Film: Café de Flore, by Jean-Marc Vallée (12/21-12/27)

at St Anthony Main Theater, brought to you by the MSP Film Society.

Canada • 120 min • French w/English subtitles • 2011 • Narrative • 35mm • NR

Directed by: Jean-Marc Vallée

Café de Flore is a love story about people separated by time and place but connected in profound and mysterious ways. Atmospheric, fantastical, tragic and hopeful, the film chronicles the parallel fates of Jacqueline, a young mother with a disabled son in 1960s Paris, and Antoine, a recently divorced, successful DJ in present day Montreal. What binds the two stories together is love - euphoric, obsessive, tragic, youthful, timeless love.

"This is a gorgeous, flashy, widescreen epic...about the most essential things in life: Family, friends and love. But most of all, love." - Miami Herald

In 1960s Paris, a working class woman gives birth to her first child, Laurent – a Down Syndrome son. Undaunted she embraces the challenge of raising her beloved offspring as normally as one would any other child. Her husband abandons them both. She bravely brushes this additional hiccup aside as Laurent replaces her spouse as the perfect man of her dreams. As Laurent approaches school age Jacqueline’s aplomb becomes obsessive and cloying. Her increasingly self-destructive attachment to her son is raised to a fever pitch when, at the age of seven, he
meets a Down Syndrome girl (Véronique) and experiences his first crush.
His sudden desire for independence, and his attraction to Véra, are the
catalysts that transform Jacqueline from a loving mother into something
resembling a lover scorned. What emerges is a love triangle of
potentially tragic proportions.

In 21st century Montreal, a forty year old divorcee, Carole, is
trying to restart her life after her divorce, two years earlier, from
Antoine, a devastatingly handsome, successful touring DJ.
Soul mates who’ve been a couple since the age of fifteen, their divorce
is a schism that might prove impossible for either of them to put in
the past. Making the transition even more difficult for Carole is the
fact that her two daughters, one teen, one tween, are about to gain a
stepmother, a stunningly beautiful, heartbreaking blonde, a woman about
to “steal” away the perfect man of her dreams. The young girls are being
cruelly pulled in two different directions, Antoine’s father, a
recovering alcoholic, seems to side with his ex-daughter-in-law, and
Carole is succumbing to fits of depression and potentially dangerous
bouts of sleepwalking. What emerges is a love triangle of potentially
tragic proportions.

Showtimes:

Fri, Dec. 21 thru Sun, Dec 23: (4:20), 9:50

Mon, Dec 24: (4:20)

Tue, Dec. 25 thru Thu, Dec 27: (1:20), 7:15

Kudos: Jiewon awarded a William W. Stout Fellowship for 2013-14!

Christophe Wall-Romana: A quick announcement that Jiewon was awarded a William W. Stout Fellowship for the 2013-14 academic year, and was selected for "her excellent academic record and professional promise." Kudos to her adviser, Bruno, and her other recommender Rembert (GSD)!!

The Institut Français d'Amérique fellowships. Deadline: 1/15/2013

Fellowships for Graduate Students and Recent Ph.D. recipients:

The Institut Français d’Amérique announces it annual competition for fellowships to support research in France. Up to four $1500 awards are available for living in France (not travel to France) to conduct research for a period of at least one month in the summer or fall of 2013. The deadline for applications is January 15, 2013.

The application process is now completed on-line, and information can be found here: http://institut.web.unc.edu/application/

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, 2013.

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 (single spaced), 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.

Application materials and recommendations (separately and directly from the recommender) should be sent to: IFA@unc.edu

For more information about the IFA (formerly the Institut Français de Washington) and previous fellowship winners, please visit the Institut’s website:

http://institut.web.unc.edu/

Video and Audio from Sex, Lies, and Paradise

Sex, Lies, and Paradise:
The Assassins, Prester John, and the Fabulation of Civilizational Identities: A talk by Geraldine Heng 11/05/12

The Assassins of Alamut are presented in popular media and academic studies as the 11th century forerunners of today's "suicide terrorists." Visiting Winton Professor Geraldine Heng analyzes these stories to see how the Assassins were believed to anticipate an Islamic paradise in the afterlife and came to represent for the West a volatile nexus of sex and violence. Heng examines in particular how two popular, widely circulating European texts—Marco Polo's Travels and Mandeville’s Travels—were key in shaping Western understanding of Islamic history in terms of a civilizational identity that “clashes” with that of the Christian West. Sponsored by Institue for Advanced Study

"Audio and Video"

Film and Meeting the Director Opportunity: Demande à ton Ombre, by Lamine Ammar-Khodja (11/7 at 4:30pm)

The Film Society of Minneapolis St. Paul presents:

Demande à ton Ombre, by Lamine Ammar-Khodja, 83 min, France, Algeria, 2012.

