Fellowship: Institut Français d'Amérique (1/15/11)

The Institut Français d'Amérique announces the annual competition for fellowships to support research in France for Graduate Students and Recent Ph.D. recipients. Up to four $1500 awards are available for maintenance (not travel) during research in France for a period of at least one month in the summer or fall of 2011.



The Fellowships include:
Gilbert Chinard Research Fellowships
Harmon Chadbourn Rorison Fellowship
Edouard Morot-Sir Fellowship in Literature
Candidacy: Final stage of dissertation research, or Ph.D. held no longer than three years before the application deadline on January 15, 2011.
Fields: French studies in the areas of art, economics, history, history of science, linguistics, literature and social sciences.
Application: No application form. Applicants write two pages maximum describing the research project and planned trip (location, length of stay, etc.), and include a curriculum vita. A letter of recommendation from the dissertation director is required for Ph.D. candidates and a letter from a specialist in the field for recent recipients of the Ph.D.
Report: Upon return, the awardee will send a brief report to the Institut Français d'Amérique about the research and the work that was completed in France.
Applications should be sent in hard copy (not e-mail) before January 15, 2011 to:
Dr. Catherine Maley
President, Institut Français d'Amérique
Department of Romance Languages & Literatures
CB# 3170
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3170
For more information about the IFA (formerly the Institut Français de Washington) and previous fellowship winners, please visit the website

Dépêche de Montpellier: Liz Panting

At the end of a really busy semester, MA student Liz Panting found some time to write us from Montpellier. She's spending the year on one our department's Fellowships as a lectrice at UPV...

I have survived my first semester teaching at the Université Paul Valéry in Montpellier, and it has been incredible. I taught 12 classes this past semester, including classes on English as a foreign language, US history, and American politics. I especially had fun teaching a class on US history from 1945-present, because in Canada we study American history briefly but not in any depth, so I had to do some serious studying every week before I felt confident enough to stand in front of my class and teach for an hour! Adapting to the French education system (as well as to the idea of teaching content-based classes) has also been a challenge, but I have had a bit of help there; I am lucky enough to be lodging with a woman who works training high school teachers. Through her, I have attended a couple of seminars on teaching foreign languages, including one seminar on teaching language to large groups -- quite useful here, where I teach English to groups of 45 students!

Outside of class time, I have been spending a few hours a week in the library, chipping away at the MA reading list. I have also been able to explore a fair bit of the south of France, and have taken it upon myself to include wine as one of my research interests. Aside from the owner of my neighbourhood wine store and the man who keeps me in baguettes, I have made some other friends who are wonderfully patient with me when I keep asking them to repeat themselves. I would like to think that my French is improving noticeably, but I suppose time will tell!

Thanks for writing, Liz!  We hope next semester is free of strikes and other strife.  Keep in touch...

Dépêche de Paris: Sylvie Ngilla interviews Claire Denis (with a photo to prove it!)

Doctoral candidate Sylvie Ngilla was in Paris last month and interviewed filmmaker Claire Denis...

About the experience of interviewing the director of an incredible diversity of films -- including  the classic Chocolat (1988) inspired by her upbringing in Africa, the vampire film Trouble Every Day (2001), the philosophical film L'Intrus (2004) or more recently, in a return to Africa, White Material (2009) --  Sylvie says...

Claire Denis is among the best independent French filmmakers for me and I was thrilled to get this interview. She is very passionate, with the finest knowledge of African cultures. I was very impressed.

The interview is for a forthcoming publication on "Culture(s) Noire(s) en France?" in Africultures that collects articles and interviews from various artists and scholars about the significance of "Black cultures" in France. Sylvie's interview is informed by her research for her dissertation on the concept of chaos in contemporary African avant-garde theater.  By the way, you can check out more of Sylvie's work at Africultures here...

Fellowship: Middlebury College Dissertation Fellows (1/21/11)

Middlebury College Dissertation Fellowship ($30,000, renewable up to two years)

As part of Middlebury's
commitment to promote faculty and student diversity, this one-year
fellowship, which may be extended to a second year, provides support to
doctoral candidates to complete dissertations in any discipline, to
cultivate effective teaching practices, and to become familiar with the
academic community offered by a liberal arts college. The college seeks
graduate students with a clear commitment and ability to advance
educational diversity, either through the nature of their scholarly
work, or through their ability to model success in fields where their
own backgrounds and experiences may be underrepresented. The College
especially welcomes teacher-scholars from underrepresented groups whose
work also engages with issues of diversity.

The program offers affiliation with Middlebury College from September
through August. As members of the Middlebury community, fellows will
receive teaching and research mentorship from faculty committed to
excellence in undergraduate education.

Eligibility: This one-to-two-year long fellowship will be
awarded to applicants who are promising scholars in areas that may not
be well represented in Middlebury's current curriculum, and who have a
strong interest in issues of diversity.

Applicants will be selected on the basis of some or all of the
following criteria: scholarly work that reflects innovative research;
clear commitment and ability to advance educational diversity, either
through the nature of scholarly work, or through the ability to model
success in fields where personal backgrounds and experiences may be
underrepresented; potential for serving as an advocate and mentor for
undergraduate students.

Applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents who intend to
pursue a professorial career in the U.S. Ph.D. candidates must have
completed all doctoral work except the dissertation by the end of the
current academic year. MFA candidates must be recent recipients of the
degree; only those with degrees granted in 2010, or to be granted in
2011, are eligible to apply. Fellows will be appointed by the Dean of
the Faculty upon the recommendation of a faculty selection committee in
consultation with appropriate departments.

