La Maison Française is open Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
The building re-opens a half-hour before evening programs. All events are open to the public and free of charge unless otherwise indicated.

2011

January | February | March | April | May

September | October | November | December

Back to current events

Monday, January 24, 7:00 p.m.
Florence Gould Event

A Special Edition of French Literature in the Making

ANTOINE GALLIMARD
President-Director General, Editions Gallimard; president, Syndicat national de l’édition (SNE)

in conversation with
OLIVIER BARROT

Les 100 ans des Editions Gallimard

In 1988, Antoine Gallimard became the head of the Editions Gallimard, one of the world’s most prestigious publishing houses. He succeeded his father, Claude Gallimard who, himself, had followed his father, the founder of this venerable enterprise now celebrating its centennial year. Gallimard is a unique, independent house, boasting more Nobel Prize winners and Goncourt Prize novels than any other French publisher. In 22 years at its helm, Antoine Gallimard has both followed a singular tradition and kept his company young and forward looking into the 21st century. One of the most respected persons in his industry, Antoine Gallimard was elected President of the French National Publishers Syndicate in 2010.

In French.

Presented with the additional support of Sofitel, Open Skies, CulturesFrance, and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy

Thursday, January 27, 7:00 p.m.

POSTPONED BECAUSE OF BAD WEATHER.

RESCHEDULED ON MARCH 10

ANKA MUHLSTEIN
Writer; author of Napoléon à Moscou; A Passion for Freedom: The Life of Astolphe de Custine; Garçon, un cent d’huitres. Balzac et la table

Proust and Balzac: A Closer Look at the
Baron de Charlus

Proust's contemporaries were obsessed by the question of keys, of real life models, and seem to have neglected the literary models that were essential to his creative process. Through the very complex character of Charlus, Anka Muhlstein will show the points of contact between Proust, Saint-Simon, and above all Balzac.

Tuesday, February 1, 7:00 p.m.

Book reading

EUGENE NICOLE
Professor of French, NYU; novelist; author of Alaska; L’Oeuvre des mers, a cycle of five books, including Un adieu au long cours (L’Olivier/Le Seuil, 2011); à coups de pieds de mouche (Le Bleu du ciel, 2011)

Long cours & pieds de mouche

Outre ses travaux sur l’onomastique littéraire, sur la poésie contemporaine et sur Proust  (il a notamment collaboré à l’édition de À la recherche du temps perdu dans l’édition de la bibliothèque de la Pléiade et dans celle du Livre de poche classique), Eugène Nicole a écrit six romans. Cinq d’entre eux constituent le cycle de L’OEuvre des mers, dont la première partie a été publiée pour la 1ère fois en 1988.

En 1956, un garçon de quatorze ans quitte son archipel natal, Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, au large du Canada. Des années après, il retraverse mentalement l'Atlantique, pour raconter ce pays de naufrages,de neige et de brouillard, et trouver dans l'écriture les reliefs oubliés de cet univers foisonnant de personnages, microcosme des îles et emblématique théâtre paroissial.

À l’origine, à coups de pied-de-mouche fut un journal intermittent entrecoupé de notations non datées: nouvelles en trois lignes, rêve dont on s’éveille au milieu de la nuit, choses vues et entendues, réserve de citations, aventures de l’immédiat.  Les repères temporels s’estompant, s’y substitua peu à peu, la cartographie d’une vie dans ses navettes entre ses lieux (New York, Paris, l’enfance) et dans ses constantes:  l’attention au « murmure » et à la prose du monde.

In French.

Wednesday, February 2, 7:00 p.m.
Instiute of French Studies Colloquium

PATRICK WEIL
CNRS; Université Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne; visiting professor, NYU; author of Etre français: les quatre piliers de la nationalité (Ed. de l'Aube, 2011)

Being French: The Four Pillars of a Nationality

Is there a French national identity? At the conclusion of a controversial, presidentially-led, public debate, historian and political scientist Patrick Weil takes on the subject. Four pillars, he argues in his most recent essay (January 2011), have served as a shared reference and a common socio-political project for France and the French. The principle of equality, the French language, the positive memory of the French Revolution, and the principle of laïcité: all products of French history, having resisted numerous challenges, survived many constitutions and even more governments, these foundational principles are still goals to measure up to. They are attractive and inclusive rather than grounds for exclusion.

Thursday, February 3, 7:00 p.m.

TOM CONLEY
Professor, Departments of Romance Languages and Visual/Environmental Studies, Harvard University; author of Cartographic Cinema; The Self-Made Map; An Errant Eye (University of Minnesota Press, 2010)

An Errant Eye: Poetry and Topography in Early Modern France

Deciphering maps as poetry, and poems as maps.
Tom Conley’s new book, An Errant Eye,studies how topography, the art of describing local space and place, developed literary and visual form in early modern France. Arguing for a “new poetics of space” ranging throughout French Renaissance poetry, prose, and cartography, Tom Conley performs dazzling readings of maps, woodcuts, and poems to plot a topographical shift in the late Renaissance in which space, subjectivity, and politics fall into crisis. He charts the paradox of a period whose demarcation of national space through cartography is rendered unstable by an ambient world of printed writing.

Monday, February 7, 7:00 p.m.

VINCENT DEBAENE
Assistant Professor of French, Columbia University; author of L’Adieu au voyage. L’ethnologie française entre science et littérature; co-author, Claude Lévi-Strauss. L’homme au regard éloigné 

French Anthropology and Literature: From Mauss and Bataille to Lévi-Strauss and Barthes

Drawing on his new book, “L’Adieu au Voyage”, published last fall by Gallimard in its Bibliothèque des Sciences Humaines series, Vincent Debaene will discuss the complex and ambivalent relationship of French anthropology to literature. He will try to seize the very identity of a tradition which, since the 1920’s, mixes claims of scientificity and desire for literature, hardcore structures and avant-garde literary experiments. Marcel Mauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss, but also Georges Bataille and Roland Barthes are characters in this story.

Tuesday, February 8, 7:00 p.m.

YVES CITTON
Professor, Université de Grenoble-3; CNRS; visiting professor, NYU; author of L’avenir des Humanités. Économie de la connaissance ou cultures de l’interprétation

Société de la connaissance ou cultures de l'interprétation ?

En parlant de « communication », de « société de l’information » ou d’« économie de la connaissance », on laisse souvent penser que le savoir se réduit à une masse de données segmentées, isolées, brevetables et commercialisables comme n’importe quelle marchandise. Devant cette vision appauvrie et sclérosée, il convient de renverser la perspective et de réviser notre imaginaire du savoir. Les Humanités, souvent considérées comme poussiéreuses voire inutiles, cultivent une compétence incontournable, celle de l’interprétation. Très loin de la simple « lecture » automatisée d’informations computables, revêche à toute réduction économiste, l’interprétation est une activité qui demande à être cultivée par un soin très particulier. La dynamique propre à ce geste diffus dans toutes nos pratiques est faite de tâtonnements, d’errances et d’erreurs, de suspens, de sauts, de bifurcations, de rencontres – où l’intuition (esthétique) joue un rôle aussi important que la systématicité (scientifique).  Devant l’emballement de la course au profit, l’exacerbation des inégalités sociales et le mur écologique qui nous font face, une reconsidération des Humanités est indispensable pour quiconque se préoccupe de l’avenir de l’humanité.

In French.

Tuesday, February 15, 7:00 p.m.
Institute of French Studies Colloquium

Haiti: the Unfinished Independence

Jean-François Brière, University at Albany, SUNY
Jonathan Katz, Associated Press
Margaret L. Satterthwaite, NYU School of Law
Chelsea Stieber, NYU (moderator)

One year after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010, this panel seeks to reflect on enduring challenges to Haiti’s sovereignty, over two centuries of independence. Participants will explore the economic and political burden of the indemnities levied by France in the nineteenth century, and the relationships with the rising U.S. power. They will address the role of NGOs in Haiti before and after the earthquake, and discuss the current political situation and the future of the sovereign state.

Wednesday, February 16, 6:15 p.m. (note time)

LOCATION: Michelson Theater, Rm. 648 NYU Tisch School of the Arts 721 Broadway,

ERIC LE ROY
Chef de Service, Archives françaises du film (CNC); vice-président, Fédération internationale des archives du film

Occupation, Collaboration, Résistance, 1940-1944: Short Propaganda Films Made in France

Screening of rare, newly restored, politically controversial shorts, made under Vichy. Introduced by French historian and archivist Eric Le Roy, who oversaw their preservation.