Arabic, French with English Subtitles

Documentary

Special screening Nov. 7 at 4:30pm followed by a Q&A with Director Lamine Ammar-Khodja

Students: Meet with the director, Lamine Ammar-Khodja, prior to the screening!

Special Screening:

Film discussion with director Lamine Ammar-Khodja and professor Patricia Lorcin, Department of History, University of Minnesota.

Eight years after leaving native Algeria for France, Lamine
Ammar-Khodja decides to end his exile on January 6, 2011, the day major
riots break out in Algiers. Organised chronologically, the film is a
first-person narrative and, just like Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal,
to which the director pays tribute, it deals with the difficulties of
getting back home. Because this journey isn’t only a private matter, but
also an opportunity to go back over Algeria’s recent history, at a time
when it could have taken another major turn. The subject is addressed
in the tone of comedy, using humour and irony, instead of expected
despair. Cheerfully mixing styles, playing freely and gracefully with
the cinema medium, and claiming rebellious youth in the name of all the
young outcasts, this first film surely reveals an original artistic
stance and writing: a new director is born. (by Jean-Pierre Rehm)

Director Biography: Lamine
Ammar-Khodja was born in Algeria in 1983, and grew up in the suburb of
Bab Ezzouar. He later moved to France in 2003. His previous short films
include: Algiers Less Than Zero, '56 South, How to Reframe an Outlaw by Pulling at a Thread. His first feature documentary film Ask Your Shadow was selected in FID Marseille 2012 and received the First Film Prize.

Meet with the Director:

The director is looking forward to meeting our students at all levels
for an informal discussion around themes and topics raised by the
attendees. The informal discussion, which will take place in Nolte 125,
will start at 3:00 and end at 4:00 on November 7. Students may arrive
at any time during the meeting if they are not able to be in attendance
right at 3:00.

Sponsored by: Institute
for Global Studies, Department of French and Italian, European Studies
Consortium, Mediterranean Initiative, and The Film Society of
Minneapolis St. Paul

Play: La Farce de maître Pierre Pathelin (10/28, 4pm; 10/29, 7pm)

Le Theatre de la Chandelle Verte, will perform their current hilarious production of the well-known medieval farce: La Farce de maître Pierre Pathelin

Le Théâtre de la Chandelle Verte is an alliance of professional artists and scholars from universities across the United States, dedicated to performing theatre in French to audiences nationwide.

La Farce de maître Pierre Pathelin: A creative and dynamic adaptation of the popular fifteenth-century
play, featuring hilarious misadventures and a loveable cast of misfits,
including the trickster Pathelin and his accomplice wife Guillemette,
the conniving merchant Guillaume Joceaulme, and the wisest fool of them
all, Thibaut L’Agnelet.

Performed in French by members of the troupe. Suitable for all ages and all levels of French proficiency. Runtime: lasts
one hour, and is free and open to the public. Reservations are strongly
recommended.

Sunday, October 28 at 4pm.

Monday, October 29 at 7pm.

Location:

Saint Catherine University Recital Hall
2004 Randolph Ave. Saint Paul, MN 55105

Map / directions

RESERVATION CONTACT: Sally Sundberg sjsundberg@stkate.edu (651) 690 6548

Film: The Intouchables, by Olivier Nakache & Eric Toledano, 10/5-10/11

The Film Society of Minneapolis St. Paul presents:

The Intouchables, by Olivier Nakache & Eric Toledano, 112 min, France, 2011.

In French with English subtitles.

Showing - Fri, Oct 5 through Thurs, Oct 11 at St. Anthony Main Theatre.

2012 MSP International Film Festival Opening Night Hit!

This true story of two men who should never have met was an unprecedented box-office phenomenon in France, where it shattered records to become the second most successful French film of all time and has sparked much heated political debate. This award-winning film tells the story of the unlikely friendship between a handicapped white millionaire Philippe (Tell No One star François Cluzet) and his free spirited Senegalese caretaker Driss (Omar Sy). Paralyzed from the neck down in a paragliding accident, Philippe has grown weary of the pitying attentions of his live-in help. On a whim he hires Driss, a recent prison parolee, as his caretaker. Gradually, these two men from very different worlds grow close, sharing in the joy and pain of each other’s lives in this hilarious and heartwarming crowd-pleaser from directors Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano. With standout performances from both Cluzet and Sy, The Intouchables provides a lively and emotionally engrossing take on the conflicts of class and culture.