Terms:
The annual stipend for the position is $30,000. The College will also
provide health and dental benefits, academic support including office
space and computer and library privileges, and an allowance of up to
$4,000 for research-related expenses. As part of the compensation, the
College will provide housing near the campus.

During their residence at Middlebury, the Fellows will be hosted by an
appropriate department or program, and will be expected to teach one
one-semester course, normally in the fall semester. One or more
Middlebury faculty members will serve as formal mentors to the Fellow.
The Fellow also will give at least one campus-wide presentation, formal
or informal, during each term. Fellows will be expected to participate
in the broader the intellectual life of Middlebury, which includes
regular attendance at events that can be determined in collaboration
with department colleagues and mentors. Fellows may apply to extend
their fellowships to a second year.

For further information and application details, please visit
http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/administration/employment/diss_fellows.

Applications are due by January 21, 2011. Inquiries should be sent to Susan Burch at dfp@middlebury.edu.

Middlebury College is an Equal Opportunity Employer
committed to recruiting a diverse faculty to complement its increasingly
diverse student body.

A Letter from FRIT Faculty

December 8, 2010

The faculty of the Department of French and Italian wish to express our unwavering support of the University Administration, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and the Center's director Bruno Chaouat, in light of the recent lawsuit filed against them.

We applaud the University's defense of its core mission: to promote academic freedom, foster sound research practices, and provide students and our community with informational resources that have been vetted to academic standards. We especially applaud our colleague Professor Chaouat for renewing the Center's commitment to address the issue of Genocide and Holocaust denial all over the world.
Prof. Eileen Sivert, Chair
Prof. Dan Brewer
Prof. Susanna Ferlito
Prof. Judith Preckshot
Prof. Mary Franklin-Brown
Prof. Christophe Wall-Romana
Prof. Hakim Abderrezak
Prof. Mária Brewer
Prof. Betsy Kerr
Prof. Ron Akehurst, JD
Prof. Susan Noakes
Prof. Juliette Cherbuliez

Dépêche de Paris: On sabbatical with Professor Dan Brewer

Dan Brewer takes time out of his sabbatical to write...

It's the season of dispatches back to the States getting published, so here's one from Paris. It's not in the grand style of Janet Flanner's or Adam Gopnick's gem-like letters in the New Yorker. Nor will Julian Assange be much interested in it. But it carries a sense of this dix-huitiémiste's pleasure, wonderment, and delight at having spent the fall in the City of Light while on sabbatical....

Of course, all has not been rosy in Paris of late.
Tectonic forces (left vs right, young vs. older, blue collar vs white
collar, men vs. women) collided over retirement reforms this fall, as
politicians and TV commentators debated (endlessly) what the appropriate
role of the state should be as France's population ages. Of course,
the bill for France's remarkable social programs is coming due, and the
question is how to pay for it. Similar questions to those in the US,
and very different answers. One popular response was to head for the
street and the political theatre of demonstrations. Mildly irritating
when the metro was more crowded than usual and the buses were late, but a
fascinating cultural encounter.

A number of films out this fall
investigate other historical encounters with difference, which of course
is not a new topic for French writers and filmmakers. Xavier
Beauvois's poignant Des hommes et des dieux explores the tragic assassination of the monks of the Tibéhirine monastery in Algeria in 1996. In Hors-la-loi,
Rachid Bouchareb, who also directed Indigènes, follows the lives of
three brothers who leave Algeria for France after WWII, each via
different paths and each representing another strand in the complex
fabric that has linked these two countries for centuries. In his
troubling and provocative Vénus noire,
Abdellatif Kechiche recounts the story of Saartjie Baartman, the
so-called "Hottentot Venus," whom Georges Cuvier in 1817 viewed as the
proof of his theories of race and human development.

Besides
spending time before the flickering screen (the big one, not that of my
laptop), I've recently become a denizen in what one colleague calls the
"steely bowels" of the BNF, the Bibliothèque nationale de France,
working on a book called Partial Recall. The goal is to tease out more
of the connections between the French eighteenth century and the
present (or the eighteenth century the present imagines). Last month I
gave a presentation at a CNRS (Centre national de la recherche
scientifique) seminar, entitled "(Mé)connaissance historique et savoir
historien au dix-huitième siècle." I'm working on a spring-time
lecture on "influence," too, trying to decide just how we text and image
folks think about that knotty topic. And a piece prompted by the
installation of an "eighteenth-century room" at the Minneapolis
Institute of Art just came out: "(Re)Constructing an Eighteenth-Century
Interior: The Value of Interiority on Display," in Architectural Space in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Constructing Identities and Interiors

It's snowing outside today, as the weather prepares me for the impending return to the upper Midwest.

End of dépêche de Paris.

Thanks for writing, Dan!

CFP: The Idea of France / L'Idée de la France (11/10-12/2011) due 1/10/2011

CALL FOR PAPERS

Interdisciplinary Conference at the University of Pittsburgh

November 10-12, 2011

"The Idea of France" / "L'Idée de la France"

We welcome abstracts from all fields (literature, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, law, religion, art, music, cultural studies, film studies, gender studies, etc.) that treat the question of the idea of France or Frenchness in any time period from the middle ages to the twenty-first century. Papers may be delivered in English or French.

Tentative keynote speakers include David Bell (History, Princeton), Olivier Dutheillet de Lamothe (Conseiller d'Etat, Membre honoraire du Conseil constitutionnel), Lawrence Kritzman (Cultural Theory, Dartmouth), Domna Stanton (Literature/Women's Studies, CUNY), and Ezra Suleiman (Political Science, Princeton).

Please send 150-250 word abstracts (English or French) to idfr@pitt.edu.

Due date: January 10, 2011.

For further information, contact Todd Reeser, reeser@pitt.edu, conference coordinator.