Les Corrupteurs (The Bribers)
29 mn, France, 1941 Director: Pierre Ramelot
Les Corrupteurs was the leading French film of anti-Semitic propaganda made during the German occupation of France. Conceived of as an educational film, Les Corrupteurs is a drama which includes archival images. In cartoonish form, the film conveys shameful justifications for anti-Semitic laws, arrests and imprisonment, and is accompanied with repugnant commentary. Despite its mediocre directing by a jack-of-all-trades of French film, Les Corrupteurs is important testimony of anti-Semitic propaganda under the Vichy regime. This medium-length film was screened prior to Henri Decoin’s feature-length Les Inconnus dans la maison, an adaptation of Simenon’s novel.
 
Le Jardin sans fleur (The Garden without Flowers)
8 mn, France, 1942 Director: Louis Merlin
A story about the nightmare of falling birthrates: the world is suddenly deprived of its flowers. We see a village going to ruin because it has no children. It contains a short excerpt of a speech by Pétain.
 
Français, souvenez-vous (France, remember!)
2 mn, France, 1944 Director: Georges Jaffé
An educational documentary with statistics (unemployment figures from 1940 to 1944) that attribute the disappearance of French unemployment to the “fraternal” reception of French workers in German factories. “Work for France and peace in Europe.” The film’s images of workers in German factories were taken from reportage films made by France-Actualités. According to a contemporary, “The dialogue caused such hysterical laughter in cinemas that the film was screened only for a short time.”
 
La France est foutue (France is Going to the Dogs)
6 mn, France,1942 Director: unknown
A young French functionary makes an appeal to his fellow citizens that France, even if occupied, must maintain its ideals and values: “France!” home of collective labor, proud of its culture, traditions and educational system... It now must face the black market, the American threat and Argentine tango. France is Mermoz, Racine, Saint Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, Chartres, Pasteur, Saint Vincent de Paul and Charles Péguy. “France, a missionary country and mankind’s greatest hope!”
 
Autour de Brazzaville (Around Brazzaville)
25 mn, France, 1944 Directors: François Villiers, Germain Krull
The film opens with the words of General De Gaulle: “The crime of the Armistice was surrendering as if France were not an empire” (August 1940). This empire is described in this documentary using Africa as an example (Brazzaville became the symbolic capital of the Free French Forces). The film moves from the sinister episode at Montoire to the arrival of De Gaulle, Leclerc and Pleven in Douala in 1940. A presentation follows of French Equatorial Africa in terms of geography (water, territorial development, public works – bridges, the Congo-Ocean railway, airlines), climate (the different kinds of resources: natural rubber for military purposes, cotton, coffee, palm oil, gold), and from a strategic and human point of view (importance of native manpower, which the filmmakers show at work “in age old landscapes”). The film also mentions the French colonial administration, which is active in the fight against sleeping sickness, training health assistants, building hospitals, maternity wards, orphanages and schools (that “allow them to free themselves of the strange habits of native women”), and of course the missions that must face “a society dominated by a primitive spirit.” The finale shows marching Senegalese riflemen: “Free France rises from the equatorial forest.”

Sponsored by Cinema Studies, La Maison Française, Remarque Institute, NYU/CNRS Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Science

Thursday, February 17, 7:00 p.m.

SARAH KAY
Professor and Chair, Department of French and Italian, Princeton University; author of The Place of Thought. The Complexity of One in Late Medieval French Didactic Poetry; co-editor, The Troubadors: An Introduction and The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature

Animals and the Ethics of Medieval Reading

David and Goliath, bas de page in Princeton MS 82, fol. 244v.

Sarah Kay explores the impact on medieval readers of the fact that medieval books are produced in a context involving the systematic exploitation of animals, and written on parchment that is made from their skins. Connections sparked between this parchment support and the content of texts copied upon it can produce an uncanny short-circuit between reader and page, whereby the page may appear as a phantasmatic double of the reader's own skin, whether as an envelope or as an opposing face. Reading becomes charged with affect; and the categorical distinction between human beings and other animals insisted on by medieval philosophy is undermined. An ethics of reading is one that responds to this ethos of the medieval page.

SPECIAL EVENT

February 24 - 26

Festival of New French Writing: French & American Authors in Conversation

Organized by the Center for French Civilization and Culture of NYU, CulturesFrance, and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy

Curated by Olivier Barrot & Tom Bishop

Location: Hemmerdinger Hall NYU Silver Center, 1st floor 100 Washington Square East

In French and English.

Simultaneous translation available for this event.

For a complete schedule of the event, please go to http://www.frenchwritingfestival.com/

Tuesday, March 1, 7:00 p.m.

OPHRA YERUSHALMI
Pianist, film director

presents her documentary film
Chopin’s Afterlife (2005, 54 minutes. In English.)

Is Chopin's Music too beautiful?

A dialogue between the film's director-pianist Ophra Yerushalmi and other musicians and artists takes on this paradox.

The film was born one afternoon at the Père Lachaise cemetary in Paris, triggered by the gesture of a young couple laying a bouquet of flowers at Chopin's grave.

Chopins Afterlife is a personal essay of a concert pianist searching for Frédéric Chopin. "I am a pianist because of Chopin. He has been a constant presence in my life". Chopin's music is the work of one of the boldest minds in music history. The film is an attempt to bridge the gap between Chopin the romantic and Chopin the revolutionary - to understand what is unique about the music and its meaning for us today.

"In the process of making this film I have found Chopin increasingly fascinating and intriguing". This documentary hopes to challenge the viewers to ask their own, new questions about Chopin's gift and his gift to us.

Chopin's Afterlife had its first public screening in New York at the Yamaha Salon of YASI on November 3, 2005 and in Cracow, Poland on December 7, 2005.

Wednesday, March 2, 7:00 p.m.

TIMOTHY J. REISS
Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature; Distinguished Scholar in Residence, NYU; author of Mirages of the Selfe: Patterns of Personhood in Ancient and Early Modern Europe

De Bry, Stradanus, Flying Monsters and Globalizing Myths of European Expansion: From the Argonauts to Michelet

A famous image designed by Stradanus, issued in a series in 1589, again for the Columbus centenary and popularized by de Bry in 1594, of Magellan passing through his eponymous straits encapsulates a powerful symbolic story of European expansion and domination. Its iconography incarnates a globalizing tale that “starts” with colonizing Argonauts, Hercules and Alexander, incorporates myths drawn from Persian, Arab and Turkish story, and folds into these American and Western European elements common to numbers of writers, from the friars and historians of American invasion (and often their indigenous sources) to sailors like Alfonse de Saintonge or Jacques Cartier, naturalists like Pierre Belon, Ariosto and the Pleiade poets and many others. It is a symbolic story still vitally alive in the nineteenth century, from Coleridge to Michelet and Wagner, if critically in some of these.

March 4 - 6

CONFERENCE

Translating the Encyclopédie in the Global Eighteenth Century

Published in Paris between 1751 and 1772, in 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of plates, the Encyclopédie contains some 77,000 articles written by more than 140 contributors. It mobilized many of the great – and the not-so-great – philosophes of the eighteenth century, and presented itself as an all-encompassing reference work for the arts and sciences, while at the same time serving as a war machine for the Enlightenment. This colloquium is part of a series initiated by the ARTFL project at the University of Chicago around the digitization of the Encyclopédie. The 2011 installment of this annual colloquium focuses on the idea of translation.