Showtimes:

Fri, Oct 5 at 1:00, 9:55

Sat, Oct 6 - NO SHOWS

Sun, Oct 7 at 1:00, 4:00, 9:55

Mon, Oct 8 at 1:00, 4:00, 7:20, 9:55

Tue, Oct 9 at 1:00, 7:40, 9:55

Wed, Oct 10 at 1:00, 4:00, 7:20, 9:55

Thu, Oct 11 at 1:00, 4:00

Fall Symposium of the Graduate Students of French and Italian (Friday, 10/5, 1-4pm, 145 Nicholson)

We would like to invite the French & Italian and English departments to the Fall Symposium of the Graduate Students of French of Italian, which will take place on Friday, October 5th from 1pm to 4pm in Nicholson 145. The presenters are Kate Droske and Jiewon Baek.
More information and details will follow in the coming weeks.

If you have questions, please feel free to contact either Courtney Pyrtle (matth193@umn.edu) or I (ferr0382@umn.edu)
We look forward to seeing you there.
Courtney and Déborah

Event: Franco-Fête Minneapolis 2012 with Le Vent du Nord, 9/28-9/29

Francophone, Francophile, French-Canadian ancestry…or know someone who is, or is interested? Consider passing this post along, about a very special event in Minneapolis September 28-29, 2012. Here is the final, detailed program: 2012 Franco-Fete Final Program.pdf

Franco-Fête will include all the elements of a fine program: family, food, fun…along with academics, history, music…

This will be the first such Fete in Minneapolis-St. Paul, but is not a first ever venture.

Leader Dr. Virgil Benoit, French-Canadian (Franco-American), professor of French at the University of North Dakota and a lifelong part of the Red Lake Falls MN community, has been putting together similar festivals for over 35 years in various places in Minnesota and North Dakota. Dr. Benoit is a professor of diverse talents and great skill, as well as having great passion for the culture and language of his birth.

This years conference will be the largest and most ambitious thus far. 

Presenters & Speakers from the U of M - Twin Cities:

April A. Knutson, Lecturer in French, University of Minnesota (retired)

Lydia Belateche, Senior Lecturer of French, University of Minnesota

Patricia Mougel, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer Dept of French & Italian - University of Minnesota

Friday, September 28th: Prelude Evening Events

One Lourdes Place
Minneapolis, Minnesota,  55414

Saturday, September 29th: Main Events

DeLaSalle High School
One DeLaSalle Drive, Nicollet Island
Minneapolis, Minnesota,  55401

"Le Vent du Nord", a Québécois progressive folk band will be
holding a concert in Minneapolis (at De La Salle High School, just a
few blocks from campus) on Saturday evening, September 29th, 7:30 p.m., as the culminating event of the Franco-Fête festival celebrating French in Minnesota taking place that day. 

You can get a reduced concert admission in one of three ways:

• If you are age 18 or below, you can pay only $5 by completing the appropriate part of the attached registration form
  and sending it to the indicated address with your payment. (You may
  also register for the day events--presentations, dance demonstrations
  etc. about French-speaking groups in Minnesota, past and present, for only $5.)

• Whatever your age, you may get a reduced rate of only $5 each for the concert and/or the day's events by volunteering to help out at the event for a couple of hours during the day.  To volunteer, contact Dick Bernard.

If you are age 19 or above, you can get a reduced rate of $15 each for the concert and/or the day's events.  You must reserve your tickets by e-mailing Madelaine Kluesner (undergrad assistant for French) no later than Friday, September 21st.

Please see the event website for more details and registration.

Lecture: Lynn Festa,"The Cook, the Thief, the Knife, and the Other: Possession and Loss in Eighteenth-Century Tahiti" (9/28, 2:30pm)

Friday, September 28, 2:30 pm, 112 Folwell Hall

Lynn Festa: "The Cook, the Thief, the Knife, and the Other: Possession and Loss in Eighteenth-Century Tahiti"

Dept. of English, Rutgers University. Lynn is a comparatist working in the 18th century. She is doing a TEMS presentation on Enlightenment birds-eye views (intersection among aesthetics, science, and history).

