SFPS Monthly Mailing: October 2018

SFPS Monthly Mailing: October 2018

1. Calls for Papers

1.1 A crisis in ‘coming to terms with the past’? At the crossroads of translation and memory (Conference)

1.2 Special Issue on “French Food, Francophone Literatures: Negotiating Cultural Assimilation in France through Food in Contemporary Fiction”

1.3 Special Issue of World Literature Studies on (Inter)Faces: Thinking the Face in Literature and the Visual Arts

1.4 Apostasy from Islam in Francophone Cultures, Societies, and Politics (Conference)

1.5 ‘Le français d’ici, de là, de là-bas’ (AFLS Colloque/Conference 2019)

1.6 Special Issue of L’Esprit Créateur on ‘Challenging Normative Spaces and Gazes: The Body in 20th and 21st Century Francophone Culture’

1.7 Representations of Disaster (Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference)

1.8 ‘Retards/Delays’ (French Graduate Conference)

1.9 ‘Ailing Empires: Medicine, Science, and Imperialism’ (Interdisciplinary symposium)

 

2. Job Opportunities

2.1 Assistant Professor in French (George Washington University)

2.2 Research Fellow in French and Francophone Prison and Penal Heritage (Nottingham Trent University)

2.3 Assistant Professor in French and Francophone Civilizations (University of Maryland)

2.4 Teaching Associate in French (Aston University)

2.5 Assistant Professor position in French (University of British Columbia, Vancouver)

 

3. Announcements

3.1 Experiences of Exile (University of Stirling, 8-15 November 2018)

3.2 Tummy Trouble – The Gut in French and Francophone Literature, Theory, and Art Conference (10 November 2018)

3.3  Bilingual Life Writing by Contemporary Women Writers (30 November 2018)

 

4. New Titles

4.1 The Algerian War in French/Algerian Writing: Literary Sites of Memory (University of Wales Press, 2018)

4.2 Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality, 1848-2016 (Combined Academic, 2018)

4.3 Algérie, les écrivains de la décennie noire (CNRS Editions, 2018)

 

1. Calls for Papers/Contributions 

1.1 A crisis in ‘coming to terms with the past’? At the crossroads of translation and memory (Conference)

1-2 February 2019, Senate House, London

Over the past decade, a particular notion of ‘coming to terms with the past’, usually associated with an international liberal consensus, has increasingly been challenged. Growing in strength since the 1980s, this consensus has been underpinned by the idea that difficult historical legacies, displaced into the present, and persisting as patterns of thought, speech and behaviour, needed to be addressed through a range of phenomena such as transitional justice, reconciliation, and the forging of shared narratives to ensure social cohesion and shore up democratic norms. Such official and international memory practices tended to privilege top-down cosmopolitan memory in an attempt to counter the bottom-up, still antagonistic memories associated with supposedly excessive effusions of nationalism. In a context of the global rise of populist nationalisms and of uncertainty linked by some politicians to migration, this tendency is increasingly being challenged, capitalizing on populist memory practices evident since the 1980s and creating what might be seen as a crisis in this liberal approach to ‘coming to terms with the past’.

Yet rather than rejecting a politics based on such ‘coming to terms’, new political formations have in fact increasingly embraced it: a growing discourse of white resentment and victimhood embodied in the so-called ‘Irish slave myth’, the wide visibility of the ‘History Wars’ controversy in Australia, legislation such as the Polish ‘Holocaust Bill’, or the withdrawal of African states from the International Criminal Court are evidence of the increasing impact of a new politics underpinning memory practices, and reveal the ways in which diverse populist and nationalist movements are mobilizing previous tropes. Moreover, these new memory practices increasingly have their own alternative internationalisms too, reaching across or beyond regions in new transnational formations, even as they seemed to reverse the earlier ‘cosmopolitan’ functions of memorialization.

Scholars have for a time noted a renaissance of these memory politics in various regions, but an interconnected globally-aware account of this shift remains elusive. Building on an ongoing dialogue between two AHRC themes, Care for the Future and Translating Cultures, we aim to bring together the approaches of both translation and memory scholars to reflect on the transnational linkages which held a liberal coming-to-terms paradigm together, and to ask whether this is now in crisis or undergoing significant challenges. The event will reflect also on the ways in which institutions such as museums, tourist sites or other institutions are responding to the emergence of these new paradigms.

