different panel (on Algeria). But
everyone worked efficiently to straighten out the mix-up, and we ended up with
a good audience. The audience included a leading expert on elite prostitution
in eighteenth-century Paris. I was citing her work in the paper, but had not
met her before. So I was a little nervous. But she was very encouraging. It was
especially productive to meet with historians’ resistance to using plays as
historical sources. This helped me to figure out where not to send this essay,
and reminded me that I do belong in Theatre Studies.
One funny thing about this conference was the etiquette
around language. People kept asking permission to speak in French, or
apologizing for speaking French even when their paper titles were in French in
the program. I went to one panel where two speakers presented in French (with requisite
apologies), and then the commenter spoke in English, and apologized for
speaking in English. The same dance happened during the Q&A, with the
speakers asking permission to respond in French to questions that had been
asked in English. It was all very polite, but it felt a little
unnecessary.