Focusing on Bougainville’s and Cook’s late eighteenth-century accounts of Tahiti, this paper examines the way persons and things (including a cook, a thief, a knife, and both lovers and others) are exchanged, offered, filched, and relinquished in cross-cultural encounters between the sailors and the islanders. Notwithstanding depictions of Tahiti as tropical paradise of free love and unbridled pleasures, neither sailors nor islanders invariably get what they want— what they lack and what they desire. I trace the way these abrupt and often unhappy reversals compel Bougainville and Cook to turn from figures of analogy and similitude to the splintering displacement and distancing of irony, a turn in trope that I argue can help us understand the critical role played by irony in producing a purchase point on a globalized world, both then and now.

Lectures and Events: Celebrating Venice!

Join the James Ford Bell Library this fall as we celebrate the entrancing city of Venice, long a capital of Mediterranean trade, through an exhibition, lectures, workshops, and other cultural events.

October 8, 2012

James Ford Bell Library Exhibition

Celebrating Venice: On Land and Sea

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Venice Public Lecture Series

All three lectures will begin at 7:30 p.m. in 120
Elmer L. Andersen Library on the West Bank Campus. Tickets will go on
sale September 10, 2012 through the University of Minnesota Ticket
Office. $20 per ticket; free to students. Discounts will be available
to members of sponsoring organizations—watch your mail box!

October 11, 2012


The 50th Annual James Ford Bell Lecture

Professor Joanne M. Ferraro, Department of History, San Diego State University
“Binding Passions and Shielding Virtue in Early Modern Venice”

October 25, 2012

The Inaugural Carl Sheppard Memorial Lecture, Center for Medieval Studies

Professor Robert S. Nelson, Department of Art History, Yale University

“ ‘Lords of One Quarter and One Half of the Empire of Romania’: Byzantine Art & State Authority in Venice”

November 1, 2012

IAS Mediterranean Collaborative Lecture

Dr. Alan M. Stahl, Firestone Library Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University

“Wealth and Power in Medieval Venice: The Condulmer Family in the Century after the Black Death”

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December 14, 2012

Institute for Advanced Study Theorizing Early Modern Studies Collaborative Workshop

Professor Lisa Pon, Meadows School of Arts, Southern Methodist University

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Center for Early Modern History Workshops

October 12, 2012

12:15 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall

Professor Joanne M. Ferraro, San Diego State University

December 15, 2012

12:15 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall

Professor Lisa Pon, Southern Methodist University, "Isolating Contagion in Early Modern Venice"

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Related Events

Consortium Carissimi

October 5, 2012

“Gabrieli!”

Details at http://consortiumcarissimi.org/

Lecture: David Kertzer, "Evil Conspiracies and Common Enemies: Mussolini, the Vatican, and the Origins of the Italian Racial Laws" (9/24, 4pm)

David Kertzer -- Professor, Brown University

"Evil Conspiracies and Common Enemies: Mussolini, the Vatican, and the Origins of the Italian Racial Laws"

Monday, September 24, 2012 at 4:00 pm

Cowles Auditorium, HHH

Reception following in the atrium.

Professor David Kertzer is Professor of Anthropology at Brown University, where he formerly served as Provost. Professor Kertzer's research ranges widely, including: Italian politics and history, anthropological demography, social organization, politics and symbols, political economy and family systems, age structuring, European historical demography and the history of Catholic Church-Jewish relations.

Selected Publications:

Prisoner of the Vatican: The Popes' Plot to Capture Italy from the New Italian State. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Italian edition Rizzoli (Prigioniero del Vaticano, 2005). A History Book Club selection. Chosen as one of the best books of 2004 by Publishers' Weekly.

The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism, 2001. New York: Knopf (paperback Vintage, 2002). A selection of Book of the Month Club; Quality Paperback book club; and Traditions (the Book of the Month Club's Jewish interest book club). Italian edition by Rizzoli (I papi contro gli ebrei, 2002); Brazilian edition by Rocco (O Vaticano e os Judeos: Os papas e a ascensão do anti-semitismo moderno, 2002); Spanish edition by Plaza Janés (Los papas contro los judíos, 2002); Dutch edition by Prometheus (In Gods Naam, 2002); British edition by Macmillan (The Unholy War, 2002); German edition by Propylaen Verlag (Die Päpste gegen die Juden. Der Vatikan und der moderne Antisemitismus, 2001); French version by Editions Robert Laffont (Le Vatican contre les juifs, 2003); Hungarian edition by Ulpius-Haz (A pápák a zsidók ellen, 2003); Polish edition by W.A.B. (Papieze a Zydzi: O roli Watykanu w rozwoju wspólczesnego antysemityzmu , 2005) . Finalist, Mark Lynton Prize for History 2002. Selected one of the "100 Best Books of the Year, 2002", Toronto Globe and Mail.