Conference organized by Lucien Nouis (NYU) and Andrew H. Clarke (Fordham)

March 4

Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus
113 West 60th street President's Dining Room, 12th Floor

1:30—3:00 p.m.       Translations of the Encyclopédie (I)

Encyclopédie Redux: Cassin’s Dictionary of Philosophical Untranslatables
Emily Apter, NYU
The Encyclopédie’s Transmission in Indisciplinary Directions
Yves Citton, Université de Grenoble

3:15—5:15 p.m.        History, Race and the Natural Sciences
Buffon’s Absence
Joanna Stalnaker, Columbia

Africa and Slavery in the Encyclopédie
Andrew Curran, Wesleyan

Dead Time: Phrasing the Past in the French Eighteenth Century
Daniel Brewer, University of Minnesota

5:30 p.m.                   Keynote

DAVID BELL, Princeton University

"Du différent génie des peuples naissent les différents idiomes":
the Problem of Language and National Character in Eighteenth-Century France

March 5 – NYU, 19 University Place, Auditorium First Floor 

10:00—12:00 p.m.    From Translation to Navigation: The ARTFL Digital Encyclopédie

Robert Morrissey, University of Chicago
Glenn Roe, University of Chicago
Glovis Gladstone, University of Chicago

1:15—3:30 p.m.       The “Planches” and the Diagram

The Culture of the Diagram
John Bender, Stanford University; Michael Marrinan, Stanford University
Translating the Planches: from Productive Scenes to Productive Architecture
Anthony Vidler, Cooper Union

3:45—5:45 The Encyclopédie and the Peripheral Enlightenment

Coffee and Cafés in Translation between the Orient and the West
Thierry Rigogne, Fordham
Centering Enlightenment in a networked age
David Bates, UC Berkeley

Encyclopedism and Global Ambition in the Venetian Republic of the Late Enlightenment
Clorinda Donato, CSU Long Beach

7:00                      Keynote

JONATHAN ISRAEL, Institute for Advanced Studies

Why was the Encyclopédie banned by the French Crown, the Spanish Crown and the Papacy in 1759?

March 6 – NYU

Maison Française
16 Washington Mews (corner of University Place)

9:30-11:30 Translations of the Encyclopédie (II)

La traduction comme obstétrique: la grammaire des arts à l’épreuve du silence de la technique
Pierre Caye, CNRS
La traduction de l’ordre encyclopédique dans l’Encyclopédie méthodique, ou l’Encyclopédie dans la modernité
Martine Groult, CNRS

The Question Concerning Technology and the Encyclopédie
Anne Deneys-Tunney, NYU

11:30- 12:30 Closing Round Table: New Access, New Readings

Conference organized with the generous support at NYU of the Humanities Initiative, the Department of French, the Department of History, and the Center for French Civilization and Culture, and at Fordham of the Dean of Fordham College Lincoln Center, the Departments of History, Modern Languages, the Program in Literary Studies, and the NY 18th-Century Seminar.

CINEMA

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2011
Screenings presented in cooperation with Unifrance, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, and the IFC Center

Location: IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas (at West 3rd St)
Tickets: $14. General Public $10. with NYU i.d. (these screenings only)
Contact: 212-924-7771 www.ifccenter.com

Friday, March 4 at 9:30 p.m.

Think Global, Act Rural / Solutions locales pour un désordre global
2010, 113 minutes. In French with English subtitles.

In what's already been called a "radical and exhilarating" documentary manifesto, the unstoppable Serreau digs into the problem of industrialized agriculture, quizzing farmers and philosophers across the globe.

Followed by Q&A with director Coline Serreau

Sunday, March 6 at 9:00 p.m.

The Long Falling / Où va la nuit
2011, 105 minutes. In French with English subtitles.
Martin Provost re-teams with SERAPHINE star Yolande Moreau for this heartfelt drama, based on Keith Ridgway's novel. The film follows the story of a long-suffering wife who takes revenge and bonds with her gay son in this suspenseful one-of-a-kind story of sin and salvation.

Followed by Q&A with director MARTIN PROVOST

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema runs from March 3 to 13, presenting the New York premieres of new French films.
Screenings take place at the Walter Reade Theater, FIAF, BAM, and at the IFC Center.
Complete schedule available at: www.rendezvouswithfrenchcinema.com

Monday, March 7, 7:00 p.m.

Discussion and reading

George Perec’s The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise
(Verso, 2010; translated by David Bellos)

DAVID BELLOS
Professor of French and Comparative Literature, Princeton University; author of Georges Perec: A Life in Words

EMMANUELLE ERTEL
Assistant Professor of French, NYU; translator; author of La Maison des mots

Wednesday, March 9, 7:00 p.m.
Institute of French Studies Colloquium

New Grounds for Race-equality Policies and Legal Decisions:
A French-American Dialogue

REVA SIEGEL, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law, Yale University, author of From Colorblindness to Antibalkanization: An Emerging Ground of Decision in Race Equality Cases, Yale Law Journal (forthcoming2011)

PATRICK WEIL, Senior Research Fellow in History and Political Science at the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique), visiting Professor at NYU’s Institute of French Studies (spring 2011), author Races at the Gate: Racial Distinctions in Immigration Policy: A Comparison between France and the United States, in From Europe to North America, Migration Control in the Nineteenth Century (2003).

Moderated by RAHSAAN MAXWELL, assistant professor of political science (UMass Amherst), author of Assimilation, Expectations, and Attitudes: How Ethnic Minority Migrant Groups Feel About Mainstream Society, Du Bois Review (2008)

For decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has sharply divided in equal protection race discrimination cases. Should the Equal Protection Clause be interpreted through a colorblind principle applied to all individuals or through an antisubordination principle primarily concerned with group inequalities? Reva Siegel argues that a rising third perspective on equal protection has been guiding the opinions of swing Justices: a concern about the social divisiveness that results both from extreme racial stratification and unconstrained racial remedies. Could this new legal ground for race-equality policies inspire the French as they seek to implement policies fighting racial discriminations but fear the divisiveness of racial categorizations? Is this principle easily enforceable and sufficient to combat racial discriminations?

Thursday, March 10, 7:00 p.m.

ANKA MUHLSTEIN
Writer; author of Napoléon à Moscou; A Passion for Freedom: The Life of Astolphe de Custine; Garçon, un cent d'huitres. Balzac et la table

Proust and Balzac: A Closer Look at the Baron de Charlus

Proust's contemporaries were obsessed by the question of keys, of real life models, and seem to have neglected the literary models that were essential to his creative process. Through the very complex character of Charlus, Anka Muhlstein will show the points of contact between Proust, Saint-Simon, and above all Balzac.

Monday, March 21, 7:00 p.m.
Florence Gould Event

French Literature in the Making

CAMILLE LAURENS
Novelist; author of Les Travaux d'Hercule; L'Avenir; Dans ces bras là; Tissé par mille; Romance nerveuse

in conversation with

OLIVIER BARROT
Writer, journalist, Un Livre un jour (France 3); publisher, Senso

Presented with the additional support of Sofitel, Open Skies, Institut Français, and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

Read more about the French Literature in the Making here.

Tuesday, March 22, 6:00 p.m. (note time)

Location: NYU Abu Dhabi Institute 19 Washington Square North
RSVP: 19wsn.rsvp@nyu.edu

Modern Oedipus: A Reading and Discussion of Wajdi Mouawad’s Scorched

Directed by Rubén Polendo, Associate Professor of Theater, NYU Abu Dhabi; organized by Judith Miller, Professor of French, NYU; moderated by Peter Meineck, Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Studies, NYU

Co-sponsored by Center for Ancient Studies and Theater Mitu

Friday & Saturday, March 25 & 26
French Department Graduate Student Conference

La Bête Noire: Loving to Hate

Friday, March 25

1:00-2:30 - Les Tensions de la Représentation

- Maria Flood (Cambridge)
Majid’s Suicide: Form and the Function of the Grotesque in Michael Haneke’s Caché
- Philippe Baryga (Université de Valenciennes)
L'Enfer de Monsu Desiderio : naissance d'une esthétique du chaos dans l'Europe du XVIIe siècle
– Mathilde Savard-Corbeil (Université de Montreal)
Michel Houellebecq et la représentation de l’œuvre d’art comme bête noire de la littérature contemporaine

***

3:00-4:00 - MFA Panel
- Taro Masushio (NYU MFA program)
Untitled (You Might See a Ghost After this Presentation)

- Alice Wang (NYU MFA program)
Translation

4:30-6:00- Venus in Furs
- James Rowlins (USC)
Cinematic Bêtes Noires: La Femme Fatale and New Wave Women
- Benjamin Hoffmann (Yale)
Fascination et répulsion dans l’Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil : la femme indienne, bête noire de Jean de Léry
– Laura Hughes (NYU)
On Bushes and Fungi: “Feminine” Resistance from within the Writing and Reading of  Psychoanalysis

