International Workshop for PhD Students and Early Career Researchers on „Love’s Matter – The Material Culture and Art of Affection, c. 1700-1900“, organised by Lara Pittelout (Neuchâtel) and Henriette Marsden (Cambridge) at the Université de Neuchâtel and Maison Borel on 12-13 November 2026.
From the early 18th century onwards, the material qualities of love were explored as a cultural technique and an artistic practice transformed by the onset of modernity. Young lovers courted their sweethearts by sending mass-produced valentine cards, friends filled each other’s albums with carte de visite photographs and industrially made paper scraps, husbands romanced their wives through the gifting of colonial luxuries, and sisters used embroidery patterns circulated through the periodical press to stitch presents with and for one another. Evidently, love, as a practice of affection between family members, romantic partners and friends, became deeply embroiled in the material conditions of global trade, colonial expansion, nation-building, and the advance of industrialised commerce.
This workshop will explore how the affective properties of love shaped and were shaped by the material conditions of modernity from the early 18th to the end of the 19th century. We invite papers by doctoral students and early career researchers that examine this diversity of love in the breadth of its aesthetic functioning as material culture, as art, and as cultural performance. The workshop also encourages comparative and cross-cultural perspectives, looking beyond Western Europe to consider how love was materially performed in the modern contexts of empire, global trade, and colonialism. The workshop is committed to fostering an open discussion between researchers at any stage of their project.
Please send a 300-word abstract in English for 20 minutes presentations as well as a 100-word CV to Henriette Marsden (hm772@cam.ac.uk) and Lara Pitteloud (lara.pitteloud@unine.ch) by the 20th of March 2026.
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