The conference seeks to historicize and chart the translations, networks and circulations which underpin these new memory paradigms of nationalist and/or populist movements across a range of political, cultural and linguistic contexts, welcoming contributions that chart its ideological origins and growth in transnational terms; address the ways it draws on techniques and tropes of former paradigms; analyse its relationship to new ideological formations based on race, nationalism and gender; and chart its current international or transnational formations.

Scholars might reflect on these themes in terms of:

• Education, museums, memorials and archives;
• Material cultures;
• Legal, economic and political discourse;
• Dark tourism and travel;
• Digital technology;
• Performance, rituals and new heritage practices;
• Actors and agents, e.g. migrants, activists, politicians;
• The growth of transnational networks or the translation of this new challenge, across borders.

We particularly encourage individual case studies focusing on a range of ethnic, cultural and national themes to foster a truly global and transnational discussion.

The conference is jointly organised by two Arts and Humanities Research Council themes: Care for the Future: Thinking Forward through the Past, which affords an opportunity for researchers to explore the dynamic relationship that exists between past, present, and future through a temporally inflected lens, and Translating Cultures, studying the role of translation in the transmission, interpretation, transformation and sharing of languages, values, beliefs, histories and narratives.

Proposals of no more than 300 words, and a short CV, should be sent to Eva.Spisiakova@liverpool.ac.uk by15 November 2018.

Funding opportunities for travel and accommodation are available, but we ask that potential contributors also explore funding opportunities at their home institutions.

 

1.2 Special Issue on “French Food, Francophone Literatures: Negotiating Cultural Assimilation in France through Food in Contemporary Fiction”

In this special issue, contributors will present a variety of perspectives on how authors of contemporary Francophone fiction negotiate cultural assimilation in present-day mainland France through metaphors of food. The instrumentalization of the potent symbolism of food to discuss cultural transactions has been an enduring feature of colonial, anti-colonial, and postcolonial writings in French. At the apotheosis of the empire in the 1930s, colonial administrators extended a rhetorical invitation to colonized subjects to join “France’s family table” by adopting French culture. During decolonization, Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon condemned this imposition as figurative acts of “starving” and “force-feeding” that required “regurgitation.” In the 1980s and ’90s, Maryse Condé and Edouard Glissant’s postcolonial theorizations posited food as a potential literary vehicle for political resistance and cultural creation. In 2010, the recognition of the “Gastronomic Meal of the French” by UNESCO signaled a return to alimentary symbolism to promulgate a vision of France as inclusive and attentive to difference. However, rather than promote food as a site of cultural multiplicity as Condé and Glissant proposed, the award enshrines the unicity of French tradition by propagating the universalist perspective that foreign ideas, cultures, and peoples should be subsumed into France through assimilation.

We invite contributors to reflect on the continued deployment of metaphors of food by contemporary Francophone authors as a means of drawing attention to the violence of cultural disintegration and the persistent dynamics of exploitation in mainland France today. Papers in this issue will also seek to reveal strategies to confront the putative openness of the French universalist model through food metaphors.

Abstracts (250 words) and a paragraph-long bio-bibliography should be sent to Jennifer Boum Make (jeb235@pitt.edu), Elizabeth Collins (emcollins@ucla.edu), and Sylvia Grove (sylvia.grove@hotmail.com) by November 15,  2018. A peer-reviewed journal has expressed interest in this Special Issue, and we will be sending the collection of abstracts by January 15, 2019. We accept articles in French and English.

 

1.3 Special Issue of World Literature Studies on (Inter)Faces: Thinking the Face in Literature and the Visual Arts

Edited by Tomáš Jirsa (Palacký University Olomouc) and Rebecca Rosenberg (King’s College London)

Across cultural history, the face has figured both a site of intimate familiarity and radical unknowability. On the one hand, the face is the most immediate and recognizable marker of identity: an organic surface upon which interiority is projected and displayed. The pioneer of psychobiological theory Silvan Tomkins, for example, defines the face as the primary site of affects, making a significant equation between the face and the human being. On the other hand, the face emerges as a mask, a simulacrum, and an unsettling site of dissimulation, rejecting the causal link between external appearance and inner essence rooted primarily in the 18^th-century physiognomic tradition. While the latter understands the face’s exteriority in terms of a semiotic surface that faithfully reflects the mental or cognitive state of the human subject, recent scholarship has brought about not only a critical reassessment of such determinism, uncovering its devastating historical consequences (Gray 2004), but also radically different conceptions of the “cyberfaces” now inhabiting digital landscapes, undermining ideas of facial resemblance and likeness (Belting 2017).