6:00-7:30- Faculty Round Table
Richard Sieburth, Emily Apter, Michael Dash, Denis Hollier (moderator)

 ***

Saturday, March 26

10:00-11:30- “I” est un autre
- Paul Descloitres (NYU)
Vers pour être calomnié : La fabrique de la subjectivité homosexuelle en poésie
- Alison Howard (UPenn)
The Ogre and the Aura: The Function of Photography in Michel Tournier’s Le Roi desAulnes
- Donald R. Bates (Sam Houston State University)
Realism meets the surreal: Exploring the supernatural in Guy de Maupassant’s Short Stories

***

1:00-2:30 - Fear and Fascination with the Other
- Dominic Marion (The University of Western Ontario)
Sade et l’interdit de lecture
- Lucy Swanson (UPenn)
Land of the Dead: The Zombie and National Identity in Dany Laferrière’s Pays sans chapeau
- David Llorca (Louisiana State Baton Rouge)
La figure expiatoire et prophétique du bouc émissaire selon Deleuze et Guattari

--COFFEE BREAK--

3:00-4:30 - Le Langage face à ses manques
- Manoah Finston (NYU)
W ou le souvenir d’espace – Towards a Spatial Poetics of Memory
- Raphaël Sigal (NYU)
Gherasim Luca: La langue aux blancs
- Zakir Paul (Princeton)
Testing Intelligence: Valéry’s Attack on Prose

5:00-  Keynote by Professor Christopher Miller, Yale University, Frederick Clifford Ford Professor of African American Studies and French.

Patrice Lumumba: From Bête Noire to Beatification

Monday, March 28, 7:00 p.m.

MARIELLE MACE
CNRS-EHESS; author of Le Savoir des genres; Le Genre littéraire

Barthes: la vie en forme de phrase

En quoi la lecture est-elle une ressource pour la vie ? Il n’y a en effet pas d’autre problème esthétique, comme le disait Deleuze que « l’insertion de l’art dans la vie quotidienne » – dans la vie, et que cette vie soit quotidienne. Nombreuses sont aujourd’hui les pensées orientées vers une vision de la littérature comme instrument où ce qui compte, ce sont les propositions que chacun tire de ce qu’il lit pour sa propre existence. Mais il est assez difficile de rendre compte de ce qui, dans une lecture, c’est-à-dire dans un corps-à-corps avec des phrases singulières, se rend effectivement disponible à un individu, et libère en lui des possibilités d’être. La façon dont Barthes s’est battu avec la catégorie grammaticale de la « phrase », se heurtant aux phrases littéraires, mais aussi s’y projetant, jusqu’à formuler le désir d’avoir « une vie en forme de Phrase », me servira de terrain pour observer la richesse de notre vie dans les formes, et de la vie des formes en nous.

RAPHAELLE BRANCHE
Associate Professor of History, University de Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne; visiting professor, NYU; author of L’embuscade de Palestro: Algérie 1956 (2010), La guerre d’Algérie: une histoire apaisée? (2005), and La torture et l’armée pendant la guerre d’Algérie, 1954-1962 (2001).

Political Uses of the Past: The Memory of the War of Independence in Algeria

Since the end of the Algerian War of Independence in 1962, an official state narrative of the war, one whose fluctuations reflect internal social and political changes, has served both to control the population and to challenge French accounts of decolonization in Algeria. Focusing on some elements of this narrative, Raphaëlle Branche examines the ways in which the memory of the war has been both instrumentalized and overpoliticized.

Thursday, March 31, 7:00 p.m.

Book Launch

DARINA AL-JOUNDI
Actress, writer; author of The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing (The Feminist Press, 2011; translated by Marjolijn de Jager)

in conversation with

PHILIPPA WEHLE
Professor Emerita of French and Theater, SUNY-Purchase; translator; international theater producer

Raised on Baudelaire, A Clockwork Orange, and fine Bordeaux in 1970s Lebanon, Darina Al-Joundi was encouraged by her unconventional father to defy all taboos. As the bombs fell, she lived an adolescence of excess and transgression, defying death in nightclubs. The more oppressive the country became, the more drugs and anonymous sex she had, fueling the resentment by day of the same men who would spend the night with her. As the war dies down, she begins to incur the consequences of her lifestyle. On his deathbed, her father’s last wish is for his favorite song, Sinnerman, by Nina Simone, to be played at his funeral instead of the traditional suras of the Koran. When she does just that, the results are catastrophic.

Book available for sale on site.

APRIL / MAY

Friday, April 1

EDITH PIAF
Photographs by HUGUES VASSAL

Opening: 6:00 p.m.
Gallery Talk: 7:00 p.m.

The exhibition continues through May 13
Monday – Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

**Please note: the gallery will be closed April 25 to 29, due to the PEN WORLD VOICES Festival**

View brochure in pdf here.

The French photographer Hugues Vassal, one of the creators of the Gamma photo agency, became a close friend of the singer in the last seven years of her life, documenting her public and  private moments. 

Tuesday, April 5, 7:00 p.m.

CAROLYN BURKE
Writer; biographer; author of Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy; Lee Miller: A Life; No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf (Knopf, 2011)

No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf

Carolyn Burke brings the iconic French singer to life in her enthralling, definitive biography, which captures Edith Piaf’s immense charisma along with the time and place that gave rise to her unprecedented international career.

Book available for sale on site.

Thursday, April 7, 7:00 p.m.

JEFFREY MEHLMAN
University Professor and Professor of French, Boston University; author of Genealogies of the Text; Émigré New York: French Intellectuals in Wartime Manhattan, 1940-1944; Adventures in the French Trade (Stanford UP, 2010)

Adventures in the French Trade:  A Memoir Revisited

A literary critic and historian of ideas, Jeffrey Mehlman shares second thoughts about his recently published memoir, Adventures in the French Trade, less a chronicle of his life as a scholar/critic of matters French than a series of episodes, each with its attendant surprise, in what one commentator has called his amour vache, his injured and occasionally injurious love, for France and the French.

Monday, April 11, 7:00 p.m.

JENNIFER HOMANS
Distinguished Scholar in Residence, NYU; dance critic, The New Republic; author of Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet (Random House, 2010)

Ballet's Past and Why It Matters

Jennifer Homans is a historian and critic who was also a professional dancer. In Apollo’s Angels
she traces the evolution of technique, choreography, and performance, drawing readers into the intricacies of the art with vivid descriptions of dances and the artists who made them. Her bookis a groundbreaking work—the first cultural history of ballet ever written. It has been a  national bestseller and was  named a Top 10 Book of 2010 by The New York Times.

Book available for sale on site.

Tuesday, April 12, 7:00 p.m.

ROBERT RUBIN
Curator, Richard Prince: American Prayer, exhibition on view at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France through the end of June, 2011

BeatHippiePunk and the French Connection:
Richard Prince at the Bibliotheque Nationale

Contemporary artist Richard Prince's collection of rare books and manuscripts, around which the show is organized, is the point of departure for the discovery of many surprising connections between Beats, Hippies, and Punks and their Gallic counterparts.

CONFERENCE

Friday & Saturday, April 15 & 16
NYU / CNRS Transitions UMI

Memory and Memorialization: A Doctoral Colloquium

LOCATIONS:

Friday, April 15: La Maison Française - 16 Washington Mews

Saturday, April 16: 4 Washington Square North - Second Floor - 917-373-0997

The colloquium brings together advanced doctoral students working on memory, memorials, historical museums, and related topics.  They will present their work in a series of roundtable discussions moderated by faculty specialists in the field.  This event is part of an extensive collaboration between NYU and France's Centre national de recherche scientifique (CNRS).

Details available at www.cnrsnyu.com or from NYU Institute of French Studies: 212-998-8740.

Thursday, April 21, 7:00 p.m.

VINCENT GIROUD
Professor, Université de Franche-Comté; author of William Walton, Composer; St. Petersburg; Picasso and Gertrude Stein; French Opera: A Short History (Yale UP, 2010)

French Opera: A Paradoxical Genre

The author of the recently published French Opera: A Short History (Yale University Press, 2010) discusses some of the paradoxes and specific characters of the French operatic tradition, which he claims is second only to Italian opera in terms of richness and variety.

