Beyond Pleasure:
A History of Modern Asceticism,
1890-1960

October 5-8, 2005
University of Leuven, Faculty of Arts

Wealth and consumption have been characteristics of Western society since the end of the 19th century. Nevertheless, strong and varied tendencies towards sobriety and austerity also existed, both in individual as in collective forms. These and other aspects of this ‘modern asceticism’ will be addressed by the conference.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5TH

Opening
19.30 Registration
20.00 Welcome by Filip Abraham, vice-rector of the University of Leuven
20.15 Klaas van Berkel [University of Groningen] – Opening lecture
21.00 Drink

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6TH

Practices
08.30 Registration
09.00 Welcome by the chair
09.15 Evert Peeters [University of Leuven] – Asceticism and authenticity. Nude culture, health reform and the performance of redemption
10.00 Michael Hau [Monash University] – Pleasure and asceticism in German health reform
10.45 Coffee break
11.15 Peter Atkins [University of Durham] – Dietary restrictions in the emergence of modern asceticism
12.00 Lesley Hall [Wellcome Trust, London] – Contraceptive expedient, feminist revolt or erotic discipline? Abstinence in British marriages
12.45 Lunch

Marketing
14.00 Steven Fielding [University of Salford] – The British Labour Party and pleasure, 1930-1960
14.45 Barbara Orland [University of Zürich] – Pure food for men. Milk and thealcohol abstinence movement in late 19th-century Germany
15.30 Coffee break
16.00 Sofie De Caigny [University of Leuven] – Disguised asceticism. The promotion of austerity in interior design in Flanders, 1920-1940
16.45 Tom Saunders [University of Victoria] – Regulating visual pleasure. Film censorship and public morality in comparative perspective

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7TH

Subcultures
09.00 Welcome by the chair
09.15 Henk de Smaele [University of Antwerp] - Suffering, self-sacrifice and sainthood in commercial societies. The nineteenth-century rediscovery of religious asceticism
10.00 Kaat Wils [University of Leuven] – The revelation of a modern saint. Asceticism and the cultures of professionalized science
10.45 Coffee break
11.15 Jeanine Verdès–Leroux [CNRS, Paris] – Pour l'avenir radieux. La mortification militante des intellectuels communistes
12.00 Wolfgang Bialas [UAE University] – Intellectual criticism of mass society during the interwar period
12.45 Lunch

Discourses
14.30 Wessel Krul [University of Groningen] – Asceticism and imperialism in the arts. The reaction against Art Nouveau and the rise of a new monumentalism, 1890-1914
15.15 Marnix Beyen [University of Antwerp] – Necessity into virtue. The ideal of sobriety in the postwar reconstruction of Western Europe
17.00 Film performance: ‘Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit’ (Wilhelm Prager, Berlin, 1924)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8TH

Temptations
09.30 Welcome by the chair
09.45 Patrick Vandermeersch and Emke Bosgraaf [University of Groningen] – The changing sensation of flagellation
10.30 Rebecca Friedman [University of Florida] – Adolescent asceticism in 19th-century Russia. Autocracy, students and the making of men
11.15 Coffee break
11.45 Bill Osgerby [London Metropolitan University] – High-living with the ‘Upbeat Generation’. Lifestyle, consumption and the rise of the new hedonism
12.30 Afterword

REGISTRATION
Mail to: beyondpleasure@arts.kuleuven.be and deposit 25 euro into 432-0000011-57 (for domestic transfers) or BE09 432-0000011-57 (for transfers from abroad – SWIFT code: kredbe bb/IBAN BE 09 4320 0000 1157), in any case mentioning 400/0000/20954.
(Drink, coffee breaks and Thursday lunch are included.)

This conference takes place within the research projects ‘Dwelling Culture in Flanders’ and ‘Lebensreform in Belgium’ of the Fund of Scientific Research – Flanders.