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Vanderbilt University is pleased to announce that it will host the Sixty-Second Annual Meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies on its campus in Nashville, Tennessee from Thursday March 3 through Sunday March 6, 2016. Lauren Clay and Katherine Crawford will serve as co-presidents of the society for 2016 and will organize the conference.In honor of Nashville’s identity as “Music City,” the conference theme will be “Spectacle and Society.” Proposals related to the theme might address music, theater, film, the entertainment industry, and fashion in French history, national culture, and imperial practices. Topics to consider might be the relationship of the media to society and politics; the performance of gender or sexual roles; the relationship between the state, artistic production, and cultural spectacle; protest demonstrations as political and cultural events; and the spectacles of war and empire. The Friday luncheon will feature Alice Conklin and Allan Greer discussing “France in the World,” the Plenary Session will be a roundtable devoted to the work of Roger Chartier, with speakers including Robert Darnton, Lynn Hunt, and Colin Jones as well as Professor Chartier himself, and the Saturday evening banquet speaker will be Mary Lou Roberts.The Program Committee welcomes panel proposals on the conference theme as well as panels or papers on all subjects of the history of France, the French Empire, and other Francophone countries, as well as France within a global or transnational framework. We encourage individuals to organize complete panels composed of two or (preferably) three papers, a chair and a commentator, but we will make every effort to combine single papers into coherent panels. The Program Committee is available to help individuals who would like to develop panels that cut across traditional periodizations but who need assistance in making connections to scholars outside their specialization. Roundtables and other formats will also be considered. In conjunction with H-France and the society’s Technology Committee, we also welcome proposals for sessions to be webcast on topics of broad interest.Sessions will be held on the Vanderbilt University campus and the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel, a luxurious 4-star hotel, where SFHS has a special conference rate of $179 per night (with the option to have up to four people/room). As a center of the American music industry, Nashville boasts the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the Ryman Auditorium, the Grand Ole Opry, and historic Music Row. Other live music venues include the Station Inn and the Bluebird Cafe. Among the sites of particular historical interest are President Andrew Jackson's home, the Hermitage, the historic Belle Meade Plantation, and the Belmont Mansion.Please do not send proposals for papers that have already been presented or published or that are scheduled for presentation elsewhere. All conference participants must be members of the Society for French Historical Studies in good standing at the time of the conference. Proposals (in English or French) must be submitted in digital format to the conference website: http://vanderbi.lt/sfhr. For any additional information or clarification, please email SFHS2016@vanderbilt.edu.The proposal deadline is 1 September 2015.