Book available for sale on site.

Monday, April 25, 7:00 p.m.
Florence Gould Event

French Literature in the Making

VINCENT DELECROIX
Writer; novelist; author of Retour à Bruxelles; Ce qui est perdu (Prix Valéry Larbaud); La Chaussure sur le toit; Tombeau d’Achille (Grand Prix de Littérature de l’Académie Française)

in conversation with

OLIVIER BARROT
Writer; journalist, Un livre un jour (France 3); publisher, Senso

In French.

More info on French Literature in the Making

Presented with the additional support of Cultural Services of the French Embassy, the Institut Français, Open Skies, and Sofitel.

Tuesday, April 26, 7:00 p.m.
Florence Gould Event

Jean-Louis Barrault Centennial

Film screening
Jean-Louis Barrault, A Man of the Theater
(FR 3 Television, 1985, 54 min.; In English)
Written and produced by Helen Gary Bishop
Directed by Muriel Balash

Round table
Lorenzo Weisman
Head of Corporate Finance for the Americas, BNP Paribas; former actor with the Comédie Française
Florent Masse
Director, Avant-Scène, the French Theater Workshop of Princeton University
Helen Gary Bishop
Producer of the film
Tom Bishop
Professor of French, NYU; moderator

Jean-Louis Barrault at Alice Tully Hall, 1981

La Maison Française welcomes
The 7th PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature
More than 100 writers from 40 nations convene in New York City to celebrate the power of the writer's voice as a bold and vital  element of public discourse.

Co-sponsored by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy

Lunchtime Literary Conversations: A Three-Part Series

From 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Free and open to the public. No reservation.

Tuesday, April 26

Ludovic Debeurme, graphic novelist; author of Lucille (Prix Goscinny)
in conversation with
Kjersti Annesdatter Skomvold, author of The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am

Moderated by Kira Brunner Don

Winner of the Rene Goscinny Prize, Debeurme's Lucille (forthcoming in May 2011) explores life and fantasies with elegant clean graphics and a profound love of childhood games. Winner of the 2009 Tarjei Vesaas First Book Prize, and Nominated for the 2009 Booksellers' Prize, Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvolds first novel, The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am, stands out for its humorous earnestness and unusually inventive prose.

Wednesday, April 27

Two bestselling French authors in conversation:
Laurence Cossé, author of The Corner of the Veil, Prime Minister’s Woman, and most recently, The Novel Bookstore
and
Hervé Le Tellier, the author of Enough About Love, and the forthcoming The Sextine Chapel

Friday, April 29
Amélie Nothomb, author of Une Forme de Vie
in conversation with
Buket Uzuner, author of Istanbullites

Since her debut on the French literary scene more than a decade ago, Belgian novelist Amélie Nothomb has published a novel a year, every year. Her edgy fiction, unconventional thinking, and public persona have combined to transform her into a worldwide literary sensation. The novelist sits down with Turkish essayist and short story writer Buket Uzuner to discuss the phenomenon of their literary lives.

An Evening with Pierre Guyotat & Edmund White

Thursday, April 28, 7:00 to 8:30 p.m.

*SOLD OUT*
Reservations: 212-998-8750 or maison.francaise@nyu.edu
Tickets: $15; $10. PEN Members; Free w/ NYU i.d.

Edmund White, writer; Professor of creative writing, Princeton University; author of Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel; City Boy
in conversation with
Pierre Guyotat, novelist, author of Eden, Eden, Eden; Coma (Prix Décembre)

Edmund White describes Pierre Guyotat's novel, Eden Eden Eden, “violent, transgressive and inspired – the last great avant-garde visionary of the 20th Century.”  Princeton’s professor of creative writing and author of Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel, talks with Rimbaud’s modern-day heir, Pierre Guyotat, who received the prestigious Prix Médicis for Eden, Eden, Eden and the Prix Décembre for Coma, recently published in English by Semiotext(e).

The full PEN World Voices schedule (April 25 - May 1) is available at www.pen.org

Monday, May 2, 7:00 p.m.
Institute of French Studies Colloquium

ANNE-MARIE THIESSE
Directrice de recherche, CNRS; author of Faire les Français: quelle identité nationale ? (Stock, 2010)

Histoire et identité nationale: enjeux politiques de la France actuelle

In French.

Monday, May 9, 7 :00 p.m.
Florence Gould Event

PIERRE ASSOULINE
Writer; biographer; author of Hergé, The Man who Created Tintin; Simenon, A Biography; Gaston Gallimard: A Half-Century of French Publishing; journalist, blogger, La République des livres

Hergé et Tintin

In French.

Thursday, May 12, 7:00 p.m.

SPECIAL EVENT

Location: 19 University Place - Room 102

Reservations: 212-998-8750 or maison.francaise@nyu.edu

JOHN ASHBERY

Recognized as one of the greatest twentieth-century poets, John Ashbery has won nearly every major American award for poetry. In May, Norton will releasehis translation of Arthur Rimbaud's prose poem sequence, Illuminations, originally published in 1886.

Book available for sale on site.

“John Ashbery has gifted us with an exquisite, untainted translation of Rimbaud; a transmission as pure as a winged dove driven by snow.” ­ Patti Smith

“More than a century after Arthur Rimbaud composed his Illuminations, they are reborn in John Ashbery's magnificent translation. It is fitting that the major American poet since Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens should give us this noble version of the precursor of all three.” ­ Harold Bloom

FALL 2011

SPECIAL EVENT

Tuesday, September 13, 6:30 p.m. (note time)

A Florence Gould Event

Roundtable Discussion (in French)

Location:
Hemmerdinger Hall, NYU Silver Center
100 Washington Square East, Ground fl.

Les Lieux de l’art

PHILIPPE de MONTEBELLO
Director Emeritus of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Fiske Kimball Professor in the History and Culture of Museums at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts. With 31 years in office, he was the longest tenured director at the Met.

JOACHIM PISSARRO
Bershad Professor of Art History at Hunter College, CUNY, Director of the Hunter College Art Galleries, and a curator in MOMA’s Painting & Sculpture Department. He is a contributor to Apollo and Artforum magazines.

PHILIPPE VERGNE
Director of the Dia Art Foundation. He was previously Director of the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Marseille; Chief Curator and then Deputy Director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and co-curator of the Whitney Biennial in 2006.

DONATIEN GRAU (moderator)
Contributing editor of Flash Art International and teaches at the Sorbonne. He has written extensively on the transmission of classical culture and on the arts, and has co-authored a book on curating.

Contemporary art seems to have changed the way we see art, and the places where it is supposed to be presented. Some of the most iconic exhibitigons of recent art have taken place outside of the traditional venue of the museum. Is it its destiny to be shown everywhere? Or does the experience of art belong to a certain time and space? Is the situation the same for ancient and for contemporary art?

Wednesday, September 14, 7:00 p.m.

ANTONIN BAUDRY
Cultural Counselor of the French Embassy

Nos sociétés actuelles:
Entre construction de soi et perception de l’Autre

La globalisation semble avoir transformé profondément notre rapport individuel aux nations. Certains des grands phénomènes structurant nos sociétés se situent désormais largement en-dehors des systèmes traditionnels des Etats et de leurs politiques. Comment nos appartenances se recomposent-elles ? L'art contemporain ou la littérature permettent-ils d'en saisir les n¦uds ? Comment participent-ils à l'élaboration d' « effets de lieu » collectifs et à de nouveaux systèmes de construction de soi et de perception de l'Autre ? La diplomatie culturelle est au coeur de ces questions. Permet-elle d'élaborer des outils pour travailler ces mécanismes ?

Tuesday, September 20, 7:00 p.m.

LAURENT JENNY
Professor, Université de Genève; author of La Parole singulière; La Fin de l’intériorité; Je suis la révolution, Histoire d’une métaphore 1830-1975; Stases et flux, la vie esthétique (2012)

L’Art dans la vie, l’art contre la vie

Le thème de la contradiction entre art et vie  marque la tradition des avant-gardes du XXe siècle, de Duchamp à Kaprow. Il s’accompagne d’un corollaire non moins étrange : celui du sacrifice nécessaire de l’artefact comme mode d’accès privilégié à la vie. Ces paradoxes recouvrent un oubli des formes les plus communes et partagées de l’expérience esthétique telle qu’elle se pratique dans la vie.

in French.

