Conference organized by Michèle Lowrie (University of Chicago) & Barbara Vinken (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität) with the support of the German Center for art history Paris

Day 1: Thursday 9 June 2022 Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art (45 rue des Petits Champs, Paris 1er).

Day 2: Friday 10 June 2022 University of Chicago Center in Paris : hybrid conference on site and online

- Register here to attend in person (6 rue Thomas Mann, Paris 75013)
- Register here to attend via Zoom

From Charlemagne to Napoleon, from Du Bellay through Poussin and Berlioz to Houellebecq, French history, art, and letters continually define France, with Paris as its capital, through the mirror of classical and Christian Rome. Less déjà vu than agonistic emulation, France’s struggle to overcome the legacy of antiquity is paradigmatic for European self-definition. Model of republican self-governance, imperial ambition, the collapse into civil war, and spiritual redemption, Rome poses a challenge. How to escape the grip it holds on the imagination without repeating its haunting example?

Program :

Day 1: Thursday 9 June 2022 
Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art, 45 rue des Petits Champs, 75001 Paris

14:30 – Thomas Kirchner, opening remarks; Michèle Lowrie and Barbara Vinken, introduction

15:00 - Larry Norman (University of Chicago) “Versailles, a New Rome”

15:45 - Richard Neer (UChicago) “Poussin’s Self-portraits and the Dream of Classical Theory”

17:00 - Christine Tauber (Munich) “Jacques-Louis David’s Roman Revolutions in Paris”

18:00 - Michael Steinberg (Brown University) Keynote: “Myths of Origin and the Politics of Renewal

19:00 - Reception at the Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art (DFK Paris)

Day 2: Friday 10 June 2022

University of Chicago Paris Center, 6 Rue Thomas Mann, 75013 Paris and online

 9:00 - Susanna Elm, (Berkeley) “Le jour de gloire – Augustine of Hippo on gloria in the City of God”

9:45 - Anselm Haverkamp (NYU and Frankfurt/Oder emeritus) “Second Romes, and No Sense of an Ending”

10:30 - Coffee

11:00 - Amine Bouhayat (University of Chicago) “Staging Ancient Rome in Early Modern France: On Corneille’s Drama”

11:45 - Tristan Alonge (Réunion, CNRS Oxford) “Néron et Louis XIV au miroir racinien : monstre ou grand Prince naissant ?”

12:30 - Lunch

14:00 - Andrea Frisch, (University of Maryland / Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study) “Commemoration as Containment: The St Bartholemew’s Day Massacre and Roman Practices of Commemorating Defeat”

14:45 - Philip Hardie (Cambridge)  “Translatio laudum: praising rulers on the Tiber and on the Seine”

15:30 - Coffee

16:00 - Stephan Leopold (Mainz) “Empire – typologie – apocalypse. La double temporalité du roman réaliste.”