Prof. Weingarden Presents Paper on Baudelaire and Brain Science at French Studies Conference

Professor Lauren S. Weingarden presented a paper, “Naturalizing Modernity/Modernizing Nature: Baudelaire’s Embodied Neural Aesthetics,” at the 42nd Annual Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium (NCSF), held at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Prof. Weingarden addressed the conference theme “La Terre” by examining how Baudelaire’s encounters with nature were filtered through his knowledge of the physiology of the nervous system. In doing so, she used Baudelaire’s prose poem “The Artist’s Confiteor” (1862) to argue that the poet’s familiarity with neurology not only shaped his poetic-sensory response to nature but also his embodied art criticism of landscape painting.