Thursday, September 22, 7:00 p.m.

MICHAEL DORSCH
Assistant Pr

ofessor, The Cooper Union; author of French Sculpture Following the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-80: Realist Allegories and the Commemoration of Defeat

Strong Women, Fallen Men: French Sculpture Following the
Franco-Prussian War, 1870-80

French Sculpture Following the Franco-Prussian War, 1870–80 investigates the role played by the trope of the 'strong woman, fallen man' in re-establishing morale among the French people following the Franco-Prussian War. The study explores how certain French sculptors – including Falguière, Mercié, Barrias, and Rodin – presented this recent history of defeat in commemorative monuments that increasingly dominated public space across France during the final decades of the nineteenth century.

Monday, September 26, 7:00 p.m.

Florence Gould Event

French Literature in the Making (in French)

MARC DUGAIN
Novelist; author of La Chambre des officiers; La Malédiction d’Edgar; Heureux comme Dieu en France; Une exécution ordinaire; L’Insomnie des étoiles

in conversation with
OLIVIER BARROT
Writer, journalist, Un Livre un jour (France 3)

Marc Dugain was born in 1957 in  Senegal, but his family moved back to France when he was 7. While still a child, Marc accompanied his grandfather on a visit to La maison des Gueules cassées, a chateau that housed soldiers from World War I who had been victims of facial mutilations. This became the subject of Dugain’s first novel, La Chambre des officiers (1998) (The Officer’s Ward, 2003), a best seller that won some twenty literary prizes including the prestigious Prix des Libraires, Prix des Deux-Magots and Prix Roger Nimier. more on French Literature in the Making

Presented with the additional support of Open Skies, Sofitel, Institut Français, Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

Tuesday, September 27, 7:00 p.m.

MARIELLE MACE
CNRS-EHESS; visiting professor, NYU; author of Le Savoir des genres; Le Genre littéraire; Façons de lire, manières d’être

Styles animaux

Friday, September 30, 2:00 p.m.
Institute of French Studies colloquium

Common Currency, Divided Nations: The Euro and its Future

DAMIEN CHALMERS
Professor of European Law, London School of Economics; Fellow, Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law & Justice, NYU

MARC FLANDREAU
Professor of International History and International Economics, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva

JEANNE LAZARUS
Research Fellow, CNRS - Sciences Po, Paris

CHRISTIANE LEMKE
Max Weber Visiting Professor of European and Mediterranean Studies, German, NYU

GRIGORE POP-ELECHES
Assistant Professor of Politics and Public and International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University

GEORGE W. ROSS
ad personam Chaire Jean Monnet, Université de Montréal; Morris Hillquit Professor in Labor and Social Thought, Emeritus -Brandeis University

Co-sponsored by NYU Center for European & Mediterranean Studies

CONCERT

Saturday, October 1, 4:00 p.m.

Conservatoire Américain de Fontainebleau 90th Anniversary Event
Fontainebleau Contemporain:
Composers of the Last 25 Years

Works by Joshua Fineberg, Fabien Lévy, Richard Carrick, Amit Gilutz, Michel Galante, Tristan Murail

Performed by

THE ARGENTO CHAMBER ENSEMBLE
Michel Galante, director

Reservations: 212-998-8750; maison.francaise@nyu.edu

Tickets: $20. General admission $10. Fontainebleau alumni; students with i.d.

Tuesday, October 4, 7:00 p.m.

Looking for Marguerite Duras: A Biographer’s Journey

JEAN VALLIER
Writer; author of C’était Marguerite Duras, Tome I: 1914-1945; Tome II: 1946-1996

in conversation with

JUDITH MILLER
Professor of French, NYU; author of Plays by French and Francophone Women Writers

Thursday, October 6, 7:00 p.m.

CHRISTINE FAURE
Sociologist, CNRS; author of Democracy without Women: Feminism and the Rise of Liberal Individualism in France; Ce que déclarer des droits veut dire: histoires

Le Donjuanisme à la française

L’actualité judiciaire américaine a mis à jour l’existence en France d’un phénomène social récurrent qui pourrait relever de l’histoire littéraire : le donjuanisme à la française, largement répandu, conforté par des justifications culturelles qui en l’occurrence neutralisent l’appareil judiciaire français. Tout est bon pour taire, cacher au nom du droit à la vie privée des politiques, des comportements transgressifs et violents parfois criminels, en tout cas humiliants pour les femmes. Les plaintes contre le viol et le harcèlement sexuel sont rares en France. Pourquoi cette survivance monarchique qui va bien au delà de cas archétypiques qui condensent tous les ingrédients de la réussite. Il ne s’agit pas d’une pathologie individuelle mais d’un état de société dont les hommes laissent la dénonciation à la seule charge des féministes considérées en l’occurrence comme les meilleures expertes du rapport hommes / femmes.
Quel est ce socle culturel, cette représentation consensuelle du XVIIIème siècle français, du rôle des Lumières prérévolutionnaires, qui relaye des pratiques contemporaines incompatibles avec la lettre démocratique de notre société. Si don Juan était à l’origine un aristocrate espagnol voire européen, il est très tôt devenu français par une mobilisation imaginaire exceptionnelle (« l’air du champagne ») menée aussi bien par les élites concernées qui puisent dans l’exercice de leur puissance les moyens de leur impunité, que par des écrivains qui au titre d’un héritage libertin conjuguent séduction et domination sexuelle.

Tuesday, October 11, 7:00 p.m.

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BAILLY
Writer, poet, playwright, publisher, philosopher; author of Le Versant animal (The Animal Side, Fordham University Press, 2011); L’Instant et son ombre; Le Temps fixé

Le Versant animal

Writer, poet, publisher, playwright and philosopher, Jean-Christophe Bailly founded and directed the  magazines Fin de siècle (1974-1977) and Aléa (1981-1989),  and was in charge of the series Détroits for Christian Bourgois éditeur. Bailly has taught at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Nature et du Paysage de Blois since 1997 and he frequently collaborates with directors and painters. He is the author of Le Versant animal (The Animal Side, Fordham University Press, 2011); L’Instant et son ombre; Le Temps fixé.

Thursday, October 13, 7:00 p.m.

R. HOWARD BLOCH
Professor of French, Yale University; author of Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love; God’s Plagiarist; The Anonymous Marie de France

Restoration: From Notre Dame de Paris to Gaston Paris

R. Howard Bloch is Sterling Professor of French and Chair of the Humanities Program at Yale University. He has written on a variety of topics in and around medieval literature and social history; legal, economic, familial, and political institutions; humor and the fabliaux; gender and the rise of Western romantic love and the history of the discipline of Medieval Studies. His recent books include A Needle in the Right Hand of God: The Bayeux Tapestry and the Norman Conquest of 1066.

His lecture "Restoration: From Notre Dame de Paris to Gaston Paris" includes discussion of Viollet-le-Duc, the gothic revival, and the restoration of medieval languages.

Tuesday, October 18, 7:00 p.m.

FRANÇOIS CUSSET
Professor, Université de Paris X; author of Queer Critics; French Theory; La Décennie; Contre-Discours de Mai

The Feedback Story: American Theory Travels to France

In  "The Feedback Story: American Theory Travels to France" he examines  the belated opening of France's intellectual world to American authors and concepts over the last ten years.

Professor of American Studies at the University of Paris Ouest, François Cusset is the former director of the French Publishers' Agency in New York City . He is the author of several books including the widely acclaimed French Theory (University of Minnesota Press, 2008). His book Queer Critics was recently translated as The Inverted Gaze:  Queering the French Literary Classics in America (Arsenal Pulp Press)

Wednesday, October 19, 7:00 p.m.

ETIENNE BALIBAR

Bourgeois Universality & Anthropological Differences
Distinguished Professor, French & Italian and Comparative Literature, School of Humanities UC Irvine; Past and current research subjects include : philosophical anthropology (the subject and the citizen), Extreme Violence and the problem of civility, Politics as War and War as Politics, Individuality and transindividuality, Borders and the representation of the stranger, universalism and cosmopolitics, etc.

There will also be a presentation/discussion with Jacques Lezra on Professor Balibar's new book from PUF publications: Citoyen sujet et autres essais d'anthropologie philosophique (Citizen Subjects and Other Essays of Philosophical Anthropology).

