Histoire de la pilosité faciale

Framing the Face. New perspectives on the history of facial hair

Conference

Saturday 28th November,

Friends Meeting House, Euston Road, London NW1

Over the past five centuries, facial hair has been central to debates about masculinity. Over time, changing views of masculinity, self-fashioning, the body, gender, sexuality and culture have all strongly influenced men’s decisions to wear, or not wear, facial hair. For British Tudor men, beards were a symbol of sexual maturity and prowess. Throughout the early modern period, debates also raged about the place of facial hair within a humoural medical framework. The eighteenth century, by contrast, saw beards as unrefined and uncouth; clean-shaven faces reflected enlightened values of neatness and elegance, and razors were linked to new technologies. Victorians conceived of facial hair in terms of the natural primacy of men, and new models of hirsute manliness. All manner of other factors from religion to celebrity culture have intervened to shape decisions about facial hair and shaving. 

And yet, despite a recent growth in interest in the subject, we still know little about the significance, context and meanings of beards and moustaches through time, or of its relationship to important factors such as medicine and medical practice, technology and shifting models of masculinity. To promote research on this issue we will be hosting a one-day workshop in London. 

For further information please contact the organisers: Dr Alun Withey, University of Exeter

A.Withey@exeter.ac.ukDr Jennifer Evans, University of Hertfordshire J.evans5@herts.ac.uk

9:30-10:00 Registration

10:00-11:30 Panel One: Representations of Facial Hair in Popular Culture/Media

Ellie Rycroft Facial Hair and Liminal Masculinities on the Early Modern Stage

Het Phillips The Moustache as Masculinity’s Moral Signifier in Screen Media

Helen Casey Poirot’s Moustache: The cultural language of facial hair in fictional characters.


11:30-12:00 Break


12:00-13:00 Panel Two: Self-fashioning and Identity

Hanna Weibye,  Speaking through his beard: facial hair as self­narrative in the case of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778­1852)

Maria Victoria Alonso Beardless young men? Some notes on the visual representation of masculinity in Nineteenth-century Spanish young artists.

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:30 Panel Three: External influences on facial hair fashion

John Gagné Italian Beards and the Horizons of Violence around 1500

Justin Bengry Consuming Men: Masculinities and Shaving Advertisements

Christopher Oldstone-Moore Title (TBC)

15:30-16:00 Break

16:00-17:00 Plenary
Dr Margaret Pelling ‘The head and front of my offending’: Barbers and self-presentation in early modern England