Dépêche de Carlisle, PA: Benjamin Ngong (PhD, 2007)

Benjamin Ngong took a few minutes to write us from Dickinson College, where he's an Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies and Contributing Faculty to Africana Studies. Of academic life, he writes:

Life as an Assistant Professor on tenure track is not easy, but I'm trying to make the best out of it.

In fact, it turns out he's been doing quite well...

He's been traveling extensively, presenting papers and chairing
sessions at academic conferences in Atlanta, Alburquerque, and Montréal.
One title that caught my eye was a presentation on "Intertextualité,
interdiscursivité et intermédialité: le cas de Bleu Blanc Rouge d'Alain
Mabanckou." He also proposed, negotiated, and developed a new
partnership between Dickinson College and the Catholic University of Central Africa, Yaoundé, Cameroon, and has led a study-abroad program to Yaoundé. Could you send us photos, Benjamin?!

In between working on articles about Ahmadou Kourouma and Eduard Glissant, he's just had an article accepted for publication in Archipélies,
entitled "Le sang du volcan de Marie-Reine de Jaham ou la nostalgie du "
'paradis perdu.' " We look forward to reading you, Prof. Ngong!

Dépêche de Nolte: Greta Bliss, IDF Fellow at the IAS

Klaeber Court, our temporary home during Folwell's remodel, is indeed far far away from Nolte Hall. Thus I was delighted to get an email from Greta Bliss detailing some of her activities as an Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. She gave her presentation to colleagues on her dissertation project, (entitled "Untranslating the Maghreb: Reckoning with Gender in Literature and Film from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia") and got useful feedback from fellows in multiple social science and humanities disciplines, which she put to use for a paper she gave last month at the Middle Eastern Studies Conference in San Diego. There she presented on the films A Door to the Sky by Farida Benlyazid and Bedwin Hacker by Nadia El Fani.

She writes:

IAS is a great environment in which to push my working questions further while being "haunted" (in a good way) by an array of methodological approaches and disciplinary concerns. Colleagues doing inspiring work in fields from Geography to Performance Studies have asked strange and stimulating questions, helping me think more extensively about the contours and content of my project--and where I want to go with it.

Working with questions from the different disciplinary angles she's encountered this semester, she'll be finishing up a dissertation chapter, "Narrative as Fault-Line in Maïssa Bey's Surtout ne te retourne pas (2005)" on which she'll also be presenting a paper at the ACLA conference in Vancouver this coming Spring...

Write us again and tell us how it goes, Greta!

Congratulations! Rachel Gibson wins Urness Award

Congratulations to Rachel Gibson who received the Annual Carol Urness Student Writing Award from the James Ford Bell Library for her essay "Correspondence from Candia: Venetian Trade in Shifting Waters."

Lecture: Goulet, "Derrida Meets the Demon-Baboon," 12/7 4pm

The Department of French and Italian announces a lecture by Andrea Goulet, Associate Professor of French, Department of Romance Languages, University of Pennsylvania.

"Derrida Meets the Demon-Baboon: Leroux's Balaoo and the Paleontological Imaginary of Crime"


Tuesday, December 7
4pm, Nicholson 275

Light refreshments will be served.



In 1911, a year before the first Tarzan installment appeared in America, the popular French daily Le Matin published Gaston Leroux's Baloo, the lurid tale of a murderous ape-man brought to France from the Javanese jungle. My talk reads this story of civilization and savagery within three contexts: 1) the evolutionary debates that followed paleontological discoveries of prehistoric human skulls in Europe; 2) the underground imaginary of nineteenth-century crime fiction in France; and 3) today's field of animal studies, especially Jacques Derrida's The Animal That Therefore I Am.

Dépêche de Williamsburg: Vlad Dima

We had a lovely visit from Vlad Dima (PhD 2010) last week, who's currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the College of William & Mary.

Along with a packed teaching, advising, and service schedule at W&M, Vlad's continued to publish in his area of research, cinematographic sound. Recent articles include Vlad has published on sound issues in Quentin Tarantino's films in "Moviement" (Indicatori sonori in Kill Bill), on Anne Hébert in "Dalhousie French Studies" (Les personnages dans Les Fous de Bassan : la nature de leurs identités). He has two more articles forthcoming in "The Quarterly Review of Film and Video," The Aural Fold and the Sonic Jump-cut: Godard's Baroque Sound, and in "The Journal for Film and Video," Aural Narrative Planes in Djibril-Diop Mambety's Films.

He has also published numerous theatre reviews for Aisle Say, and has contributed to the "Bright Lights Journal" with reviews of A Single Man and Inglourious Basterds.

He is currently working and has submitted articles on Hitchcock, one dealing with the evolution of the murder scene, and the other with connections between Baudelaire's spleen and Hitchcock's Vertigo, as well as a study of the female voice in Seinfeld.

Alumni, send us your news!

Lecture: Mall, "Mercier ou les Lumières au jour le jour" (Macalester, 12/1)

Lecture (in French) by Dr. Laurence Mall

on
Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at
4:45 p.m.
at Macalester College in Humanities 401.

"Louis Sébastien Mercier ou les Lumières au jour le jour"

ABSTRACT: Mercier's sprawling Tableau de Paris (1781-89), a fascinating description of pre-revolutionary Paris, can also be read as a a proto-sociological text. Along with most philosophes Mercier criticizes the Ancien Régime's weak administration and corrupt government, but his interest lies in the very concrete impact this weakness and corruption have on Parisians and their immediate environment. Work and everyday life will be highlighted as two domains where philosophical values, political criticism and sociological insight combine most remarkably.