The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara. New York: Knopf, 1997. Paperback published by Vintage, 1998. Italian edition (Prigioniero del Papa Re) published by Rizzoli in 1996; British edition by Picador in 1997 (paperback will be by Papermac); French (Pie IX et l'enfant juif, Perrin, 2001); German (Die Entführung des Edgardo Mortara, Hanser, 1998); Brazilian (O Seqüestro de Edgardo Mortara, Rocco, 1998); Hebrew (Kinneret, 2000); Spanish (El secuestro de Edgardo Mortara, Plaza Janés, 2000). Finalist, National Book Award for nonfiction, 1997. Winner, National Jewish Book Award for Jewish-Christian relations, 1997. Selected one of the "Best Books of the Year, 1997", Publishers Weekly, Toronto Globe and Mail. "Edgardo Mine," a stage version of the book , written by Alfred Uhry, opened at Hartford Stage in October, 2002.

Contact:

Name: Department of Anthropology

E-mail: anth@umn.edu

Phone: 612-625-3400

Sponsored by: Anthropology, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, French & Italian, Holocaust & Genocide Studies, Jewish Studies, History, Global Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Religious Studies

Disability Options:

To request disability accommodations, please contact Department of Anthropology by email at anth@umn.edu or call 612-625-3400.

Film: The Well-Digger's Daughter (La Fille du Puisatier), by Marcel Pagnol, 8/17-8/23

Kino Lorber is proud to present the U.S.
theatrical release of THE WELL-DIGGER’S DAUGHTER (La Fille du Puisatier), opening
in Minneapolis at Landmark’s Lagoon Cinema on Friday, August 17 until Thursday, August 23. This exquisite adaptation
of Marcel Pagnol's classic tale is directed by Daniel
Auteuil, who starred in Claude Berri’s adaptations of Marcel Pagnol’s JEAN DE
FLORETTE and MANON OF THE SPRING.

The hardworking well-digger Pascal Amoretti (Daniel Auteuil) is a
widower raising six daughters in rural France at the start of World War I.
Holding a special place in his heart is his eldest daughter, Patricia (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey), who returns home from school in Paris to help care for
her sisters. Patricia soon catches the eye of Jacques Mazel (Nicolas
Duvauchelle), a dashing fighter pilot and son of a
wealthy merchant. Their attraction quickly blossoms into something more and
when Jacques is suddenly called to war, Patricia is left alone to face the
consequences of their passion. Upon learning that he is about to become a
grandfather, Pascal is torn between defending the family honor and his love for
his daughter. Beautifully shot in the Provence countryside, THE WELL-DIGGER’S
DAUGHTER captures all the warmth and humanist spirit of Marcel Pagnol's
classic. (A Kino Lorber
Release/107 min./Not Rated/In French with English Subtitles)

 

See the trailer at:

www.welldiggersdaughter.com

www.facebook.com/welldiggersdaughter

 

STARTS Friday,
AUGUST 17:

LAGOON CINEMA

1320 Lagoon Avenue

Minneapolis, MN 55408

612-392-0402

www.landmarktheatres.com

 

Tickets and
Showtimes:

$9 General; $7 Senior/Child; see theater
website for discounts.

Tickets and Showtimes available online
and at box office starting August 14.

 

Theater engagement is for a minimum of one week.
For more information please contact Karen O'Hara at karenoh@aol.com or
520-326-0813.

Conference: French-American Conversations on Psychoanalysis

A conference entitled French-American Conversations on Psychoanalysis, will be held at the University of Chicago on October 14 -15, 2011.

The program includes nine roundtable discussions between French and American professors and psychoanalysts. Two lectures are also offered as part of the conference by: Professor Françoise Meltzer (Literature and Psychoanalysis, on Friday, October 14 at 4:30 pm) and Professor Frédéric Gros (Language and Madness in Foucault’s History of Madness on Saturday 15 at 5:00 pm).

Conference will be held in English, all free and open to the public.

For more information on the program, click here.

*A joint initiative from the Université Paris Diderot and the CRPMS (Centre de recherche Psychanalyse, Médecine, Société), the Cultural Services of the French Consulate of Chicago, the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, the University of Chicago and the France Chicago Center.

