Reception (6 pm) Mairie du 5e arrondissement 21 place du Panthéon, 75005 Paris
DAY 2 (TUESDAY, JUNE 28th)
“Melville’s Energies” Exhibition and Cocktail (6 pm) Hall des Grands Moulins 16 rue Marguerite Duras, 75013 Paris
DAY 3 (WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29th)
Tours
Panthéon (meet there at 3.15 pm) Place du Panthéon, 75005 Paris
Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac (meet there at 2.45 pm for “Tattoos,” 3.25 pm for “Mixes”) 37 Quai Branly, 75007 Paris
Musée de Cluny (meet there at 3.30 pm) 28 rue du Sommerard, 75005 Paris
DAY 4 (THUSRDAY, JUNE 30th)
Reception and Concert (6 pm) Fondation des États-Unis Cité Internationale Universitaire 15 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
Monday June 27
Reception at Mairie du Ve arrondissement
On our first evening, we will gather at the neoclassical Mairie du Ve arrondissement, place du Pantheon. Opening remarks will be delivered by Marie-Christine Lemardeley, special advisor to the mayor of Paris in charge of higher education, student life and research, former President of Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, and former Professor of American Literature at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle.
Tuesday June 28
“Melville’s Energies” Exhibition and Cocktail at Université Paris Cité
This exhibition, organized with the support of the Cultural Program Office of Université Paris Cité, will feature works by Jos Sances, Peter Martin & David Rosenthal, and Matthew Cumbie & Tom Truss. The cocktail will open with a public reading by John Bryant, entitled “Melville, Nuku Hiva, and the Tricolore”
[This event will be open to the public, so feel free to bring along your partners and friends]
Wednesday June 30
Lunch for early-career professionals at Université Paris Cité
We invite new members, junior faculty, post-docs, graduate students, early-career independent scholars, and those in alt-ac careers to learn more about opportunities in Melville studies and within the Melville Society. Join us for lunch and meet other conference participants.
Museum Tours
Participants (presenters only) can choose which tour they would like to attend. Due to limited capacity for each tour, we will ask participants to let us know their preferences in advance and will try our best to accommodate them on a first come, first served basis.
Melville walked by the Panthéon in 1849 while it was undergoing repairs, hence the mistaken comment that appears in his Journal: “Still building.” Completed in 1789, it is a grandiose building. Jacques-Germain Soufflot’s ambition was to outdo the churches of St. Peter's in Rome and St. Paul’s in London. The monumental peristyle was inspired by the Pantheon commissioned by Agrippa in Rome. With this tour, you’ll be able to visit the crypt and the tombs of eminent French personalities who shaped France's national identity. A permanent exhibition gives details about the lives and works of those who are buried here, from Voltaire, Rousseau, and Victor Hugo, to Alexandre Dumas and Joséphine Baker. You will also be able to observe Foucault’s pendulum—a device that demonstrated the Earth's rotation—which was first installed in 1851, then removed and reinstalled in 1995.
Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac (Meet there at 2.45 pm for the "Tattoos" tour, at 3.25 pm for the "Mixes" tour)
Inaugurated in 2006, the musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac contains more than 370,000 objects, 700,000 iconographical pieces and more than 200,000 reference works, which makes it one of the richest European public institutions dedicated to the study, preservation and promotion of non-European arts and civilizations. Two tours will be offered, for you to choose. One will focus on tattoos and will reveal the diversity of bodily transformations and the purposes of these practices in different cultures through selected examples from Oceania, Asia, Africa and the Americas. The other one will focus on mixes and the mixing of objects, which bears witness to different cultures clashing, trading and interacting with one another.
Melville visited the Hôtel de Cluny in 1849, and loved it: “The house is just the house I should like to live in. Glorious old cabinets — ebony, ivory carving. — Beautiful chapel. Tapestry, old keys. Leda & the Swan. Descended into the vaults of the old Roman palace of Thermis. Baths &c.” The Hôtel de Cluny, its winding stair, and the Roman baths, feature prominently in Moby-Dick as a crucial metaphor for Ahab’s inner mysteries in Chapter 41. The Hôtel de Cluny has now become the Musée de Cluny, a museum dedicated to the arts of the Middle Ages, recently reopened after extensive renovation. The tour will take you through the permanent collection and to the Roman baths mentioned in Melville’s Journal and Moby-Dick.
Thursday June 30
Closing reception and Concert at Fondation des États-Unis
We will celebrate the conclusion of the conference with a reception and concert in the Art-Déco Grand Salon of the Fondation des États-Unis. The Fondation des États-Unis is a cultural center serving Franco-American cultures since 1930. It is part of the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris.