Building the Belle Époque

This panel pursues new art and architectural histories of the so-called Belle Époque (c.1870-1914) at the nexus of construction and material culture. Retrospectively identified as a halcyon age of beauty and prosperity, enjoyed by a rising global bourgeoise in imperial metropoles like Paris, the Belle Époque bore witness to sweeping, and often violent, planetary change. A growing body of literature by scholars of Global History demonstrates how the period’s waves of settler colonialism, mass migration, environmental degradation, and infrastructural expansion remade cities, landscapes, nation-states at unprecedented scales. But how can we revisit the art and architecture of this pivotal epoch without re-centering its hegemonies?

We invite papers that consider how the Belle Époque’s global circulations were made possible by local practices of material production. Spanning diverse geographies and imperial contexts, case studies might include construction sites, bronze foundries, textile factories, rubber plantations, or jute mills—each contributing, in different ways, to the Belle Époque’s mythic splendor. Drawing on perspectives from the “material turn,” we welcome approaches that deflate the period’s narratives of universal progress by instead highlighting the situated frictions, failures, and local resistances that emerged within its global networks. Moreover, taking inspiration from Deborah Silverman’s reappraisal of the Belgian Art Nouveau, contributions might destabilize the era’s iconic aesthetic forms by foregrounding “unseen” forms of labor, technical know-how, and capital involved in the production of art, decorative arts, architecture, urbanism.