Sports and the Body in Modern France

We are very excited to be offering a brand-new undergraduate French course this spring. Please consider enrolling today!

French 3650, Section 002: "Sports and the Body in Modern France"
MW: 8:15 A.M.-9:30 A.M.
3 credits

Description: Prerequisite: FREN 3015. In the lead-up to the Rio Olympics and the Moscow World Cup, this course will examine the cultural and political uses of sport in the nineteenth through twenty-first centuries, as well as some of the many ways sports have been imagined to make or unmake bodies. Through encounters with literary texts, criticism, film and other cultural materials, we will parse attempts to define what sport is and is not, to understand sport’s ethical, aesthetic, and political implications in the era of mass spectacle, and to describe how sports have participated in shaping bodies in modernity. From the athletic young girls in Proust’s À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs to the sinister games in Perec’s W, from the mythologized footballer in Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s “La Mélancolie de Zidane” to Barthes’ sport “mythologies,” this course will pay close attention to how athletic gestures have been imagined to express aspects of ethnicity, gender, and class identity in motion.

Instructor: T. Wilds

Upcoming Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Conference

 

The Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Conference will be held April 6-8, 2016. The UIC is in its fourth year and provides an opportunity for students with majors or minors in French Studies, Italian Studies, Spanish/Portuguese Studies, ALL, GSD, or GLOS to to showcase their work.

In addition to traditional conference panels and presentations, this year they will be asking students to propose collaborative and discussion-based sessions. The application and abstract deadline is February 24th. More information will be made available on the UIC website z.umn.edu/2016uic. Questions may be directed to Maryanne Williams at will2381@umn.edu.

Mulhollem Cravens Leadership Scholarship

$5,000 Internship Award for CLA Students

CLA Career Services introduces the Mulhollem Cravens Leadership Scholarship. This scholarship opportunity will combine the hands-on experience of a summer internship with an internship reflection course, enhanced career coaching and alumni mentoring opportunities.

Application deadline is December 15. No need to have an internship secured by the time of application. For more information and to apply, visit cla.umn.edu/leadership-scholarship.

SITE Internships

Wish you had a paid opportunity to experience the Italian language and culture while making a difference in the classroom? We have exciting news to share with you.

We have recently developed a partnership with the Study, Intercultural Training, and Experience Program (SITE) to ensure two recent majors in Italian paid internships in Lombardy as English Teaching Assistants. Our first two interns are in Italy right now, and they are having a very exciting time of their lives. You could be the next one!

For information about the program and to submit your application please contact Professor Susanna Ferlito (ferli001@umn.edu) by December 15, 2016.

To learn more about the SITE program, please click here: http://siteprogram.pacioli.net/.
 
"Italy, and specifically Crema, is fantastic! The city is very charming, and I'm enjoying my experience with a host family (I have my own apartment, but they live below). The program itself is also going well. I teach hour-long English conversation/listening lessons to first and third-year students at the moment, and I'm having a lot of fun doing that. Eventually, they will have me teach CLIL, which involves teaching specific subject material in English. On the side, I do private lessons in order to live more comfortably, and this, too, is very enjoyable. I've been starting to travel around northern Italy, and I've found that in the last two months alone I have become very"comfortable with the pace of life here and the local culture. My Italian is also rapidly progressing too!"
-Nick Lambert
"The SITE program has been one of my best experiences so far! I love everything about it and am having the time of my life! Not only do you get work experience, but it also teaches so many other important life lessons that can be applied to a number of different things. The workload isn't heavy either, so there's plenty of time to travel and make friends. I'm enjoying it so much so that I already am thinking about signing up again for next year!"
-Emily Irsfeld

Lecture by French author Réjane Sénac

Upcoming events featuring visiting Professor Alessia Ricciardi

Luncheon and Seminar for graduate students and faculty
Thursday, October 8. Folwell Hall 113, 11:00 A.M.-1 P.M.

Free Use/Monasticism/Digital Media
In The Highest Poverty (2013), the philosopher Giorgio Agamben sheds light on a surprising and perplexing affinity between contemporary digital culture and the Franciscan school of monasticism by revisiting the medieval theological controversy Alessia Ricciardi surrounding the notion of free use. In our discussion, we will consider the implications of Agamben’s thinking for the present-day problem of freely shared digital media and intellectual property. For this event only, please RSVP to hanza016@umn.edu regarding your participation in the luncheon and seminar on October 8 no later than 12 P.M. on Monday, October 5.