Film: The Woman In The Fifth, by Pawel Pawlikowski, 6/29-7/5

The Film Society of Minneapolis St. Paul presents:
The Woman In The Fifth, Director Pawel Pawlikowski, 85 min, France, 2012.
In French with English subtitles.
Showing - Fri, Jun 29 through Thurs, Jul 5 on Screen 3 at St. Anthony Main Theatre.

American writer Tom Ricks (Ethan Hawke) arrives in Paris to be closer to
his young daughter who is living with his estranged ex-wife. Completely
broke, he accepts a job as a night guard for a local crime boss.
Stationed in a basement office, his only task is to push a button when a
bell rings. The tranquility of the night, he hopes, will help him focus
on his new novel.

His days become more exciting when he starts a romance with Margit
(Kristin Scott Thomas), a mysterious and elegant widow who sets strange
rules to their meetings: she will only see him at her apartment in the
fifth arrondissement, at 5 pm sharp, twice a week and he should ask no
questions about her work or her past life. When people suddenly start
dying around Tom, he begins to believe that a dark force has entered his
life. (Art Takes Over)

“Pawel Pawlikowski keeps a tight grip on his film, insisting a
seriousness that the actors wrap themselves in like a mantle… [Ethan
Hawke] draws you close.” - Manohla Dargis, THE NEW YORK TIMES

Showtimes:

Fri, June 29 - Sun, July 1 at (1:30), (4:30), 7:00, 9:30

Mon, July 2 at (1:30), (4:30), 9:30

Tue, July 3 at (1:30), (4:30), 7:00, 9:30

Wed, July 4 at (1:30), (4:30), 7:00

Thu, July 5 at (1:30), (4:30), 7:00, 9:30

News from 314 Folwell: Welcome to Summer!

It's a slow month in the Front Office. Stop by anytime with iced tea (for Midori), hot chai (for Nissa), and a triple espresso (for Kerry). If you're looking for information or advice about academic programs, do contact our fearless Chair, Professor Daniel Brewer, acting DUS and DGS for the summer.

Congratulations: Severine Bates awarded a fellowship at UMN-Morris!!

Séverine has been awarded a fellowship!

She gives the details. It is:

A Pre-doctoral fellowship through the University of Minnesota's Diversity Pre-Doctoral Teaching Fellowship program offered by the Office for Equity and Diversity and the University of Minnesota-Morris. [I] will be spending next year at the University of Minnesota-Morris, teaching French and Francophone literature and doing research on [my] dissertation project, “The Immigrant as Homo Mediaticus ? The Role of Visual Media in Identity Constructions in Contemporary Francophone Migrant Literature.”

She'll be affiliated with the French Department there. Good luck, Séverine!

Congratulations: Rachel Gibson awarded an SSRC-IDRF!

The Social Science Research Council has awarded Rachel an International Dissertation Research Fellowship for 2012, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Rachel will be doing research at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris), and at the Biblioteca Marciana (Venice).

Rachel's research project is entitled "Negotiating Space and Self in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Construction of Mercantile Identity in Franco-Italian Literature." She is one of 77 awardees, selected from a total of 1,148 submitted applications from graduate students at 128 universities. This year's awardees represent 32 universities and 13 disciplines: anthropology, art history and architecture, drama/theater and performance studies, environmental science, film studies, geography, history, literature, political science, education, religion, sociology, and urban planning.

Congratulations: Anna Rosensweig a Hella Mears Fellow!

Anna was awarded a Hella Mears Graduate Fellowship for Summer 2012 for her dissertation, "Tragedy and the Ethics of Resistance Rights in Early Modern French Theater."

The Center for German and European Studies awarded 8 fellowships this year.

Congratulations: Tracy Rutler awarded a Fulbright Fellowship!

Kudos to Tracy Rutler, who will be spending next year in France on a Fulbright Fellowship to research her dissertation project, "Family Remains: The Politics of Legacy in Eighteenth-Century French Literature."

Dépêche de Montpellier: Rachel Gibson

Rachel Gibson took a moment to write us from Montpellier where she is spending the year. French bureaucracy and the travails of teaching the Monroe Doctrine to first-year students at Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 almost got the best of her, but she's got back to her research. She writes:

I have found some time to do research on a fourteenth-century manuscript at the Faculté de Médecine, Gui de Nanteuil, with an eye to comparing it to the other existing full manuscript of this work in Venice, written in Franco-Italian. Specifically, I seek to determine the significance of the Venetian additions to the Old French texts - from the inclusion of new verses and physical emphasis on certain lines, to words or passages with embellished or highlighted lettering, as well as the placement and inclusion of colored miniatures, dedications, marginalia, and other material features. This will be a part of a critical literary analysis of Gui alongside other re-authored epics and romances that will provide a holistic approach to understanding the value and integration of French chivalric culture in the Venetian mercantile community.