The recent exhibition “Gesicht” at the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden (2017), curated by literary scholar Sigrid Weigel, illuminated these multiple and ambivalent approaches to the face, foregrounding the eminent importance of further research into the face amid current sociopolitical and technological shifts. Exploring the affective and technological dimensions of the face from the point of view of both cultural history and contemporary neuroscience, the exhibition attested to the face’s call for interdisciplinary exploration. From the ubiquity of Facebook and Instagram, to the politics of identity, to innovations in plastic surgery, to the “uncanny valley” inhabited by robots’ faces, the face continues to constitute a site of contestation, resistance, transformation and plurality which demands to be thought in greater diversity. How do literature and the visual arts invent and explore the manifold aesthetic, political and socio-cultural dimesions of the face? How does the face fit specifically within discourses of embodiment? How do faces catalyze new modes of aesthetics, society and sociality in the contemporary moment as well as across technological and posthuman futures? In both the recent debates around the face in humanities and its contemporary uses in various aesthetic forms and cultural practices, the premise of this edition of World Literature Studies is to think the face beyond the boundaries of the classical subject and its interiority.

For this issue of World Literature Studies we are looking for contributions that address the face in its various aesthetic constellations, cultural uses and theoretical conceptualizations. Contributions may be based on case studies or specific works or bodies of work, or may address methodological, theoretical and philosophical issues of a more general nature. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches on the threshold of literary, visual and film studies, cultural analysis, media theory, comics studies, philosophy, anthropology, science studies and the medical humanities.

In particular we invite contributions relating to (but not limited to) the following issues:

• “Inventing” and constructing the face in the visual arts, film, and literature
• The affective, artistic and technological modalities of portraiture
• Destruction, deformation, and the disappearance of the face across cultural history
• “Cyberfaces” and other digitally generated faces in contemporary cultures
• Beyond anthropocentrism: the face as cultural technique and its mediality
• Animal and other non-human faces
• Biological, ecological, and environmental approaches to the face
• Approaches to the face in the medical humanities and disability studies
• Queer approaches to the face: drag, gender, performativity
• The aesthetics and politics of the face in race and identity studies
• “On the face of it”: the politics and aesthetics of superficiality and judgment
• Famous faces and celebrity studies

Deadline for abstract proposals: November 30, 2018.

Please send your abstract (300-500 words in English + bibliographical references) and a short biographical note to t.jirsa@gmail.com and Rebecca.rosenberg@kcl.ac.uk by November 30, 2018. All notifications of acceptance will be emailed no later than December 20, 2018. If accepted, 5 – 6,000-word essays will then be required for peer review by July 30, 2019.

For more details on the journal World Literature Studies, see http://www.wls.sav.sk/?lang=en

 

1.4 Apostasy from Islam in Francophone Cultures, Societies, and Politics

In recent years, the phenomenon of apostasy from Islam has become increasingly politicized, with right-wing politicians and polemicists, such as Geert Wilders, weaponizing ‘ex-Muslims’ and left-wing politicians and polemicists, such as Max Blumenthal, castigating ‘ex-Muslims’ as self-hating Islamophobes and ‘native informants.’ Indeed, in The Apostates: When Muslims Leave Islam(2015), the only book-length sociological study of apostasy from Islam, Simon Cottee notes how the right portrays apostates ‘as brave dissidents who live in fear of violent reprisal from fanatical Muslims’, while, for the left, ‘the question of Islamic apostasy is seen at best as a diversion from more pressing issues, like the emancipation of Palestine […] [and at worst] derided as “Islamophobic”.’ The intense polarization around apostasy in Islam—and the consequently high political stakes involved in representing apostasy and apostates—is perhaps one reason why there is a dearth of scholarship, across disciplines, on the socio-political and cultural aspects of apostasy from Islam, especially from an on-the-ground, lived-experience perspective. Thus, while scholars have extensively examined the works and lives of numerous Francophone cultural figures of Muslim heritage—such as writers Salim Bachi, Boualem Sansal, and Rachid Boudjedra—from almost every angle possible, they have neglected to take into account these individuals’ public dis-identification and disaffiliation from—and/or disavowal of—Islam.