Public Lecture
Friday, October 9. Nicholson 135, 2:30 P.M.-5:00 P.M.

Red Desert: Woman as a Form of Life
This lecture focuses on the strategic role assigned to the character of Giuliana, who is played by Monica Vitti, in Michelangelo Antonioni’s landmark film, Red Desert (1964). Confronted by the signs of ecological crisis and unsettling technological change in the film’s setting of Ravenna, Giuliana undertakes a search for new ethical alternatives to the prevailing ways of thinking and being. We will assess her responses to her predicament with the help of the poet Anne Carson’s brilliant lyrical engagements with Antonioni’s masterpiece.


Both events are sponsored with the support of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, MIMS Graduate Group, and the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Italian Cultural Center.


Alessia Ricciardi is a Professor in the French and Italian Department and the Comparative Literary Studies Program at Northwestern Universitiy. Her first book, The Ends of Mourning, was published by Stanford University Press in 2003 and won the MLA's 2004
 Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literature. Her Alessia Ricciardi second book, After La Dolce Vita: A Cultural Prehistory of Berlusconi's Italy, was published by Stanford in 2012 and won the MLA’s 2013 
Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies. Currently, Professor Ricciardi is writing her third book, which is titled Woman as a Form of Life: Gender Politics in Antonioni's Films. Her essays have appeared in PMLA, Modernism/Modernity, Modern Language Notes, diacritics, and The Romanic Review, among other publications. Her most recent articles are about works by Pasolini, Antonioni, Foucault, Deleuze, and Agamben.

Two Upcoming Events with Christophe Wall-Romana

"Soirée Jean Epstein" 

Jeudi, le 1 octobre — 19h
Alliance Française Grande Salle,  113 N 1st St.
$3 pour les membres, sinon $5.
http://afmsp.org/events/soiree-jean-epstein/

Faites la redécouverte d’un des grands cinéastes du muet qui a influencé toute l’histoire du cinéma... Nous montrerons et discuterons des extraits de ses films, tout en touchant à sa biographie, en une soirée interactive servant d’introduction à la belle rétrospective qui aura lieu au Walker Art Center en octobre et novembre 2015. Cet événement sera présenté en français par Christophe Wall-Romana, professeur à l’Université de Minnesota et Directeur des études “Graduate” au département de français et italien.

Film Screening: FINIS TERRAE, 1928 (End of the Earth)
Directed by Jean Epstein

Part of The Intelligence of Cinema: Masterpieces of Jean Epstein
“A masterpiece of silent cinema.” —Arte

DATE       October 7, 2015

TIME        7:30 pm
PLACE     Walker Cinema
PRICE     $9 ($7 Walker members, students, and seniors)

http://www.walkerart.org/calendar/2015/end-earth-finis-terrae

Both sharing the experience of island life and the story of a group of kelp fisherman, the film becomes a psychological documentary seen through the eyes of a hallucinating character. Jean Epstein plays with subjective distortions of reality in one of the greatest films about fluid matter and sensation. 1928, DCP, 80 minutes.

Post-Screening Discussion
Following the screening, join Christophe Wall-Romana for a discussion about the film. Wall-Romana is associate professor in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Minnesota, where he is also affiliated with the new graduate major in Moving Image Studies. His research has focused on the textual intersections of French poetry and cinema, especially around the post–World War II narrative avant-garde in France. He is the author of Jean Epstein (Manchester, 2012), the first monograph in English on the filmmaker.
 

FUNDING
Support for this program is provided by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, La Cinémathèque française, and the Cultural Service at the Consulate General of France in Chicago. This presentation is made possible by generous support from the Bentson Foundation.

In the Community: EXPO Milano 2015

FRIT French student, Hanna Worku, along with 120 other US undergraduate and graduate students served as student ambassadors at the USA Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015. Students from 94 universities, 34 states, together speaking 28 languages facilitated conversations with guests about the Expo theme "Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life". Tours were given to a variety of international dignitaries, business leaders, and celebrities including U.S.First Lady Michelle Obama and the presidential delegation from the USA Pavilion on June 18th, 2015.