BIO: Laurence Mall is an associate professor of French at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). She obtained a PhD in French in 1990 from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of two books on Rousseau. Her current research focuses on Louis Sébastien Mercier's Tableau de Paris and Le Nouveau Paris.

NPR Covers SUNY-Albany Closings

Cuts To University's Humanities Program Draw Outcry
by MARGOT ADLER

As a colleague quipped, referring to SUNY-Albany's motto The World Within Reach", "I guess that is a literal expression nowadays, e.g., within arm's length..."

But the question remains, what are we doing, and what are we not doing, to make visible the connections we know should be apprent to our culture?

The Chronicle: "Deficiency in Foreign Language Competency: What is Wrong..."

Among those of us engaged in international education, it is considered a basic premise that, in today's knowledge-based global economy and society, a full command of at least one second language is a core competency that should become mandatory for all graduates of higher-education institutions.

"Deficiency in Foreign Language Competency: What Is Wrong with the U.S. Educational System?" -- November 9, 2010, 2:45 pm

By Francisco Marmolejo

Graduate Seminars in French, Spring 2011

Three seminars will be offered in our department next semester. Some seminars in our department require participation in French, others require reading knowledge of French. See below for details...

French 8270: Literature Out of Bounds in Modern and Contemporary France (Prof. Mária Brewer)

French 8410: Storied Identities: Women Writers in Contemporary Quebec (Prof. Eileen Sivert)

French 8120: The Problem of the Fifteenth Century (Prof. Susan Noakes)

French 8270 Critical Issues: Prose. Literature Out of Bounds in Modern and Contemporary France

Mária Brewer--Th 2:30-5:00pm

The questions of the literary and its boundaries (or lack of them) have undergone dramatic changes in response to historical situations and events as well to the propositions of avant-garde aesthetics and its various forms of experimentation. This course aims to provide the opportunity for discussing selected narrative and critical works that have contributed significantly to resetting the boundaries for an understanding of literature and the socio-symbolic conditions for representation in modernity. Seminar readings and discussions will be organized according to the following topics: 1) The novel and subjectivity in the early 20th Century; 2) What is literature in existentialist thought and action? 3) The New Novel reconsidered; 4) Boundaries of the subject in la societe de fiction. Literary works will be selected from the following: Marcel Proust, Louis-Rene des Forets, Nathalie Sarraute, Samuel Beckett, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon, Georges Perec, Monique Wittig, Marguerite Duras, Amelie Nothomb, Marie Darrieussecq, and Kossi Efoui. (Note: no more than six texts will be selected from the above for common reading, but all of the above as well as the critical theorists below may be chosen as subjects for the presentation and/or the seminar paper.) In conjunction with these works, we will read essays by theorists who have engaged with the notion of literature and its status in history, culture, and critical thought. Selections will be made from writings by the following: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Roman Jakobson, Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes, Fredric Jameson, Helene Cixous, Maurice Blanchot, Paul de Man, and Jacques Ranciere. The course will be conducted in French. If you have a reading knowledge of French, you are welcome to participate in either English or French.

French 8410 Topics in Quebecois Literature: Storied Identities: Women Writers in Contemporary Quebec

Eileen Sivert--Tu 2:30-5:00pm

This course looks at the disproportionate role women writers have played in the transformation of the novel in Quebec. We will touch briefly on the development of the Quebecois novel from the `novel of the land? (which dominated literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Quebec) to contemporary writing. The class, however, will concentrate on more recent novels (and some films) which pose questions about power, authority, language and form. Changes in narrative will be considered in the context of changes in the social order. We will see how, with these writers, there is a shift from a male-centered `novel of the land? to, first, a modern psychological novel, which foregrounds the female and announces and participates in the liberalization of social institutions. At the same time these novels reveal the beginnings of experimentation with form that are so evident in the literature of Quebec today. The writers selected work in different ways to question boundaries or limits imposed by lingering traditions in a changing society. Through novels as well as cultural and theoretical readings, we will analyze the acts of writing and storytelling as means of reconstructing social meaning as well as forming and altering social relations and community in contemporary (that is to say rootless and itinerant) society. The experience of Quebec women writers, moving suddenly from limited access to the published word to near dominance in many literary circles, as well as the radical transformation of their place in modern Quebec society, makes them particularly suitable subjects for this kind of study. They all suggest, through storytelling, a kind of fluid self-determination, teased out in a process of shuttling between a community standpoint and a growing individual perspective, with community chosen and created, constructed through writing and storytelling. Indeed these novels serve as case studies that both test and expose the creative power of narrative on identity. Primary readings will include novels by Gabrielle Roy, Monique LaRue, Anne Hebert, Louise Dupre, Elise Turcotte and possibly Nicole Brossard or Lise Tremblay. Cultural and theoretical readings will be chosen from writings of Sherry Simon, Deborah Parsons, Michel de Certeau, Julia Kristeva, Lori Saint-Martin, Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin. Readings are mostly in French with some in English. Seminar discussions will be in English. A reading knowledge of French is required.

French 8120 Topics in Later Medieval French Literature. The Problem of the Fifteenth Century

Susan Noakes--W 2:30-5:00pm

French literary historiography has long struggled with the literature of the fifteenth century. Perhaps the best-known and most coherent overview of the period and its cultures appears in Johan Huizinga's THE WANING OF THE MIDDLE AGES. The class will work to develop an understanding of this century of literary experimentation and change by studying especially the works of Christine de Pizan, Charles d'Orleans, and Francois Villon. Attention will also be given to THE FARCE OF PIERRE PATHELIN, Rene d'Anjou's LE LIVRE DU CUER D'AMOUR EPRIS, LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI, and Froissart's LA PRISON AMOUREUSE. Important themes will include nostalgia for courtliness, the reaction against courtliness, the representation of gender, and the literary effects of the Hundred Years' War. Some attention will be given to the development of Middle French and to the early history of French poetic forms and their relation to the history of music. Conducted in French.

