American Studies Department; Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Spending Time with/in the Nineteenth Century:An Interdsciplinary Conference.
Frankfurt/Main, 03.02.2020-04.02.2020.
Conference Program
Abstract

The nineteenth century holds an important cultural, social, and economic innovation, which we in the twenty-first century take for granted, but which is slipping through our hands: leisure time. In times of the increasing dilution of the boundaries between work and leisure, the beginnings of mass society and the understanding of leisure time and hobbies are all the more important to explore. From these considerations, conclusions can be drawn about the emerging consumer society in Europe and the United States as well as changes in social relations and the public/private sphere.

This interdisciplinary conference, Spending Time With/In the Nineteenth Century, brings together young scholars from various fields of the humanities to explore the social, political, and aesthetic implications of the emergence of leisure time in the nineteenth century. We invite them to also think about how we, as scholars, spend time in the nineteenth century and reflect about the possibilities that (digital) scholarship on the century facilitates.