Language Alumni Reunion

Alumni Reunion Event Info

On Saturday morning, April 25, 174 alumni from GSD, French & Italian, and Spanish & Portuguese came to the beautifully remodeled Folwell Hall to enjoy the company of faculty, staff, and new or old friends. They gathered on the fourth floor for coffee and pastries, voted for the best student photographs from the past year's study abroad experiences, and donned "conversation pins" to facilitate discussions of how their language studies have enriched and informed their lives. Everyone then went to the first floor to participate in three mini-class sessions, choosing from the following seventeen mini-classes taught by a mix of faculty, students, and alumni:

Session A Teaching Abroad - the Benefits and challenges Regions of France Language Learning Outside the Classroom Finnish Origins: Linguistics % & Genetics Danger in Francophone Africa Convivencia in Medieval Iberia

Session B Saints and Soldiers in Medieval France The Historic Cultural Phenomenon of the Cuban Rumba Language Leaning Assumptions Growing Anti-Semitism in Europe Divine Decadance: Berlin in the Roaring '20s U.S. Latino Theater

Session C 25 Years After the Wall Only in Italy: Events not to be Missed Food, Energy & Politics in Germany World Cafe: Contemporary Language Evolution & Impact of New Technologies Latino Immigration

Comments from some of the alumni about their experience at the reunion:

Cynthia G. Fischer, B.A. 1972, Italian, Lawyer at Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP

"I loved the reunion! Especially meeting so many Italian majors as I was the only one when I was majoring in Italian. It was lonely! I particularly enjoyed talking to a young man who is thinking of going to law school. I too became a lawyer and Italian is what got me my first job at an Italian law firm in New York."

Sue Wickham, B.A. 1973 French, Retired Director of Human Resources, Department of Administration, State of Minnesota

"After college much of what you hear is in sound bites. It's exciting to be able to hear what's below the surface on current issues."

Gretchen Walker, B.A. 1979 French, who is now a Reference Librarian at the Minneapolis law firm Dorsey and Whitney

"So energizing to return to Folwell Hall! The 4th floor commons area seems like a great space for enjoying a quiet moment, or the community of others. The programs I attended encompassed 3 languages and cultures. The combined reunion of many language departments provided opportunities to explore and expand knowledge of other cultures. As always, a memorable occasion to re-connect with old friends and to make new acquaintances."

Ablavi Epou, B.A. 2013, French, Political Science, Global Studies, Human Resources Operations Student Service Specialist

"The 2015 CLA Language Alumni was very intriguing. The series of topics to attend, very well, depict the strengths of the CLA Language programs. The three presentations I attended were simply the tip of the iceberg; they showed not only how dedicated the language professors at the University of Minnesota are, but also dedication to their students. My best friend (a U of M alumni, French major like myself) and I felt very much at home. There is no doubt of the connection learning a language can provide for an individual. The number of turn outs to the reunion speak volume. A shout to one of the best Professors I have had at the U of M, Monsieur Bruno Chaouat, c'était un plaisir de vous revoir. Je manquerai pour toujours d'avoir été étudiante dans votre classe. I will also be looking forward to the next Language Alumni Reunion."

Dana Boyle, B.A. 1979, Italian, Human Factors Graduate Student, former V.P. Engagement Life Science Alley

"Integrating alumni, faculty and current students gave the reunion such a vibrant feel. It is clear that the global orientation we represent is increasingly seen as relevant and respected in our dynamically changing world. I greatly appreciated the diversity and quality of the mini-sessions and the chance to meet so many intelligent and interesting participants."

Alumni Reunion Event Pictures

Quote from Alumni about Reunion Event

"Returning to Folwell Hall was like returning to that chapter of my life when so much was ahead of me. My professors and fellow students taught me to harbor a keen curiosity for history and the arts and incited a passion to shape the future; my French Studies proved central to my formation. I hope for many more opportunities to connect with foreign language alumni."

— Nicole Frank, B.A. French Studies and English, Class of 2002

Language Case Statement

JE-SUIS-CHARLIE

Malraux and the Transcendence of Death: The Antimemoires

Refugees in Cinecittà: Screening and Discussion with Noa Steimatsky

Friday, April 24, 2015 - 3:00pm

Best Buy Theater (Northrop)

Cinecitta, the great movie studio built by Mussolini, became universally known as “Hollywood on the Tiber” and as Fellini’s second home. But in an interim period (1944-50) it served very different functions, quite unlike that of a dream factory. Under the Nazi occupation of Rome it was a transit camp for deportees, then following the liberation, it was transformed by the Allies into one of the largest refugee camps in Italy. Directed by Marco Bertozzi and based on groundbreaking research by Noa Steimatsky, Refugees in Cinecittà explores the fortunes of the Cinecitta camp and its inhabitants, unfolding a story hitherto untold in the chronicles of European reconstruction, and of film history.

Professor Noa Steimatsky will introduce the film and lead a post-screening discussion.

