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."