March Newsletter, 2006

   

Departmental News:

The National Endowment for the Humanities Division of Preservation and Access has awarded full funding to the second phase of "The Renaissance in Print: Sixteenth-Century French Books in the Douglas Gordon Collection." The grant will allow more books to be prepared for the digital exhibit and will permit the creation of metadata to enhance searching and studying the digitized images. Karen James, Ph.D. 1992 and Scholar in Residence, is director of the project, and Mary McKinley is the principal investigator and consultant. The NEH grant will provide funding for several graduate students to assist on the project and receive valuable training in creating digital archives for the humanities.

On March 1 Elisabeth Ladenson gave a talk at Yale University entitled "Barbey d'Aurevilly and the Esthetics of Materiality." On March 28 she will speak at Royal Holloway University in London on the censorship history of Nabokov's Lolita, after which she will give a paper on Flaubert and Sade at the British SDN (19th-century French Studies Society) meeting in Edinburgh on March 30.

At the Renaissance Society of America meeting in San Francisco, March 23-26, Mary McKinley chaired two panels considering "Montaigne and Ethos." The papers from those panels, along with papers from similar panels at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in October 2005, will be published by Cambridge Scholars Press.

Jennifer Tsien presented a paper entitled "La Pucelle entre furie et folie guerrière" at a colloquium in Paris on the theme of Heroism and the Enlightenment, organized by the University of Chicago. Also present were Philippe Roger, Jean-Claude Bonnet, and other people who were exiled from their universities which were closed during the CPE demonstrations. They made the best of their refuge by eating large amounts of foie gras.

Paula Sato presented the paper "The Gothic Bodies of Fu Manchu and Meiling Jin" at the "Bodies, Communities, Regions" 2006 Association for Asian American Studies Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, March 22-26, 2006.

FRANCOPHONE FILM FESTIVAL

Vincent Baudoin, Aline Charles, Isabelle Choquet and Pierre Dairon wish to thank the French Department, the French House and all our colleagues and the residents of the Maison Française who helped us to organize and advertise the Festival (17-19 of March). Thank you very much to our speakers who presented and led the discussions after the screenings: Natasha Copeland, Janet Horne, Hélène Sicard-Cowan and Roland Simon.
The Festival was a success: about 50 persons came to the reception at the Maison Française, 550 spectators came to watch the 5 movies we showed and we had great discussions after the movies. Thank you all!
Photographs from the festival.

Undergraduate News:

Distinguished Majors Program
Présentations de thèses 2006

On Thursday March 30th, students in this year's Distinguished Majors Program in French presented their theses in the French House. Their topics and faculty directors are:

Kelly Olivia Annick Mayer - "L’Anatomie du concept artistique : l’autoportrait visuel et écrit"
Director: Professeur Saunders

Kevin Maskell – "Les Vampires Français du XIXe et XXe Siècles"
Director: Professeur Krueger

Danielle Sewell - "L'exception publique: vers une nouvelle conception de la crise
socio-économique en France"
Director: Professeur Simon

Theresa Davis - "La laïcité : L'avenir de la République"
Director: Professeur Horne

Sarah Raymond - "La crise de l'immigration maghrébine en France: Une analyse des causes"
Director: Professeur Bargach

Michelle Cloud - "Les Champs-Elysées : l’évolution d’une avenue décadente"
Director: Professeur Bargach

Up-coming Events:

   Friday April 14 ~ 3:30 p.m., Cabell 332

VAHEED RAMAZANI
Tulane University

"NATION AND NATALITY
in Zola's
Au Bonheur des Dames"

Reception in Cabell 329

   Friday May 5 ~ 4:00 p.m., Cabell 332