The one-day symposium La Maladie Fin de Siècle: Decadence and Disease will take place at Birkbeck School of Arts on 26 June 2019. The symposium will explore the turn-of-the-century medical poetics and representations of illnesses in order to advance our understanding of the languages of disease, their conceptualisation during the long fin de siècle, and the effect they have had on the present perception of physical and mental health.
For more information and to view the programme for the day Click Here.
We will begin with two academic panels, covering a variety of topics from the sexual anxieties to eating disorders of Decadence. In the afternoon, we will embrace the cinematic aspect of the long fin de siècle, probing representations of Decadence as disease through Russian and Ukrainian silent films: Yevgeni Bauer’s Happiness of Eternal Night (1915) and Viacheslav Vyskovsky’s Satan Married Them (1917).
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The symposium is supported by the Birkbeck/Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund and the Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies.
Connect via Twitter: @DecadentDisease
The poster for the symposium has been designed by Hanna Strizh. It is based on Robert Strüdel’s work, Tuberculosis: the head of the Medusa representing the disease, and advertising an exhibition against tuberculosis in Basel. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY.