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panels took up the Québécois writer Hélène Monette, chick media, and women’s letter writing, including as yet unpublished letters written to Lucie Dreyfus at the height of the Dreyfus Affair, the letters of nineteenth-century aristocratic girls, and the letters of Flora Tristan.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).
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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
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25
October
2007
Here is the latest version of the programme wifis-2007-programme-final.doc 
Posted under WIFIS 2007
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 under Publications
11
September
2007
Click on the following link to access general information about the forthcoming conference: General info
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3
August
2007
Here is the link to access the provisional programme. wifis-2007-programme-provisoire.doc
Posted under WIFIS 2007
27
June
2007
The registration form for the 2007 conference is available to download from the following link: wifis-2007-registration-form.doc
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27
June
2007
Here is the link to the poster for the 2007 conference: wifis-poster.jpg. It has been designed especially for the occasion by Kathryn Pender. You can view more of her great work at www.kpender.com
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8
June
2007
The 2007 WIFIS conference will be held at the Glasgow Women’s Library, 2nd floor, 81 Parnie Street, Glasgow.
Information on how to get there are available from the Glasgow Women’s Library site. Click on the link on the right to access the website directly.
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