CFP:

Women Wandering Purposefully:

The Flâneuse in Literature and Popular Culture

(Edited Collection/Updated 6-1-24)

“I love walking in London. Really, it’s better than walking in the country.”

—Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

We seek essays of 3,000-5,000 words for an edited collection that explores the female flâneur, what Lauren Elkin calls the Flâneuse in her book, Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016). About this character, both fictional and real and male, Elkin explains:

From the French verb flaneur, the flâneur, or ‘one who wanders aimlessly’, was born in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the glass-and-steel covered passages of Paris. When Haussmann started slicing his bright boulevards through the dark uneven crusts of houses like knives through a city of cindered chêvre, the flâneur wandered those too, taking in the urban spectacle. A figure of masculine privilege and leisure, with time and money and no immediate responsibilities to claim his attention, the flaneur understands the city as few of its inhabitants do, for he has memorised it with his feet. (3)   

The flâneur, moving and rising in tandem with the modern industrialized city has been many things, mostly notably, perhaps, he has been male. But that is not the entire story. Of course, it is not. In our volume, we intend to explore the female wanderer who, perhaps by default, has always had to move with more craft, with more purpose, with more cunning than her male counterparts in our misogynistic world.

We invite you, then, to submit an essay exploring the many possibilities and challenges of the modern-day (nineteenth century and beyond) female wanderer, the flâneuse. Possible authors include George Sand, Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, Sophie Calle, Laura Oldfield Ford, Martha Gelhorn, and Rebecca Solnit. This list but scratches the surface, for many other writers of all kinds and nationalities have written of and about this character in one or more ways.

This collection will serve as an accessible volume for academics, university students, teachers at the university level, and even some general readers whose interests include literature and popular culture relating to the flâneuse/flâneur, literature and the city, feminist studies, global culture, and travel, walking, serendipity, and wandering. Within the higher education sector, there are myriad undergraduate courses that offer perspectives on travel and travel experiences as seen through media, film, literature, communication, and/or visual culture as components of their major degrees.  Further, we believe that curricula should be radically reshaped to include ever more space for women and their liberatory actions, especially flâneuses who (re-) claim space in and around the cities of the world. The study of women’s emancipation is also incorporated into degrees in the social sciences and humanities, such as Psychology, Literature, History, War Studies, and Gender Studies programs, and many more.  We expect this volume to have both a narrow and wide audience, depending on the space from which readers approach it.

While not attempting to be a comprehensive history, this collection will attempt to cover a variety of possible flâneuse examples and experiences, both international and domestic (US), literary and popular. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• History and culture of places through the flâneuse-ing;
• Exploring place through psychogeography and dérive;
• Finding and documenting insurgent and reclaimed public spaces;
• Slow Travel and/or Slow Food, being a flâneur in the 21st Century;
• Deconstructing the myths of historical markers and heritage sites;
• Barriers and violences to/on females wandering in the city;
• Future flâneuse-ing
• And on and on…

Abstracts of around 500 words & CV by July 8, 2024 to:

Completed first drafts between 3,000 and 5,000 words by December 31, 2024

Jeff Birkenstein, Ph.D.                                                                    Irina Gendelman, Ph.D.

Department of English                                                                   Department of Society & Social Justice

jbirkenstein@stmartin.edu                                                              igendelman@stmartin.edu                        

Saint Martin’s University

5000 Abbey Way SE

Lacey, WA  98503 (USA)