Frieda Ekotto Lecture 11/19, 3-5pm, 115 Nicholson Hall

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The Department of French and Italian announces a lecture by Frieda Ekotto (University of Michigan) entitled: "What is the Color of Blackness?" on Friday, November 19 from 3-5pm in 115 Nicholson Hall.

Light refreshments will be served.

J-L Nancy responds to Albany

Jean-Luc Nancy, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Strasbourg and the European Graduate School, has written a rather snarky critique of Albany that pretty much sums up what is at stake here. Since it is short I have reposted the entire response...

"Choisir entre supprimer le français et supprimer la philosophie... Quel beau choix ! Enlever plutôt le foie ou le poumon ? Plutôt l'estomac ou le coeur ?..."

Film Premiere: Enemies of the People

Please join the Human Rights Program at the University of Minnesota in a discussion with the Director/Producer of the award-winning documentary, Enemies of the People, Thursday, November 11 from 3:30 to 5:00 pm in Room 614 Social Sciences, University of Minnesota.

Enemies of the People Director/Producer Rob Lemkin will join Patricia
Hampl, award-winning author and U of Minnesota Regents Professor of
Creative Writing, to discuss documenting human rights violations
through film and writing. Short clips from the documentary will be
shown.

Also join them at 7:00 pm for the Twin Cities premiere of Enemies of
the People at St. Anthony Main Theater, 115 Main Street, SE,
Minneapolis, MN 55414. Discussion following the premiere with
Director, Rob Lemkin, Cambodian refugee and U of M graduate, Vuth
Chhunn, and Human Rights Program Director, Barbara Frey. $8 students
$10 adults.  For more info, click here.

About the Film

Enemies of the People turn the camera onto Nuon Chea aka Brother
Number Two, the highest ranking Khmer Rouge leader still alive today.
The Khmer Rouge was one of the twentieth century's most brutal
regimes. While in power, the Khmer Rouge was responsible for the
deaths of approximately 1.7 million people by execution, starvation
and forced labor in camps that were later described as the Killing
Fields.

In the film, one of Cambodia's best investigative journalists, Thet
Sambath, persuades Nuon Chea to admit, for the first time, how he and
Pol Pot (the two supreme powers in the Khmer Rouge state) decided to
kill party members whom they considered 'Enemies of the People'. The
mystery of the Killing Fields is unveiled as the men and women who
perpetrated the massacres break a 30-year silence to give testimony
never before seen or heard.

Enemies of the People is being screened as part of the Minneapolis-St.
Paul Asian Film Festival sponsored by the Minnesota Film Arts Event
sponsored by the Human Rights Program at the University of Minnesota
and the Program in Human Rights, Center for Holocaust and Genocide
Studies at the University of Minnesota and Humanitarianism at
Macalester College.

For more information about the Cambodian Genocide please visit our
links page.

--
Jodi Elowitz
Outreach Coordinator
Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies
768 Social Sciences Building
267 19th Ave. S.
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612-626-2470
elow0001@umn.edu
www.chgs.umn.edu/

Lecture: Cox, "Immigrant Writing" 11/15 4:45 (Macalester College)

The French and Francophone Studies Department at Macalester College would like to invite you to the French Lecture Series on Monday, November 15 at 4:45 PM in Humanities 401.


Stephanie Cox, Visiting Professor from Carleton College will present "Immigrant Writing in Quebec and Ying Chen"

Francophone Asian-Canadian Writer Ying Chen was born in Shanghai, came to Montreal in the 1990s, and now lives in Vancouver. As the first Chinese writer in Quebec, she attracted attention and her first three novels have been popular in and outside the classroom. Since Quebec society had always identified itself strongly in opposition to the Other, be it the English, the Amerindian, the French and the American, the immigrant gaze reversed its position and inaugurated its role as dominant society. After becoming an icon of Immigrant Writing, Ying Chen made major changes within her writing, thereby risking to lose a portion of her readers but with the aim to avoid the kind of ethnic reading which she felt the categorization of "écritures migrantes" (Immigrant Writing) leads to. Instead of instructing Western readers about the Chinese culture as a cultural ambassador, she invites the reader to meet through the universal experience of exile, whether it be geographic or social.

Stephanie Cox is a Visiting Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Carleton College where she teaches courses on Quebec, Acadia and Louisiana, including "Women of New France" and "Marginality and Renaissance in Francophone North America." She is the author of "La vie probable" a forthcoming study on the writing of Ying Chen. She is the recipient of a Faculty Enrichment Grant from the Canadian Embassy to design a course on "Transnational Writers of Quebec."

Fellowship: IDF (final deadline 2/15/11; internal deadline TBA)

The Graduate School, on behalf of the Provost's Interdisciplinary Team, is pleased to announce that it will award a limited number (approximately 10) of one- and two-year Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowships for 2011-12 to outstanding Graduate School students with interdisciplinary dissertation topics who would benefit from interaction with faculty at one of the University's interdisciplinary research centers or institutes. The fellowship provides a unique study opportunity for our very best students with research and scholarly interests that complement those of the host center or institute and its faculty. Prospective fellows are asked to designate the host center or institute they believe is the best match with their dissertation topic, contingent upon a faculty member's willingness to work with the student during the fellowship year.

TERMS OF THE AWARD

Recipients of the 2011-12 fellowship will receive a stipend of $22,500 for the academic year beginning September 2011, plus full tuition. Eligible recipients are also covered by comprehensive health insurance, including subsidized dependent and dental care.