I have also had the opportunity to frequent a course on Old Occitan, and to attend conferences on medieval southern French urban identity, as well as the Société Internationale Renardienne’s bi-annual conference in Aix-en-Provence. I’ve also traveled some in beautiful Languedoc-Roussillon, making short day trips to the picturesque towns of Nîmes and Sète, with plans to visit Carcassone, Narbonne and Perpignan in the near future.

Traveling aside, sometimes it’s enough to just to play the flaneuse in my own town, letting the pretty narrow streets named after Rabelais and Voltaire lead me where they may, (though preferably to a happy hour with some friends). The experience on a whole has been educational, and a tremendous help to my fluency, and in the coming months I look forward to making the most of my remaining time in France.

Thanks Rachel!  Best of luck for the rest of your stay in Montpellier!

Lecture: Andrea Ciccarelli, Crossing Borders: Considerations on Contemporary Italian Literature, 4/23, 3 pm, Folwell 10

Andrea Ciccarelli is Professor of Italian at Indiana University. He has published widely on Italian literature and culture, with a particular emphasis on modern and contemporary writers. His current book projects are on Exile, Migration, Borders in Contemporary Italian Culture and Tradition and Innovation in Modern Italian Culture. Andrea Ciccarelli is the editor of Italica, the quarterly journal of the American Association of Teachers of Italian.


Monday, April 23, 2012
3:00 pm, Folwell 10

A reception follows the lecture.

Lecture: Eric Marty, "Why Did the 20th Century Take Sade Seriously?" (4/20, 3pm, Folwell 123)

Eric Marty -- Professor, Université Paris 7-Diderot

"Why Did the 20th Century Take Sade Seriously?"



Friday April 20, 2012 at 3:00 pm

Folwell 123

A reception will follow the lecture.

Eric Marty will discuss his most recent book (Pourquoi le vingtième siècle a-t-il pris Sade au sérieux?). He will explore the impact of the Marquis de Sade on the construction of French literary modernity, from the immediate post-war period to the late 20th century. Authors who have "taken Sade seriously" include Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Pierre Klossowski, Roland Barthes, and Philippe Sollers. Lecture In English.

Eric Marty is a professor of French literature at Université Paris 7-Diderot. He is the editor of the complete works of Roland Barthes (published by Le Seuil) and of many books and articles on modern and contemporary French literature.

Roundtable: Corbin Treacy

Human Rights Graduate Minor Colloquium, "Human Rights Research in Action"
Leah Entenmann & Corbin Treacy
Monday April 23, 2012, 3:30 pm
260 Social Sciences

Human rights research is key to understanding how violations occur, how the resulting trauma heals, and ultimately, how violations may be prevented in the future. We are fortunate at the U of M to have many of the best and brightest faculty and student researchers exploring these questions from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Joining us on the 23rd are Human Rights Graduate Minors, Leah Entenmann and Corbin Treacy, discussing the criminalization and punishment of gays and lesbians in Uganda and literary representations of human rights and how literature and human rights advocacy may mutually benefit from a more cohesive linkage. Leah and Corbin are sure to provide with plenty of thought-provoking material. More info...

Alumni Update: Vlad Dima moving to Univ Wisconsin

Congratulations to Vlad Dima! Currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Union College, Vlad will be taking a position as an Assisant Professor in French at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. His area of specialty will be Francophone Film.

Congratulations! Tracy Rutler and Corbin Treacy awarded IDFs

Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowships permit students to research and write in collaboration with faculty mentors in interdisciplinary centers on campus.

Tracy Rutler will be working on her dissertation, "Family Remains: The Politics of Legacy in Eighteenth-Century French Literature” with Prof. Nancy Luxon (Political Science) at the Institute for Advanced Study.
Corbin Treacy will research on his dissertation, "Failed Amnesia, Urgent Memory: Post-1988 Algerian Literature and Film," with Leigh Payne and other affiliated faculty at the Program in Human Rights at the Institute for Global Studies.

Check it out: Univocal Publishing

Univocal Publishing is a small, local, and independent publishing house that specializes in philosophy, art, technology, and poetry. Inspired by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s deployment of the concept of univocity, the press strives to publish thinkers and writers whose voices are singular and diverse.

http://univocalpublishing.com/

Career Networking Breakfast for Graduate Students, Postdoctoral Researchers, and Alumni

WHEN:
Friday, April 13, 2012 from 9-11:30 a.m.