Thursday, October 20, 7:00 p.m.
Co-sponsored by Institute of French Studies

VINCENT CRAPANZANO
Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Anthropology  at the CUNY Graduate Center. Among his books are Tuhami: A Portrait of a Moroccan; Serving the Word: American Literalism from the Pulpit to the Bench; Imaginative Horizons: An Essay in Literary-Philosophical Anthropology; The Harkis: The Wound that Never Heals

The Harkis: The Wound That Never Heals

A quarter of a million Algerians, mostly illiterate peasants, fought on the side of France during Algeria's war of independence, less for political reasons than to survive in a war-torn country. Despite warnings of  an imminent bloodbath by the officers under whom the Harkis, served,  the Gaulist government refused them entry into France.  Tens of  thousand were massacred by other Algerians in the months following independence. Finally the French government relinquished. Survivors were brought to France where they were placed in camps, some for as long as sixteen years. Condemned as traitors by Algeria, branded "collabos" by Algerian immigrant workers, and scorned  by the French, the Harkis became a population apart, lost for the most part in themselves Their children bear the wounds of their fathers...

Monday, October 24, 7:00 p.m.
Florence Gould Event

French Literature in the Making (in French)

OLIVIA ROSENTHAL
Novelist, playwright; author of On n’est pas là pour disparaître (Prix Wepler); Viande froide: Reportages; Que font les rennes après Noël ? (Prix du Livre Inter)

in conversation with
OLIVIER BARROT
Writer, journalist, Un Livre un jour (France 3)

Presented with the additional support of Open Skies, Sofitel, Institut Français, Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

More on French Literature in the Making

Tuesday, October 25, 7:00 p.m.

STEPHEN NICHOLS
Professor of French and Humanities, Johns Hopkins University; author of Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography; The New Philology

Inventing Paris: The Birth of a Cultural Capital in the Long 14th Century

Stephen G. Nichols, James M. Beall Professor of French and Humanities at The Johns Hopkins University, also served as Director of the School of Criticism and Theory, based at Cornell, from 1995-2000. A specialist in medieval literature, art, and history, he is the author of Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography (James Russel Lowell Prize, MLA) , among other works.

Thursday & Friday, October 27 & 28

La Revue PO&SIE: bilans et perspectives

A celebration of PO&SIE, the major French poetry and poetics journal

MICHEL DEGUY
Founder and editor in chief; poet, philosopher

HEDI KADDOUR
Member of the editorial board; poet, novelist

CLAUDE MOUCHARD
Associate editor; poet, critic

MARTIN RUEFF
Associate editor; poet, critic, translator

EUGENE NICOLE
Professor of French, NYU; novelist, poet

Thursday, October 27, 7:00 p.m.

PO&SIE: Présentation et lecture de textes

Lecture (courte) de quelques textes (incipits) marquants publiés par PO&SIE

Friday, October 28, 7:00 p.m.

- PO&SIE et les poètes américains (publications passées et projet d’un prochain numéro)
- Poème et “évènement poétique”
- Poésie et théorie

In addition to the above sessions, which are free and open to the public, there will be an afternoon seminar on Friday, October 28 for French Department faculty and students.

Sponsored by PO&sie and the Center for French Civilization and Culture.

NOVEMBER / DECEMBER

Tuesday, November 1, 7:00 p.m.

JEAN-MARIE ROULIN
Professor of French Literature, Université Jean Monnet, Saint-Etienne; author of L’Exil et la gloire; L’Epopée de Voltaire à Chareaubriand: poésie, histoire et politique

Retours d'émigration: le corps revenant (Chateaubriand, Balzac)

Balzac considère « la grande figure de l’émigré » comme « l’un des types les plus imposants de notre époque ». Dès l’Empire, ce personnage majeur de la littérature française postrévolutionnaire porte les interrogations et les enjeux du retour d’émigration. Il s’agira de dégager les enjeux de ces retours, en se concentrant sur le corps des personnages d’émigrés dans  quelques romans de Chateaubriand et de Balzac.

Wednesday, November 2, 7:00 pm
Institute of French Studies Colloquium

SAMY COHEN
Senior research fellow in political science, Sciences Po, Paris; author of Democracies at War against Terrorism: A Comparative Perspective

Guerre contre le terrorisme : pourquoi les démocraties violent-elles les droits de l'homme ?

Depuis plusieurs années, des Etats démocratiques sont militairement engagés contre des groupes armés définis par eux comme des "terroristes". Comment ces démocraties ont-elle géré cette lutte au regard de leurs propres principes ? La réalité montre qu'elles se sont toujours autorisées des violations des droits de l'homme. Pourquoi commettent-elles ces violations ?

Thursday, November 3, 7:00 p.m.

FRANÇOISE GAILLARD
Professor, Université de Paris VII; author of Diana Crash; La Modernité en question

Éloge de la simplicité: Flaubert et la question moderne de la bêtise

In French.

Wednesday, November 9, 7:00 pm
Institute of French Studies Colloquium

NONNA MAYER
Senior research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Centre d’études européennes, Sciences Po), and a professor of political science at Sciences Po; visiting professor at NYU’s Institute of French Studies. She specializes in the sociology of political behaviors, racism and anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism. She is the author of Sociologie des comportements politiques (2010), Ces Français qui votent Le Pen (1999 and 2002)

National Front Voters and Marine Le Pen’s Leadership

In January 2011, Marine Le Pen, the youngest of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughters, succeeded her father as president of the National Front. Almost immediately, several polls showed her matching or outpacing Nicolas Sarkozy before the run-off in the 2012 presidential elections. Analysts have wondered about her ability to refresh the
image of the party and garner the vote of new constituencies with more leftist economics. The presentation explores National Front voters and voting under the leadership of Marine Le Pen.

Thursday, November 10, 7:00 p.m.

DANIEL HELLER-ROAZEN
Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University; author of Echolalias: On the Forgetting of Language; The Inner Touch: Archaeology of a Sensation (Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize, MLA); The Enemy of All: Piracy and the Law of Nations 

Secrets and Cryptic Tongues

Friday, November 11, 4:30 p.m. (note time)
Reading and Discussion

Contemporary Poetry and Translation

JULIEN MARCLAND
Poet; actor; director; author of Neiges; Parole et musique; Amitiés à Perec

MOLLY LOU FREEMAN
Poet, author of In Wind: A Paper; translator; editor, Carnet de route

Marcland and Freeman have translated American poets Barbara Guest, Jorie Graham, Geoffrey Nutter, and James Tate, among others, and French poets Suzanne Doppelt, Dominique Fourcade, and Jean-Christophe Bailly.

Tuesday, November 15, 8:00 p.m. (note time)
Co-sponsored by Institute of African American Affairs

ABDELWAHAB MEDDEB
Novelist; essayist; award-winning French-language poet; professor of comparative literature, Université de Paris X; radio producer, “Cultures d’Islam” (France Culture); author of La Maladie de l’Islam (Prix François Mauriac); Pari de civilization; Printemps de Tunis

Le Printemps arabe

In French.

CONFERENCE

Sponsored by NYU/CNRS UMI “Transitions”

Friday & Saturday, November 18-19

In the Tracks of Memory

Friday, November 18

9:30 a.m.: Introduction
Edward Berenson, co-director, NYU/CNRS UMI “Transitions”; Clifford Chanin, National September 11 Memorial and Museum; Denis Pechanski, CNRS; Chair, Scientific Advisory Board, Mémorial de Caen

10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.: Children and Traumatic Memory
Chair: Edward Berenson

Henry Parens, Psychiatrist; Daniella Doran, Colgate University; Jack Saul, Columbia University

2:00 – 5:00 p.m.: Memory and Its Discontents
Chair: Denis Pechanski

Katherine Fleming, NYU; Ophelia Deroy, London; Adam Brown, NYU School of Medicine

Saturday, November 19

9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.: Archaeology of Memory; Archaeology of Death
Chair: Stéphane Grimaldi, Director, Mémorial de Caen

Father Patrick Desbois, Yahad-In Unum; Mark Schaming, NY State Museum; Francesc Torres; Brigitte Sion

2:00 – 5:00 p.m.: Diplomacy, Memory, and the State: A Roundtable Discussion
Chair: Clifford Chanin

Antonin Baudry, Cultural Counselor, French Embassy; Inigo Ramirez de Haro, Cultural Counselor, Spanish Embassy; Others to be announced

Concluding Remarks
Carol Gluck, Columbia University

Monday, November 21, 7:00 p.m.
Florence Gould Event

French Literature in the Making

JEAN HATZFELD
Reporter; war correspondent; writer; author of L’Air de la guerre; Dans le nu de la vie (Prix Pierre Mille, Prix France Culture); Une Saison de machettes (Prix Femina, Prix Joseph Kessel)
in conversation with
OLIVIER BARROT
Writer, journalist, Un Livre un jour (France 3)
In French.