This conference seeks to address this lacuna by (re-)examining the works and lives of Muslim-heritage Francophone public figures—be they writers, actors, singers, filmmakers, politicians, or even individuals, such as Waleed Al-Husseini, whose rise to public prominence was in a way built on an act of public apostasy—in light of their public apostasy, within the broader polarized and politicized context surrounding ‘ex-Muslims’ and the phenomenon of apostasy from Islam. In addition, we welcome papers that focus on other aspects of apostasy from Islam, including, but not restricted to, the lived experiences of ‘ex-Muslims’, representations of apostasy from Islam in media and political discourse, and historical analyses of the concept of apostasy in, for example, nineteenth-century Algeria (such as in the context of the Code de l’indigénat).

We welcome contributions for 20-minute papers on aspects of apostasy from Islam including, but not restricted to:

Defining Islam in the French/Francophone public sphere.

• Differing reactions to public apostasy around the world.
• The lived experiences of ‘ex-Muslims’.
• Colonial histories of assimilation and (public) apostasy.
• Republicanism and apostasy.
• The politics of recuperation of the apostate (on the left, on the right and in the “centre”).
• The novelist, actor, singer or filmmaker as public figure or spokesperson.
• Resisting ideological appropriation and reductive categorisation.
• The poetics/aesthetics of apostasy.

Proposals of 200-300 words and a short bio should be sent to apostasy.conference@gmail.com by the deadline of December 21, 2019.

 

1.5 ‘Le français d’ici, de là, de là-bas’ (AFLS Colloque/Conference 2019)

Colloque AFLS 2019

‘Le français d’ici, de là, de là-bas’

Le colloque annuel de l’Association d’études en langue française (AFLS) sera tenu à l’Université de Bristol, Royaume-Uni, du lundi 15 au mercredi 17 juillet 2019.

Il est peut-être inexact de parler du « français » au singulier, comme si cela impliquait que la langue française est un objet monolithique homogène. En effet, le français contemporain varie sur les plans géographique et social et, même s’il nous semblerait étrange de parler des « français » au pluriel, il faut au moins reconnaître que le « français » se compose d’une multitude d’accents, de dialectes et de variétés. Ce colloque examinera la variation diatopique, diastratique, et diaphasique en français, et les implications de ces recherches pour la pédagogie, l’acquisition du langage, ainsi que pour notre compréhension du monde francophone en général. Le comité scientifique accueille favorablement toute proposition de communication sur ce thème, ainsi que sur tout autre aspect de l’étude de la linguistique française et de l’enseignement du français dans l’éducation supérieure.

Les langues du colloque sont le français et l’anglais, et les propositions devront être rédigées dans la langue de communication. La durée prévue des communications est de 30 minutes (20 minutes suivies de 10 minutes pour les questions).

Les propositions de communication (300 mots maximum, titre et références inclus) peuvent être soumises via le site internet du colloque entre le 1 octobre 2018 et le 14 janvier 2019. Les propositions, qui devront être anonymes, mentionneront explicitement le ou les domaines dans lesquels elles pourront s’inscrire.

Conférenciers invités confirmés:

Prof. Jacques Durand (Université Toulouse II – Jean Jaurès)

Prof. Emmanuelle Canut (Université Charles de Gaulle – Lille III)

Prof. Mari C. Jones (University of Cambridge)

Prof. Leigh Oakes (Queen Mary, University of London)

Pour plus de renseignements, contacter: afls2019bristol@gmail.com

Site internet du colloque: https://afls2019.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/

***

AFLS Conference 2019

‘Le français d’ici, de là, de là-bas’

The annual conference of the Association of French Language Studies (AFLS) will be held at the University of Bristol, UK, from Monday 15 to Wednesday 17 July 2019.

It is perhaps inaccurate to refer to ‘French’ in the singular, as if to imply that the French language is a homogeneous monolithic object. Indeed, modern contemporary French varies and changes over geographical and social space and, while it may seem odd to refer to ‘Frenches’ in the plural, we must acknowledge at the very least that ‘French’ is made up of a plethora of accents, dialects, and varieties. This conference will consider geographical, social, and stylistic variation in French, as well as the implications of such research for pedagogy, language acquisition, and our understanding of the Francophone world in general. The organising committee welcomes abstract submissions on these and any other areas of French linguistics and French language teaching in Higher Education.

