29
October
2007
To mark the centenary of Simone de Beauvoir’s birth
*‘The Legacies of Simone de Beauvoir’*
University of Northumbria
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
13th -15th June 2008
Keynote Speakers: Professor Elizabeth Fallaize, Oxford University, UK and Sonia Kruks, Danforth Professor of Politics, Oberlin College, USA.
CALL FOR PAPERS
This international conference aims to re-evaluate Simone de Beauvoir’s contribution to 20th century fiction, autobiography, philosophy and politics. Her influence as a major intellectual figure in the history of post-war France will be considered. The conference will assess Beauvoir’s legacies in terms of her influence on subsequent generations of writers and critics, both in France and internationally. Questions of reception, dissemination and translation of Beauvoir’s oeuvre will also be addressed, particularly in the light of recent publications. It is hoped that this focus on Beauvoir’s legacies will be of interest not only to Beauvoir scholars but also to those working in Gender Studies, Philosophy, 20th Century French fiction and life writing.
Proposals are invited for papers lasting twenty minutes in French or English. Please send abstracts, in English or French, of not more than 350 words, to the conference organisers, Dr Alison Holland (alison.holland@northumbria.ac.uk) and Dr Susan Bainbrigge (susan.bainbrigge@ed.ac.uk), by Monday 19th November 2007.
New extended deadline: end January 2008.
Posted: Calls for Papers
25
October
2007
Gisèle Pineau, renowned Guadeloupean novelist and writer of children’s fiction, will read from her work and answer questions from the audience at a special event hosted by the School of Modern Languages of the University of St Andrews on 16 November. The reading will take place in the Buchanan Building, Union Street, St Andrews, at 2.00pm. Admission is free and all are welcome. This event will be conducted in French and will be suitable for members of the public, senior school pupils and Undergraduates as well as researchers and University staff.
For directions and further information please contact Dr David Evans, dee3@st-andrews.ac.uk or Dr Elodie Laügt, el40@st-andrews.ac.uk
Mme Pineau will also be the guest of honour at this year’s Burn French Studies Conference, 16 - 18 November. Further details about the conference are available from Dr David Evans, dee3@st-andrews.ac.uk or Dr Elodie Laügt, el40@st-andrews.ac.uk
Posted: Events
25
October
2007
The sixth annual meeting of Women in French in Scotland (WIFIS) took place on 13 October 2007 at the Glasgow Women’s Library (www.womenslibrary.org.uk), the only women’s library in Scotland. The conference, organized by Joy Charnley and Caroline Verdier (Strathclyde), welcomed participants from throughout Britain as well as from the universities of Ottawa and British Columbia. Conference panels took up the Québécois writer Hélène Monette, chick media, and women’s letter writing, including as yet unpublished letters written to Lucie Dreyfus at the height of the Dreyfus Affair, the letters of nineteenth-century aristocratic girls, and the letters of Flora Tristan. At the WIFIS round table, Professors Lorna Milne (St Andrews), Siân Reynolds (Stirling), and Mary Orr (Southampton) discussed career strategies and pitfalls specific to the experience of women in higher education. The WIFIS plenary was given by Thérèse Moreau (Lausanne), who asked, ‘Les femmes sont-elles solubles dans la démocratie française?’ The organizers remain grateful for financial support to the University of
Strathclyde and the Alliance Française de Glasgow. Next year’s meeting, broadly themed around ‘Women’s History/ L’Histoire des femmes’ will take place in Glasgow on 18 October and will welcome historians from Marseilles as part of the Glasgow/Marseilles Twin Towns Programme. For more information, please visit the WIFIS blog at http://wifis.edublogs.org. (Report by Amy Wygant, Glasgow).
Posted: Information
25
October
2007
The WIFIS 2007 conference was a great success and we would like to thank everyone for their enthusiastic participation and enlightening contributions. Special thanks to the Glasgow Women’s Library Team for their behind-the-scenes work, fantastic support on the day and documentation of the event…Compromising pictures will soon be posted on the blog. If you wish to get a copy of the pictures taken on the day, e-mail me: caroline.verdier@strath.ac.uk
Thanks again to everyone
Vive WIFIS!
Caroline & Joy
Posted: Uncategorized
8
October
2007
Medea, Magic, and Modernity in France. Stages and Histories, 1553-1797
Amy Wygant
Published by Ashgate Publishing
www.ashgate.com
217 pages, hardback, $99.95/ £50.00
ISBN 978-0-7546-5924-2
Synopsis: This study shows how the glamour of the historical witch, a spell she cast, was set on course, over a span of almost three hundred years, to become a generally broadcast glamour of appearance. The antique heroine Medea, revived on the stage of modernity by La Péruse, Corneille, and the operatic composer Cherubini, is the vehicle of this development.
Psychoanalytic thought about the behaviour of casual groups constituted by ephemeral events is brought to bear on the question of “what happened” when the early modern witch was staged. But the illusion generated by the witch is fundamentally demonic and only secondarily theatrical, and this study defines the link between the witch and the stage with an analysis of the little-read early demonology treatises of the two major theatrical theorists of the French seventeenth-century stage.
The study concludes with an analysis of Diderot’s claim that the historical process itself is magical, and with the moment in Revolutionary France when the slight and fragile body of the golden-throated singer, Julie-Angélique Scio, became a Medea for modernity.
Contents:
Introduction: Stages and Histories
1. Glamour and its Discontents
2. Medean Renaissance
3. Of Glammatology
4. The Question of Illusion
5. Narcissus, and the Devils of Loudun
6. The Magic of Modernity
Postscript
Bibliography
Index
Posted: Publications