Noa Steimatsky is Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the use of landscape – natural, built, and ruined – in post-World War II European cinema, on the human face as privileged site of representation and, more broadly, on the figural, iconic efficacy of the moving image. Among her publications: Italian Locations: Reinhabiting the Past in Postwar Cinema (University of Minnesota Press 2008), "The Cinecittà Refugee Camp" (October) and “Incoherent Spasms and the Dignity of Signs” (in Opening Bazin, ed. Dudley Andrew). Her new book The Face of Film is forthcoming with Oxford University Press in 2015.

For more info and trailer: http://goo.gl/Wpje4L

Refugees in Cinecittà:

Thomas Baldwin's Lecture: "Proust in Theory (Barthes, Deleuze, Guattari)"

Thomas Baldwin will talk on Friday April 3rd on the topic, "Proust in Theory (Barthes, Deleuze, Guattari)". The lecture will take place in 121 Folwell at 2:30 PM.

Thomas Baldwin is Reader in French at the University of Kent (UK), where he directs the MA in Modern French Studies and is co-director of the Centre for Modern European Literature. He is also the general editor of the Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature.

Thomas Baldwin's research interests are in nineteenth and twentieth century French literature, post-war literary and critical theory, and the relation between the literary and the visual (in painting and photography). He has published extensively on Marcel Proust, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari.

During his visit to Minnesota, Thomas Baldwin will also lead a workshop for faculty and graduate students on Anne F. Garréta’s La Décomposition. Garréta’s novel is a complex critical palimpsest of Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu in the mode of detective fiction. The workshop will be held on Thursday, April 2nd from 11-12:30pm.

"Proust in Theory (Barthes, Deleuze, Guattari)"

Sven-Erik Rose: Heideggerian Ontology and the Holocaust

The Department of French & Italian along with the Center for Jewish Studies & the Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch invite you to Sven-Erik Rose's talk entitled "Heideggerian Ontology and the Holocaust: Piotr Rawicz's Le Sang du ciel."

Sven-Erik Rose is an associate professor of German and affiliate in French, in Comparative Literature, and in Jewish Studies at the University of California, Davis. His book Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789–1848 was published by Brandeis University Press in 2014. He has published articles on German, French, Swedish, and Yiddish literature and culture in journals including The Goethe Yearbook, French Studies, Eighteenth Century Studies, New German Critique, and Postmodern Culture. He was also the guest editor of a special issue of New German Critique:Ambivalent Sites of Memory in Postwar Germany, 2011. His current book project, The Holocaust and the Archive from the Cold War to Postmemory, examines the role of real and virtual Holocaust archives in shaping how the Holocaust has been understood and remembered.

Heideggerian Ontology and the Holocaust

Italian-Ghanaian Filmaker and Activist Fred Kunwornu

Please join us in welcoming critically acclaimed Italian-Ghanaian filmmaker and activist, Fred Kuwornu, to campus February 26th and 27th. He will be presenting clips from his film in progress, BlaxpoItalian: Blackness in Italian Cinema, on Thursday, February 26 (5-6:15) in 10 Blegen Hall and screening his film,18 IUS SOLI, a documentary that traces the twisted path to citizenship for the children born of immigrants in modern Italy, on Friday, February 27 (3:00-5:00PM) in 275 Nicholson Hall. Friday's screening will be followed by a Q&A session.

Blaxpoitalian

Citizenship in Contemporary Italy

Charlie Hebdo Symposium

Following the Charlie Hebdo incident in Paris, France, the University of Minnesota held the symposium: “Can One Laugh at Everything? Satire and Free Speech after Charlie.” A panel of speakers talked about how to respect pluralism and diversity while also upholding the principles of freedom of speech and expression. Please open the following link for remarks from William Mitchell constitutional law professor Anthony Winer, 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning Star Tribune editorial cartoonist Steve Sack, University of Minnesota media ethics and law professor Jane Kirtley, and U of M French professor Bruno Chaouat.

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/02/03/mpr_news_presents

Thurs, 1/29: Satire and Free Speech After Charlie

Je préfère mourir

Tue, 12/2: Hosting the Ambassador of Italy, Claudio Bisogniero

The Department of French and Italian was pleased to host the Ambassador of Italy, Claudio Bisogniero, on Tuesday, December 2, 2014. The Ambassador was greeted by faculty and dignitaries at the Elmer L. Anderson Library, and treated to a display of Italian Manuscripts presented by Dr. Erika Lee.