A select number of students will receive a two-year award. Award of fellowship funds for the second year will be contingent upon satisfactory degree progress and active participation in the host center or institute, as documented by the student's adviser, DGS and center/institute mentor. The stipend in 2012-13 will be determined by spring 2012.

Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellows must register in the Graduate School as full-time students each semester. Fellows may hold supplemental support up to the value of a 25-percent graduate assistantship from any source in each semester. Awards may not be deferred beyond the original award period.

ELIGIBILITY

The competition is open to Ph.D. students by application, with endorsement by the student's graduate program and college dean/associate dean. Successful applicants are likely to be students who will be in the second, third, or fourth year of their program in the 2011-12 academic year and who are making timely degree progress. Students who have passed the preliminary oral examination are eligible, as well as those who have not yet passed this exam. Students who have received a Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship are not eligible.

APPLICATION PROCEDURES

Directors of Graduate Studies are responsible for assisting the student in preparing the application file and submitting the completed application to the Graduate School Fellowship Office by the specified deadline. The following information must be included in the student's application:

1. the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship application form

2. a three-page statement, written by the student, that:

describes the proposed interdisciplinary research or scholarly project

explains how the student's scholarship will benefit from residence at the center/institute at which the student proposes to study

if the application is for a two-year award, provides justification for two years of support

3. the student's c.v. that includes documentation of the student's involvement in, or contributions to, research, scholarly or creative activities (e.g., publications, abstracts, presentations at professional conferences or university seminars, exhibits)

4. a letter of support from the director of the research center or institute at which the student intends to study; in addition to supporting the student's application, the letter from the center/institute director must:

a. demonstrate how the student will benefit from an affiliation with the center/institute and how the center/institute will benefit from the student's participation

b. identify the resources the director will commit to the student in terms of:

study space funds for student travel to a professional conference (directors are encouraged to provide $2,500 for activities related to the student's professional development)

c. explain how the center/institute would be an appropriate host site for the student, e.g.:

the mix of disciplines represented among its faculty related to the student's interdisciplinary interests, the diversity of faculty research interests and methodologies

regular, events that feature faculty members' work opportunities for students to feature their work other support the center/institute might provide (financial support, mentoring, professional development opportunities)

5. letter(s) of support from the faculty member(s) at the selected research center or institute with whom the student plans to study

6. a letter of support from the student's academic adviser/co-advisers

7. a letter of support from the Director of Graduate Studies of the student's major program; the DGS's letter may focus principally on the overall academic quality of the student and the student's scholarly potential

8. transcripts from each college or university attended (photocopies are acceptable, including the University of Minnesota transcript)

9. an up-to-date copy of the official degree program form, if the student has filed it.

Potential applicants are strongly encouraged to consult with prospective mentors and host center/institute directors early in the application process to ensure that the student and research project are a good match for the host site.

REVIEW AND SELECTION

The review will be conducted by a committee of the Graduate School Fellowship Office.

Selection of recipients will be based on the following criteria:

• the importance of the research and the clarity with which it is conveyed to the non-specialist

• the potential for the student to make an unusually significant contribution to the field

• the degree to which the proposed or current research manifests the student's independence, originality, and resourcefulness

• the potential for the research project to incorporate methodologies from more than one discipline

• the synergy that can be created by the student and faculty member working together around the interdisciplinary topic or problem

• the comparative strength of the student's academic record

• the clarity, coherence and strength of the letters supporting the student's application

Special attention will be given to the interdisciplinary nature of the current or proposed dissertation research and the willingness of the particular center or institute and its faculty to host the student during the fellowship year.

The DGS and dean of the student's program will be notified of the outcome of the student's application in March.

Please direct questions about these awards to the Graduate School Fellowship Office at 612-625-7579 or gsfellow@umn.edu.

Lecture: Lynch, "Obituaries for Poetry," 11/19

The English Department's Nineteenth Century Subfield presents

"Obituaries for Poetry: Dead Poet Love, the Life of the Author, and Photographed Romanticism"

Deidre Shauna Lynch, University of Toronto

Friday, November 19, 2010 at noon

Lind 207a

A light lunch will be served

Please join us for a presentation by Deidre Shauna Lynch, the Chancellor Jackman Professor and Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto. Dr. Lynch is an established literary scholar specializing in eighteenth-century and romantic-era literature with particular interests in women authors and the history and theory of the novel. Her first book, The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning was the winner of the 1999 MLA Prize for a First Book.

Co-sponsored with the Department of English, Theorizing Early Modern Studies, the Center for Early Modern History, the Coca Cola Activity Initiative and GAPSA.

Working toward a better understanding of the Humanities

There have been a lot of posts about the demise of the humanities, and relatedly the massive disconnection between those who practice humanistic inquiry and their administrators.   Here's a different take on the situation, covered by the Boston Globe:

"Colleges Aim to Revive the Humanities"

I like the change of tone, but there are a lot of aspects to what this article covers that make me wonder... For example, I don't think we need "reviving;" just better understanding.  Am I naïve?  And more crucially, check out our spokespeople:

the leaders of many prestigious universities -- including Cornell,
Dartmouth, and Harvard -- are increasingly espousing the virtues of the
humanities...

Why is this happening first and foremost at the privates, or so-called "luxury" institutions.  Are the humanities a luxury that public institutions really do without?

Fellowship: CGES Berlin (due 12/3)

The Center for German & European Studies is now accepting applications for our 2011 Minnesota Goes to Berlin fellowship. Open to U of M system undergraduate and graduate students in any discipline or field beyond their sophomore year; minimum age 20; demonstrated interest in working with school-age children; German language proficiency desired but not required.

