Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
Use the "Filter by Track or Type of Session" or "Filter by Session Topic" dropdown to limit results by type. Some of the sessions are also color-coded: purple indicates performances, grey indicates paper forums, and orange indicates sessions which have been organized by one of the regional associations of IMS (ARLAC or IMSEA). (Sessions which are both IMS sessions and performances are only colored orange.)
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Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:58:01am EDT
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Daily Overview |
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Gendered Bodies on Stage Session Chair: Jessica Payette | |
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The Singing Body at Work: Health and Labor among Female Singers at the Paris Opéra (1830–1870) EHESS-Centre Georg Simmel/Lyon 3, Université Jean Moulin-IHRIM, This paper examines health as a structuring factor in the professional lives of female singers at the Paris Opéra between 1830 and 1870. Treating operatic performance as labor in a legal and institutional sense, it investigates how bodily and mentality alterations—from temporary hoarseness to chronic illness—shaped artistic production, income, and employment stability. While recent works has significantly advanced the study of operatic careers (MONNIER – 2012 ; GIROD – 2015 ; WHITE – 2018), questions of health have often been relegated to anecdote or retrospective diagnosis. We argue instead that health functioned as a central concern at the intersection of financial, administrative, and aesthetic considerations, with the power both to direct and to derail a singer’s career. Our presentation will focus on female singers at the Paris Opera in the 19th century, based on a systematic examination of personnel files from 1830 to 1870. This serial approach, encompassing performers of different ranks—from principal singers to choristers—moves beyond exceptional or dramatic cases to illuminate everyday experiences of impeded labor. It demonstrates how illness-related absences, extended leave, and fines for missed performances materially affected careers. It also highlights situations specific to female performers, particularly pregnancy and menstruation. Under the watchful eye of healthcare professionals, whose power only increased in the 19th century, women's bodies were scrutinized and examined through a lens of representations influenced as much by scientificity as by romantic fantasies (DASEN-MOULINIER-BROGI-HANAFI-CHAPERON – 2022). The development of an internal medical service within the institution reflects the growing medicalization of artistic labor. Drawing on methods from the history of patients (RIEDER – 2010 ; PILLOUD – 2013), this study foregrounds the agency of singers in negotiating health-related constraints: interactions with administrators, the strategic use of medical certificates, and adjustments to repertoire or performance schedules. Rather than portraying these artists merely as fragile bodies subjected to medical authority, the archival record reveals their agency within a context of professional precarity. By bringing together labor history, the history of health, and the history of occupational medicine, this paper reconceptualizes the Paris Opéra as a site where medical norms, gendered assumptions, and the material conditions of operatic production were continuously renegotiated. | |