On 15 & 16 January of 2026, an international workshop will be organised in Ghent (Belgium) on cultures of consumption, focusing on the relation between products, desire and imagination in Europe from 1500-1800.

In our contemporary world, consumers are bombarded daily with advertisements to buy products. Most advertisements in modern media are not limited to the utility of the product as their main selling point.  They instead sell the fantasy that the consumer’s life is elevated by buying the advertised product. Consumption cannot solely be defined as the opposite of production, and is instead an autonomous force, intrinsically tied to the imagination and identity of the consumer. How consumerism and consumer culture emerged has been a fruitful topic of debate in recent scholarship on the rise of consumer society in Europe. Scholars like David Graeber have challenged the definition of consumption as the opposing force to production, while steering towards a more critical analysis of consumption that also involves the link between consumption and cultural imagination.

In the critical analysis of the origins of consumption and consumer culture, such as Graeber’s, much scholarly attention has been paid to early modernity. In early usages of the word in French and English starting from the fourteenth century consumption was linked to disease and the wasting of material goods. The desires and fears of early modern people concerning consumption and objects of desire were explored and portrayed in art, theatre and science. These desires and anxieties were rooted in class, gender and colonial relations. ‘Cultures of consumption’ therefore is defined broadly within this workshop. We are particularly focused, however, on the aspect of cultural imagination and the ways in which this imagination engages with the desire to purchase and possess products.

We invite researchers to reflect on this dimension of imagination and its interaction with the affective aspects of consumption from a variety of media perspectives. This may include insights drawn from the study of literature, theatre, visual art, and early examples of advertising. A range of academic disciplines can be brought to bear on this topic, including cultural history, history of emotions/affect studies, theatre studies, socio-economic history, philosophy, and material studies. This international workshop at Ghent University aims to bring the many divergent approaches to the history of consumption and desire together.

We welcome submissions for a presentation of papers that will be distributed to participants beforehand as a (very) short paper of about 1,000 words to stimulate engaging feedback during the workshop (deadline 15 December, 2025). Paper Proposals of about 300 words can be submitted before 15 September, 2025. Please send the proposals to estel.vandenberg(at)ugent.be You will be notified by 1 November whether your proposal has been accepted.

 Topics that are of interest to our workshop include but are not limited to:

• Consumption in the theatrical imagination
• Consumption in early modern literature
• Consumption in early modern art
• Consumption, the body and desire
• Consumption and disease in the cultural imagination
• Consumption, food and sexuality in the cultural imagination
• Desire, products and affective economy

Keynote speakers

Prof. Dr. Inger Leemans, about ‘The Sweet Smell of Desire: How the Dutch Created an Affective Economy for Fragrance Consumption’

Professor Inger Leemans is Chair of Cultural History at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and PI of NL-Lab, a research group on Dutch Culture and Identity at the Humanities Cluster of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). Her research focusses on early modern cultural history, the history of emotions and the senses, cultural economy, history of knowledge and digital humanities. She has published about the history of pornography, (radical) Enlightenment, cultural infrastructure, stock markets and financial crises. Her text book on eighteenth-century literature Worm en donder. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur 1700-1800 (co-author Gert-Jan Johannes) was hailed in the press as ‘a masterpiece’. Inger Leemans was the coordinator of the Odeuropa project, olfactory heritage and sensory mining, She furthermore coordinated projects on the cultural history of finance, on early modern visual culture and the culture of violence, and collaborated in various digital humanities projects (e.g. Clariah+, Golden Agents).

Prof. Dr. Daniel Fulda, about ‘Delights beyond Virtue: Consumer Ethics in the German Enlightenment’s Comedy’

 Professor Daniel Fulda, Chair of Modern German Literature at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, specialises in the visual dimensions of Enlightenment thought. His recent research reframes Enlightenment beyond texts, examining how images shaped its ideals—tracing from pamphlet frontispieces and satirical prints to maps and room interiors. A distinguished Alfried Krupp Senior Fellow (April–September 2024), he developed the project “What is Enlightenment? Let’s look at its (self‑)images”, culminating in a monograph unpacking how visual media preceded and shaped Enlightenment discourse. An influential publication is Schauspiele des Geldes (2005), where he analyses the aesthetics, narratives, and ideological functions of money on the early modern stage—demonstrating how economic themes were dramatized and moralised in Enlightenment theatre. Professor Fulda is the principal investigator in the DFG-funded Research Training Group “Politics of the Enlightenment” at Halle, Leipzig, and Gotha, exploring historical and political dimensions of Enlightenment thought, and in the Cluster of Excellence “Practices and Dynamics of Social Imagining” at the University of Jena. His work advances a media‑comparative historiography, bridging eighteenth‑century visuality with contemporary visual cultures.

The workshop is organised by the researchers of the FWO-project Displays of desire. Imagineering consumption in comedies of the Low Countries (1650-1725). This project is a cooperation between Ghent University and the Uiversité Libre de Bruxelles. It will be hosted by the alliance research group VUB-UGent: THALIA – Interplay of Theatre, Literature & Media in Performance – and GEMS, Group for Early Modern Studies at Ghent University.