Live and work in Berlin! Spend 1 month living with a German host family and serving as a native speaker resource person in an elementary school. You will also conduct research on a topic of your choice, explore Berlin's culture as a group and participate in organized social and cultural programs.

Fellowship package includes:

* room and board with host family

* international health and liability insurance for 1 month

* public transportation pass

* stipend of EUR 150

* $500 grant towards airfare reimbursement

For more information and to download an application, please visit: http://www.cges.umn.edu/fellowships/internships.htm#USAgoesBerlin

Deadline is *Friday, December 3, 2010 by 4:30 p.m.*

--

Center for German & European Studies

University of Minnesota

214 Social Sciences Building

267 19th Ave. South

Minneapolis, MN 55455

Phone: (612) 626-7705

Fax: (612) 625-0528

Email: cges@umn.edu

www.cges.umn.edu

The Art of the Conference Paper

An interesting take by Alessandro Angelini, on Inside Higher Ed, on the pitfalls of the conference paper, as often experienced by graduate students!  The author suggests that bad conference papers are

symptomatic of the same underlying features of post-graduate life: one is often at a low point in intellectual confidence, one has yet to produce original work, and most importantly, one is new at this. So one either communicates this felt fragility or compensates for it with unmeasured bombast.

Do you agree?

Thanks to Corbin Treacy for sharing.

Paris apartment locators

Every once in a while, someone asks about finding an apartment in Paris.

Here are two on-line services

lokim.com. Used to be called paris-be-a-part-of-it.  Luckily they changed their name.  Reputed to be "user-friendly and professional, and there are a range of prices."

France-USA Contacts has a very active site with professional and private rental availabilities:  fusac.com.

Any other suggestions?

FLAS information sessions

The Institute for Global Studies and the European Studies Consortium are happy to announce the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship competition for summer 2011 and the 2011-12 academic year.  All departments are encouraged to nominate up to four graduate students (for both summer and academic year) for each competition.  Nominations are due to IGS by February 11, 2011.  Competition priorities and eligibility information are available here:

International: http://igs.cla.umn.edu/grad/fundflas.html
Europe: http://esc.umn.edu/funding/flas.html

These fellowships provide opportunities for students to pursue foreign language study, with primary emphasis on advanced study in the less commonly taught languages (any language other than French, German, or Spanish).  During the academic year, graduate students are provided with a $15,000 living stipend and up to $18,000 in support for tuition and mandatory fees.  The summer award provides a $2500 living stipend and $5000 in tuition/fee support.  (Note: departments are no longer required to cover tuition overages.)

Later this month IGS will hold information sessions for students interested in the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships.

Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2010, 400 Ford Hall, 2:30-3:30 p.m.

Thursday, Nov. 18, 2010, 2-207 Carlson School, 1:00-2:00 p.m. (special emphasis on professional schools)

Monday, Nov. 22, 2010, 260 Social Sciences, 1:00 - 2:00 p.m.


Contact: 
Laura Seifert
FLAS Coordinator
Institute for Global Studies
214 Social Science Building
P: 612.624.6527
F: 612.626.2242

Gallica, the BNF's Bibliothèque numérique, gets better and better!

If you haven't checked out Gallica recently, the site is worth a look (available in English too!). Check them out on Facebook too, where they recently showcased one of the copies of the L'Ami du Peuple that Marat fell onto after being stabbed by Charlotte Corday...


Exemplaires tachés du sang de Marat, des n.os 678, 13 août 1792, et 506, 30 juin 1791, de l Ami du Peuple
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France

I am particularly fond of this new widget they've developed that allows visualizations of Gallica documents in other sites. Now that's freedom of information!

Check out some of the works of the 18th-century Swiss Rodolphe Töpffer, considered by many to be the original comic-book artist:


Histoire de M. Cryptogame, par l auteur de M. Vieux-Bois, de M. Jabot, de M. Crépin, du docteur Festus, etc. [R. Töpffer]... 5e édition
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France

Filmmaker Michael Prazan: 11/4-11/7

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies is proud to host French filmmaker Michael Prazan next week. He will present his documentary Einsatzgruppen: Death Brigades at St. Anthony Main on Thursday, Nov. 4th at 7pm and on Sunday, Nov. 7th at 6:30pm. For more information on Mr. Prazan and his film, please see the attached flyer, or visit www.chgs.umn.edu.

Mr. Prazan will be on campus on Thursday, Nov. 4th, and we would like to invite you to join us for an informal gathering to welcome him to campus. If you are available, please join us in the CHGS Library (room 710 in the Social Science Building) from 12:45pm - 2pm.

As this gathering is over the lunch hour, feel free to bring a brown bag lunch, or if you would prefer, a box lunch from Kafe 421 can be provided for $10. See the attached order form for box lunch options. Please let me know which sandwich and side you would like to order. You can bring cash or a check to the lunch.

I hope you will be able to join us. Please RSVP to lech0045@umn.edu.

Eintazgruppen.pdf

Freelance: Translator Needed

Monday, November 01, 2010 1:16 PM

Hello! We need a script translated from English to French, or French Canadian if possible. The script is about 45 pages long and approximately 18,000 words.



Email me at Susan@WFCResources.com



Susan Seitel

WFC Resources

5197 Beachside Drive

Minnetonka, MN 55343

952-936-7898

800-487-7898

www.WFCResources.com

The Five Stages of Grading

Thanks to Dr. B for this helpful exploration of what so many of us must face every 3-4 weeks...

CFP: KFLC (4/14-16/2011), Deadline extended: 11/15

The Kentucky Foreign Language Conference has extended the deadline for abstracts until November 15, 2010 for the upcoming 2011 conference.