Conference papers are welcome in either French or English, and abstracts should be written in the language of the presentation.  Speakers will be given 30 minutes for oral papers (20 minutes, plus 10 minutes for questions).

Abstracts may be submitted via the website from 1 October 2018. Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words (including title and references), and should be sent by 14 January 2019. Abstracts should be anonymised and should state explicitly which field they subscribe to.

Confirmed plenary speakers:

Prof. Jacques Durand (Université Toulouse II – Jean Jaurès)

Prof. Emmanuelle Canut (Université Charles de Gaulle – Lille III)

Prof. Mari C. Jones (University of Cambridge)

Prof. Leigh Oakes (Queen Mary, University of London)

Please send all queries to: afls2019bristol@gmail.com

Conference website: https://afls2019.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/

 

1.6 Special Issue of L’Esprit Créateur on ‘Challenging Normative Spaces and Gazes: The Body in 20th and 21st Century Francophone Culture’

This special issue of L’Esprit Créateur (Summer 2020) will examine the body in French and Francophone cultures within and beyond the metropole, with a broad temporal, national, ethnic, racial, gendered and generic scope. Authors will explore how the body can be deployed to challenge normative spaces and/or gazes, including fixed notions of identity, as well as heteronormative and patriarchal structures of representation and power. Articles (6000 words or fewer) will focus on how the body is understood and presented in the twentieth- and twenty-first century across multiple medias including film, literature and television. We invite papers from a variety of disciplines such as literature, history, art, sociology or philosophy. The issue aims to offer a far-reaching conceptualization of the body, inclusive of the queer, racialized, transnational, exiled, migrant, maternal, abject and posthuman body.

Abstracts in English or French of no more than 250 words, along with a short biography, should be submitted to Dr. Antonia Wimbush, Dr. Maria Tomlinson and Polly Galis at imaginingthebody@gmail.com by 15^th January 2019.

 

1.7 Representations of Disaster (Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference)

University of Pittsburgh

March 8-9, 2019

Keynote by Dr. Deborah Jenson, Professor of Romance Studies and Global Health, Duke University

This conference aims to converse with disaster narratives and representations in French/Francophone and Italian literatures and media. We seek to explore the aes- thetics of representations and narratives of disasters in a variety of mediums as a means to critically engage and historicize the myriad of stories about and around these events. Environmental disasters from The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, the 1966 flood of the Arno in Florence, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and man- made disasters such as the Holocaust, 9/11, and the November 2015 Paris attacks have long captured literary and creative expression. The influx of representations of disasters and their continuous development through artistic production guides us in coming face to face with the challenges of telling others’ stories or telling about one’s own experiences. The University of Pittsburgh’s Year of the Global provides an opportunity to reflect on the multiple ways and forms of cultural production that attempt to make sense of the increasingly global scale of disaster.

In thinking of the aesthetics and ethics of disaster representations, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are great points in history to explore modern reflections on catastrophic events. Other periods of time are just as plentiful in their portrayals of disaster as we move from pre-modern to more contemporary landscapes. Through the works of Deborah Jenson, Maurice Blanchot, Catherine Rigby, Rich- ard Watts, Marco Folin, and Monica Preti, we are acquainted with both a denota- tion of disasters as well as the various ways in which these events are rendered.

Deborah Jenson’s essay “The Writing of Disaster in Haiti” (2010) suggests that the 2010 earthquake in Haiti has been “tested and remapped by disaster, [but it is not], in itself, disaster.” This is in contrast to Michel Blanchot’s The Writing of the Disaster (1980) which theorizes affective responses, such as grief, anger, terror, to refer to how “the disaster ruins everything, all the while leaving everything intact.”

The in- terplay between disasters, destruction and reconstruction prompts to consider the destabilizing and (re)ordering forces that operate in the event of disasters and find expression in the artistic forms that recuperate and revisit them. Reflecting on dis- aster representations and narratives transhistorically and through varied forms of artistic expression will provide a broader comparative framework to consider how the Humanities can engage with more recent ecocritical perspectives and environ- mental concerns in thinking about disasters in political, social, and aesthetic terms.