Presented with the additional support of Open Skies, Sofitel, Institut Français, Cultural Services of the French Embassy

More on French Literature in the Making

Tuesday, November 22, 7:00 p.m.

Co-sponsored with the Departments of Italian and Art History.

New Scholarship in 18th-Century
French Art History

Laura Auricchio, Parsons The New School for Design
Nina L. Dubin, University of Illinois at Chicago
Meredith Martin,Wellesley College
Thomas Crow (Respondent), Institute of Fine Arts, NYU
Ara H. Merjian (Moderator), Italian Studies and Art History, NYU

Claude Gillot, Les Deux Carrosses (vers 1707)

Organized in honor of the 25th anniversary of the publication of Tom Crow's groundbreaking  Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris, this session seeks not only to summarize the influence of that book but also to identify some of the questions that are animating the field today.

CONFERENCE

Thursday and Friday, December 1-2
Sponsored by Cardozo School of Law and Institute of French Studies, NYU
co-sponsored by IRIS (CNRS/EHESS) and Faculty of Law, Université de Paris X - Nanterre

The DSK Scandal: Transatlantic Reflections on Sex, Law, and Politics

Organized by Éric Fassin, Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez, Julie Suk, Frédéric Viguier

Locations:
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law Yeshiva University
55 Fifth Avenue (at 12th Street)

La Maison Française of NYU
16 Washington Mews (at University Pl. & 8th Street)

From May 14 to August 23, 2011, from Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest to the day the penal charges against him were dropped by the New York City justice system, the sexual assault indictment initiated by Nafissatou Diallo’s accusation provoked extraordinary public attention throughout the world. While the penal case is now over, and regardless of what becomes of the civil one, or the French lawsuits that followed, this will certainly be an affair to remember: it will remain important in the years to come not only because of what happened, but also for what it has revealed about France and the United States, as well as its potential impact on both societies. Not only is the affair a mirror; it may also turn out to be a catalyst. Thus, it would not be a mere scandal, now behind us; the DSK moment could prove momentous. This two-day academic conference, co-organized by French and American scholars and institutions, aims at interpreting the transatlantic dimensions of this event. On the one hand, the mutual misunderstandings revealed important differences between France and the United States – not only between the legal systems, but also between the media cultures, as well as the political ones. On the other hand, the political dimensions of the story – in terms of gender, class, and race, and even sexuality – did transcend such national differences. Many feminists were quick to point it out: exceptionalism (whether French or American) is irrelevant in matters of power. As a consequence, the necessary cultural approach must eschew culturalism. In particular, attention will be paid not only to the different languages used within each society (in particular in law, media, and politics), but also to the self-examination this confrontation occasioned, and as a consequence the transformations that may result on both sides. The conference is organized around three related panels to draw out the legal, political, cultural, and social implications of the DSK case in the United States and France.

Thursday, December 1

4:00 - 6:30 pm: (Cardozo School of Law)
- Introduction
- Sexual Violence in Public Discourse
- Laure Bereni (CNRS/Centre Maurice Halbwachs)
- Kimberlé Crenshaw (Columbia Law School and UCLA School of Law)
- Amy Davidson (The New Yorker)
- Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense)
- Frédéric Matonti (Université Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne)
- Moderator:  Julie Suk (Cardozo School of Law)

This panel will address the media treatment on both sides of the Atlantic, not only of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, but more generally of sexual cases and scandals. It will include questions such as what is considered “fit to print,” how, and when, the revelation of names and pictures and the cultures of privacy, the issue of sources and leaks, the coverage of the United States in France (and vice versa), the investigative traditions and the relations between the media and the political class in both countries.  To what extent are media practices with regard to rape victims driven by the law of privacy and/or freedom of the press?  How is the legal disposition of a sexual assault case influenced by the media’s representations of it? Whose voice gets to be heard in the public when allegations of sexual violence are made against politicians and public officials?

Friday, December 2
10:00 am -12:00 pm: (Cardozo School of Law)
Justice for Whom? Rape and Comparative Criminal Procedure

Taina Bien-Aimé (Lawyer and Consultant to Equality Now)
Pauline Delage (IRIS)
Emmanuel Saint-Martin (France 24)
Julie Suk (Cardozo School of Law)
James Q. Whitman (Yale Law School)
Moderator:  Paris Baldacci (Cardozo School of Law)

This panel will be devoted to comparisons of French and U.S. criminal procedure as they were understood throughout the DSK scandal –and how they are actually used by feminist activists in both countries. Discussions will cover such issues as the (infamous) “perp walk,” understandings of “the presumption of innocence,” and the mechanisms by which a rape victim’s credibility is evaluated.  How do the victim’s past sexual and immigration history play out in each justice system?  Do American “rape shield” laws (and exceptions to them) have French analogues?  How did prosecutorial discretion and adversarial fact investigation affect the DSK case?  Might a rape victim fare better with judicial investigation of facts and/or limited prosecutorial discretion?    How significant was the American “beyond a reasonable doubt” criminal standard in the prosecutors’ decision to dismiss the DSK case?  What are the legal problems raised by the prosecution of Dominique Strauss-Kahn initiated by Tristane Banon’s complaint in France?  How do the different relationships between civil and criminal complaints in the two legal systems affect the trajectory of a rape case?  

1:30 - 4:00 pm: (La Maison Française, NYU)
The Politics of Seduction: The Role of Sex in Democracy

Delphine Dulong (Université Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Eric Fassin (Ecole normale supérieure and IRIS)
Renée Kaplan (France 24)
Ruth Rubio Marín (European University Institute, Florence)
Joan Scott (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)
Moderator: Frédéric Viguier (NYU)

The DSK scandal is the latest chapter in an ongoing transatlantic debate about the politics of seduction.  The French and American political cultures reflect different attitudes about the relevance of a politician’s sexual affairs to their ability to govern.  The two legal cultures reflect different understandings of the line between seduction and sexual aggression.  The concept of seduction might also inform the different concerns of French and American feminism, which have led to different policies to combat gender inequality.  The United States has a robust law of sexual harassment, on the one hand, but France has laws requiring gender parity (known to Americans as “quotas”) in positions of political and social responsibility. Might the DSK moment narrow the gap between French and American understandings of seduction and gender relations in a democracy?

CONCERT

Monday, December 5, 8:00 p.m.

TRIO CLEONICE

Trio Cleonice has quickly established itself as one of the most creative, communicative, and exciting young ensembles in the United States.

Ari Isaacman-Beck, violin
Gwen Krosnick, cello
Emily Phelps, piano

W. A. Mozart Piano Trio in C Major, K. 548
Maurice Ravel Piano Trio in A Minor

Reservations: 212-998-8750; maison.francaise@nyu.edu
Tickets: $20. General Admission; $10. Students.

Tuesday, December 6, 7:00 p.m.

Spreading the News:
The Invention of the Illustrated Press in France

PATRICIA MAINARDI
Professor of Art History, Graduate Center, CUNY; author of Art and Politics of the Second Empire (Charles Rufus Morey Prize, CAA); The End of the Salon; Husbands, Wives, and Lovers: Marriage and Its Discontents in Nineteenth Century France

Mass-circulation illustrated periodicals became widespread in the nineteenth-century, beginning first in England and then in France. Their origins stem from sensationalism, the popular broadsheets that delighted in depicting violent crime, and from a kind of populist idealism that attempted to provide basic education to a newly enfranchised citizenry while, at the same time, dissuading them from radical politics. Patricia Mainardi will be discussing these two trends that informed, in varying degrees, the first such publications, with an emphasis on the role of the printed image.

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