By the end of the nineteenth century, the morphine addict was a familiar visual and literary motif, created in response to the increasing social and medical problem of morphine addiction in France. My research analyses depictions of morphine use in fin-de-siècle French visual culture, examining the hypervisibility of the female body and the socio-political, artistic and medical implications of this hypervisibility. The research considers the visual culture of morphinomanie (morphine-mania) as an interdisciplinary, multi-functional device. It explores wider debates on medicine, femininity, masculinity, domesticity, class and opiate trading, reframing the significance of this widely neglected aspect of French society.
Research interests
- Mass culture in late nineteenth-century France
- Concepts of visual culture
- Fin-de-siècle femininity and women’s experiences in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France
- Consumerism and its representations in art
- Medical history and its visual teaching aids
- Concepts of addictions and visual depictions