Topics include but are not limited to:

• Disaster fiction and narratives
• History and disasters
• Disasters, media, and film
• The ethics of disasters
• Apocalyptic imaginaries
• Nationalism, transnationalism
• Postcolonial ecocriticism
• Anthropocene
• Migration, exile
• Slow violence
• Globalization
• Poverty, labor
• Slavery , rebellion
• Time and temporalities of disasters
• Teaching about Disasters

Presentations will be limited to a reading time of 20 minutes (8-10 pages). Please send abstracts of 200- 250 words, including department/affiliation in a word document to pitt.frit.conference@gmail.com by January 15, 2019. Papers can be in English, French or Italian. Please include “Submissions: FRIT Graduate Conference” in the subject line of your email.

 

1.8 ‘Retards/Delays’ French Graduate Conference

University of Cambridge, 25th-26th April 2019

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Prof. Achille Mbembe, Dr Adeline Desbois-Ientile, Dr Claire White.

The ‘temporal turn’ of the last decade has witnessed the return of the concept of delay at the centre of literary and artistic production. These often focus on the deployment of time in works, for instance, the dyschronia of the contemporary (Agamben 2008). The disjuncture between lived and perceived time is echoed by the hermeneutics of ancient texts and contemporary literary theory. The propensity for anachronic readings (Bayard) in the 2000s, or studies of ‘queer temporalities’ (Allen, Time and Literature¸2018), make a compelling case for a re-reading of canonical texts and literary re-interpretations through ‘timely’ studies.

Whether by the use of hyperbaton, which dislocates the sentence and produces a delayed effect through the deferred appearance of a word, or by the deceleration of rhythms (through pauses in the narration or the aesthetics of slowness, such as the dyssynchronization between sound and image exhibited in Godard’s films or “slow cinema”), writers and filmmakers experiment with the rhythms of time. Sixteenth-century authors dwell on their perennial linguistic delay in relation to the ideal of Antiquity, which they are emulating, and the “Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes” in the seventeenth-century solidifies two centuries of literary debates on the legitimacy of the present.

Time lag can become the marker of civilisations deemed inferior, of people and modes of living which elude heteronormative or so-called ‘normal’ rules as defined by dominant cultures. To be ‘passé’, ‘retarded’, ‘underdeveloped’, are amongst the many expressions which reduce alterity to an inferiority gestured to through temporality. Within this context, the use of the notion of delay to think of spatial differences is interrogated: one need only evoke the ‘backwardness’ of former French colonies in relation to France, or the gap between Anglo-American literary theoretical developments and French schools of thought.

We would warmly welcome presentations from doctoral students working on a range of periods in the French and Francophone world: from the Middle Ages to the Ultra-contemporary. The following is a non-exhaustive list of potential topics of interest:

– Delays in press and publications. Materiality of works and its delays

– Philosophical notions of dyschronia, anachronia, parachronia, the future of the past, and the impossibility of simultaneity

– Spatial and temporal disjuncture

– Spatial and temporal displacement, migrations

– Cinematic delays

– Queer temporalities

– Representations in time and the deconstruction of liminal/marginal characters and spaces

– Poetic delays (microsctructural and macrostructural)

– Dislocating stylistic figures

– Anachronic readings

– Aesthetics of delays/ tragedy

– Progress/’backwardness’

– Perceptions of historical time

– Causes and effects of delays

The conference will take place at the University of Cambridge (Corpus Christi College) on 25th and 26th of April 2019. We invite proposals (250 words max) to be sent by 30th January 2019 to the following address: delaysretards2019@gmail.com. It is envisaged that a selection of the papers presented will be subsequently published.

 

1.9 ‘Ailing Empires: Medicine, Science, and Imperialism’ (Interdisciplinary symposium)

University of Edinburgh

31 May 2019

Keynote speaker: Dr Samiksha Sehrawat (Newcastle)

Twitter: @AEconference

2018 has begun as a period of renewed public and academic debate over the history and legacies of colonialism. Among their many faults, detached inquiries regarding the supposed benefits of colonial endeavours, however, miss the significance of everyday experiences of empire as expressed in a range of historical, literary, and visual evidence.