Call for Papers:

The University of Kentucky is now accepting abstracts for the upcoming 64th Annual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference to be held April 14-16, 2011. This year's conference accepts abstracts for the following divisions: Arabic Studies, East Asian Studies, French and Francophone Studies, German-Austrian-Swiss Studies, Hispanic Linguistics, Hispanic Studies ( Peninsular and Spanish American), Italian Studies, Language Technology, Luso-Afro-Brazilian Studies, and Second Language Acquisition.

Mary Louise Pratt (http://as.nyu.edu/object/marypratt.html) will deliver the 2011 Keynote Lecture, "Globalization as Linguistic Force Field" on Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 5:00 p.m.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is now NOVEMBER 15 2010. Please distribute widely.

Acceptance of your paper for presentation implies a commitment on your part to register and attend the conference. All presenters and attendees must pay the appropriate registration fee by February 15, 2011 to be included in the program.

For more information on the conference please visit http://www.as.uky.edu/kflc/ or contact the directors by email at kflc@uky.edu.


Kentucky Foreign Language Conference
April 14-16, 2011
University of Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky 40506
http://www.as.uky.edu/kflc/
Email: kflc@uky.edu

TheGonzoGroupTheatre: "Waiting for Godot" 10/20-30

TheGonzoGroupTheatre presents
"Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett

While waiting near a tree on a barren stretch of road for someone named Godot, Vladimir and Estragon inhabit a drama spun from their own consciousness. What results is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense. A seminal work of twentieth-century drama, Waiting for Godot remains one of the most magical and beautiful stories of our time.

Cast includes: Nick James, Luke Weber, Michael Ooms, Paul McGuire, and Jordan Alexander

"Waiting for Godot" runs October 20th-30th at the Lowry Lab Theater in downtown Saint Paul. $12-$18. For tickets and information, visit www.gonzotheatre.org.

Contact Sophie Kerman for more info!

CFP: KFLC (April 14, 2011 - April 16, 2011): 1 November 2010

The Division of French and Francophone Studies is now accepting abstracts for the upcoming 64th Annual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference to be held April 14-16, 2011.   All topics and periods are welcome.  We are particularly interested in topics related to the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

 
We request that you submit brief abstracts (300 word max) at the following URL: http://web.as.uky.edu/kflc/ABSTRACT.html

Mary Louise Pratt (http://as.nyu.edu/object/marypratt.html) will deliver the 2011 Keynote Lecture, "Globalization as Linguistic Force Field" on Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 5:00 p.m.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is November 1, 2010.

 

For more information on the conference please visit http://www.as.uky.edu/kflc/  or contact the directors by email at kflc@uky.edu.

 

 

Kentucky Foreign Language Conference
April 14-16, 2011
University of Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky 40506

http://www.as.uky.edu/kflc/

Email: kflc@uky.edu

Two on-line journals offering long review essays

Two new journals in medieval studies, Postmedieval and New Medieval Literatures are both publishing critical review essays. As Postmedieval states,

"Each issue will also feature a book review essay, and unlike most other medieval studies journals, we will not be incorporating reviews of individual books (with, say, five to ten reviews of single titles per issue). Rather, each issue of the journal will include a review essay (of 6,000-8,000 words) that will address a particularly pressing theme or topic within medieval studies and the humanities more broadly, and it will include books that are related to each other within the rubric of this theme or topic. These reviews will include books written by medievalists as well as by scholars in other fields and periods in order to draw for our readership what we see as the very important connections and conjunctions between work in medieval studies and contemporary thought. These reviews will be written by scholars in medieval studies whose work is connected to the theme or topic of the books collectively under review, thereby ensuring a review that will not just remain on the surface of these books, but which will make a critical contribution to the subject(s) addressed in the books under review."

Thanks to Mary Franklin-Brown for the tip!

Nominations for Stout-Wallace Fellowships due 5 November

Reminder: UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA GRADUATE SCHOOL ENDOWED FELLOWSHIPS, 2011-12

WILLIAM STOUT AND THOMAS WALLACE FELLOWSHIPS. For graduate students in the humanities or social sciences who are in the intermediate years of the Ph.D. (i.e., normally students currently in their second or third year of graduate study). One nomination per department. Stipend: $22,000, plus tuition.

Instructions at:

Draft applications due to the department (Front Office by NOON, Friday 5 November).

Draft applications should include:
1) Draft application form, signed by the DGS (to confirm that we have talked about your application)

2) Draft research proposal, including title of project.
• Up to three pages, double-spaced, 12 point type, with margins not less than one inch, and title at top of page.
• Your proposal should describe the proposed research or study you plan to pursue in the coming academic year.
• If you choose to include key references, they must fit within the three-page limit.

3) Personal biographical statement.
• One page, single or double spaced, 12 point type, with margins not less than 1".
• Your statement should provide an account of the various sources, influences, and previous efforts that led to your choice of academic discipline and research area, while filling in any gaps in your record. It should offer a picture of your motivation and purpose as well as a description of long-range personal and professional plans and goals. It should not be an extension of the Research Proposal section.

4) A current University of Minnesota graduate transcript (unofficial)

5) On one page, an explanation of any "Incomplete" grades (if applicable), as well as a note offering the names of your two recommenders, and confirming that they have both agreed to write you letters of support.



Our nomination will be announced by 15 November, with the final application due at the Graduate School by 1 December.

New design launched using Movable Type

Our web site is sporting a new look and feel thanks to Movable Type and the Professional Template Set. The Professional Template Set makes it possible for just about anyone to get up and running with a new web site using Movable Type. It is literally as easy as just a few clicks. Just pick a new for your web site, select the Professional Template Set and publish. Then viola! a new web site. Thank you Movable Type!