WHERE:
University Hotel Minneapolis - Ballroom
615 Washington Ave. SE
Minneapolis, MN 55414

The event is free, but registration is required due to limited space.

Click here to register.

Armand Renaud 1918-2012

It is with great sadness that the Department of French & Italian announces of the death of Armand Renaud, professor emeritus of French. He was 93 year of age.

For those of you who did not know Armand, it is thanks to his generosity that the Madeleine Renaud Graduate Fellowship was established as a tribute to his wife Madeleine. This fellowship also honors the life and work of Armand Renaud, who gave generously of his learning and wisdom to students, colleagues, and friends during his time in Folwell.

A lovely portrait of Armand and Madeleine Renaud

The Conquest -- a film by Xavier Durrigner

The Conquest, Director Xavier Durrigner, 105 min, France, 2010,
In French with English subtitles.
Showing - Fri, Feb 10 through Thurs, Feb 16

The Film Society of Minneapolis St. Paul presents a larger-than-life account of Nicholas Sarkozy’s 2007 taking of the French presidency in Xavier Durringer’s The Conquest, showing theatrically on Screen 3 at St. Anthony Main Theatre Fri, Feb 10 - Thurs, Feb 16.

Denis Podalydès delivers a witty yet commanding portrayal of Nicolas Sarkozy and his rise to the French presidency through the lens of his unraveling marriage to then-wife Cecilia (Florence Pernel). Never one to disguise his ambition, the film’s Sarkozy curries favor with predecessor Jacques Chirac (Bernard Le Coq) and spars gamely with glib rival Dominique de Villepin (Samuel Labarthe). This lampoon depicts the future president of France as a bold and unashamed virtuoso of political combat, whose inattention to his disintegrating domestic partnership emerges as his chief vulnerability.

With leads brilliantly etching sharp characterizations of living politicians, director Xavier Durringer need never veer too far from reality, even while deploying fictional embellishments and a larger-than-life sense of humor that—with Nicola Piovani’s buoyant score—giddily evoke a circus-like atmosphere. (Description courtesy Music Box Films)

Official Selection - Cannes Film Festival 2011


The Film Society of Minneapolis St. Paul presents the very best of national and international independent cinema on Screen 3 at St. Anthony Main Theatre, 115 SE Main Street, Minneapolis, MN 55414. www.mspfilmsociety.org | Press Release online: http://bit.ly/yJDRsK

Lecture: Claire Nouvet, "Annihilation Through Consumption: Dali’s Double Game" (3/2/2012, 3:00-4:30pm)

Claire Nouvet, "Annihilation Through Consumption: Dali’s Double Game"
Date: 03/02/2012
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
Location: 123 Folwell Hall
Cost: Free
Description:
Annihilation Through Consumption: Dali’s Double Game

Relentlessly and shamelessly, Dali claims to expose in his literary corpus all of his "secrets" which he "feeds," one by one, to his avid readers. One, in particular, will be exposed, most notably in La Vie Secrète de Salvador Dali: the vital role that Gala (his wife and muse) played in making any creative act possible. For all this exposure, the name of "Gala" will be shown to mark in fact the site of a secret that remains intractable. A maternal figure, Gala indeed stands in for an originary and annihilating experience of consumption that preempts self-constitution. And it is ultimately this annihilating consumption that Dali not only "feeds" to the oblivious consumers of his works, but also turns into a creative matrix of sorts.
Contact:
Name: Department of French & Italian
E-mail: frit@umn.edu
Phone: 612.624.4308
Sponsored by: French & Italian

Alumni News: Rob St. Clair interviewed

Rob St. Clair (Ph.D. 2011), Assistant Professor at the College of William & Mary interviewed on the Global Voices™ Journal!

Check out this conversation on his teaching, research interests, and what he's been reading for fun. Follow this link to find out why French poetry is easier than English poetry, how he's had "a number of wonderful ideas that have nearly cost me my life..." Rimbaud's formal subversions, and an argument for why Terry Eagleton should be leisure reading...

On Language Proficiency

This piece by Stephen Brockmann, professor of German at Carnegie Mellon, from the Chronicle of Higher Education on job candidates' language incompetency. What do you think?

Yes, that’s right: these people had applied for a position as assistant professor of French, but when my colleague in French started interviewing them it quickly became clear that their French left more than a little to be desired. And this even though some of them came to us with recommendation letters talking about their “flawless” French.