‘Ailing Empires’ is a one-day symposium that seeks to explore the extent to which narratives of health, medicine and science are inextricably bound with experiences of empire and colonialism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries. Through focus on a range of colonial contexts, textualities and sources, this symposium hopes to address questions such as: How did different colonial empires instrumentalise medicine and science? What role did healthcare and/or science play within the respective colonial project? Is ‘medical imperialism’ a useful term across different colonial contexts? In what way(s) did exchanges between Western and non-Western medical knowledge function as contact zones? How can scholarship engage with legacies of colonial medicine in the postcolonial age?

In order to explore to these questions, we invite papers and presentations from a variety of disciplinary and comparative perspectives from across the humanities, and particularly encourage submissions from postgraduate and early-career researchers.

The following is an indicative, but by no means exhaustive, selection of the kinds of issues we would like to address:

– Medical imperialism

– Postcolonial legacies

– Control and resistance

– Medical encounters and knowledge exchange

– Medicine and ecology

– Mental health

– The doctor-patient encounter

– Missionaries and nurses

– Sex and gender

– Class and access/restriction

– Infrastructures

– Literary and visual representations

– Medicine and travel writing

– Authority and authorship

– Drugs and healing practices

– Hygiene, disease, and public health

– Health reform and policies

Please send proposals of no more than 300 words detailing your topic, along with a brief bio, to ailingempires2018@gmail.com by 8 February 2019. We invite the ‘traditional’ 20-minute paper, as well as alternative formats of presentation.

Contact: Dr Sam Goodman (Bournemouth): sgoodman@bournemouth.ac.uk | Dr Sarah Arens (Edinburgh): v1sarens@ed.ac.uk.

 

2. Job Opportunities

2.1 Assistant Professor in French (George Washington University)

The Department of Romance, German and Slavic Languages and Literatures at The George Washington University invites applications for a tenure-track appointment to begin as early as Fall 2019 at the rank of Assistant Professor.

Minimum Qualifications: Ph.D. in French with specialization in Medieval and/or Early Modern Literature and Culture by date of appointment; evidence of strong potential for scholarship as demonstrated by publications and/or works in progress; evidence of teaching excellence and innovative pedagogy; and native or near-native fluency in French and English.

The complete application is in two parts. 1) Please complete the online faculty application at http://www.gwu.jobs/postings/55985 and upload current CV, statement of teaching and research interest, course evaluations, article-length writing sample, and cover letter outlining how your experiences match the basic qualifications 2) Please send three (3) letters of recommendation directly to RGSLLFrensearch@gwu.edu with the subject line of “Assistant Professor Position/YOUR NAME”. Review of applications will begin on November 9, 2018 and continue until position is filled. Only complete applications will be considered. Employment offers are contingent on the satisfactory outcome of a standard background screening.

The University is an Equal Employment Opportunity Affirmative Action Employer that does not unlawfully discriminate in any of its programs or activities on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression or on any other basis prohibited by applicable law.

 

2.2 Research Fellow in French and Francophone Prison and Penal Heritage (Nottingham Trent University)

Applications are sought from suitably qualified candidates to work on the AHRC-funded project ‘Postcards from the bagne: Tourism in the shadow of France’s overseas penal colonies’. The successful candidate will work under the supervision of Dr Sophie Fuggle. Specific duties will involve, for example, carrying out archival and fieldwork at relevant sites in France and internationally, organising dissemination events including an international conference, preparing journal articles and other outputs, organising pathways to impact activities. For more information and to apply please visit: https://vacancies.ntu.ac.uk/displayjob.aspx?jobid=5891. The position is 1.0FTE for 8 months but there is the possibility to discuss carrying out the role on a part-time basis over a longer period. For an informal discussion, please contact: sophie.fuggle@ntu.ac.uk. Closing date: 11 November 2018. 

 

2.3 Assistant Professor in French and Francophone Civilizations (University of Maryland)

The Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics and Intercultural Communication at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) invites applications for a tenure-track position at the level of Assistant Professor of French and Francophone studies starting August, 2019.

Candidates should demonstrate a tangible promise in research, teaching, and service. Preference may be given to candidates who specialize in more than one field of French and Francophone Studies, for example, in history, culture, society, and/or whose work puts French and Francophone Studies into a dynamic engagement with intercultural studies, but they should demonstrate the ability to teach language courses and content courses in French.  Teaching load: 5 courses over two semesters (3/2). Ph.D. required by time of appointment. We seek a colleague with a specialization in French and Francophone civilizations with a focus on 20thand 21stcentury cultural French civilization and history and their connections to the intellectual history in other parts of the Francophone world and Europe.

Only applications submitted through Interfolio will be considered. Paper applications will not be accepted. An Application must include a cover letter, a curriculum vitae, three letters of recommendation, a writing sample (no more than thirty pages), and a brief statement detailing your experience and commitment to diversity in teaching and working with individuals from diverse backgrounds.

UMBC’s Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, in addition to offering instruction in a broad range of languages, has a long history of training students to examine cultural differences, to understand their nature and implications, and to apply their linguistic and intercultural talents and skills in advancing cultural and ethnic diversity and social responsibility.  With its renewed emphasis on intercultural issues and conflicts, MLLI has become one of the primary academic departments at UMBC dedicated to innovative approaches to linguistic, cultural, and economic diversity and social justice.  For further information about the department, please consult mlli.umbc.edu.

UMBC has a strong commitment to increasing faculty diversity. We are especially proud of the diversity of our student body and we seek to attract equally diverse faculty.  Successful candidates must be able to work in a multicultural environment and support diversity and inclusion reflecting our student body.  Furthermore, the successful candidate should embrace our vision and mission, and be committed to inclusive excellence and diversity.  Members of minority groups, women, veterans and individuals with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.

UMBC is an EEO/AA employer, known among its peers for its commitment to diversity and inclusion. Women, minorities, persons with disabilities, veterans, and international applicants are encouraged to apply.  Closing Date 21 November 2018.

For more information, see https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=57629.

 

2.4 Teaching Associate in French (Aston University)

Languages & Social Sciences

Salary:	£33,199 to £39,609 per annum
Grade:	Grade 08
Contract Type:	Fixed Term (until 15th June 2019)
Basis:	Full Time
Closing Date:	23.59 hours GMT on Friday 23 November 2018
Interview Date:	Monday 17 December 2018
Reference:	R180469

Applications are sought for a Teaching Associate in French Language and Society.

The successful candidate must have experience teaching all levels of French and will be a native or near-native speaker of both French and English, as teaching will be carried out in the target language.

Preference would be given to candidates with a background in business to teach French Business Environment on the International Business and Modern Languages programme, but other areas of expertise may be considered.

The successful candidate will hold a PhD (or have submitted their thesis by the start date) in a relevant area, and will be experienced in teaching French at University level in the UK.

For informal discussions about the post please contact Raquel Medina on 0121 204 3813 or r.medina@aston.ac.uk.

The preferred start date for this role is 15th January 2019. This role is full time however, a job share/part time arrangement would be considered.

Aston University is committed to the principles of the Athena SWAN Charter http://www.ecu.ac.uk/equality-charter-marks/athena-swan/, recognised by a bronze award. We pride ourselves on our vibrant, friendly, supportive working environment and collaborative atmosphere.

Further details:

Job Description     University Information

 

Email details to a friend

Apply Online

Further particulars and application forms are available in alternative formats on request i.e. large print, Braille, tape or CD Rom.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact HR via recruitment@aston.ac.uk

Aston University is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applications from all sections of the community.

For more information, see https://jobs.aston.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=R180469.

 

2.5 Assistant Professor position in French (University of British Columbia, Vancouver)

The Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies at The University of British Columbia (Vancouver) invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in French with a specialization in 20th/21st-Century French Literature and Culture. Additional interests could include literary theory, intellectual history and cultural history. Demonstrated interest in Québec literature and culture would be an asset. The anticipated start date is July 1, 2019.

We are particularly interested in scholars who will be able to participate in collaborative projects with other faculty members, who will enhance our course offerings, propose new perspectives on European French history and culture, and contribute to the Faculty of Arts commitment to foster international engagement and cultivate intercultural understanding among our students. The position entails a teaching load of 4 courses per year (12 credits).

A completed PhD in French (or relevant field) is required at the start date of the appointment (July 1, 2019). Candidates must have native or near-native fluency in French, as well as an excellent command of English, and must be able to demonstrate strong evidence of an ongoing commitment to academic and teaching excellence. The successful candidate will be expected to develop and maintain an active program of research leading to peer-reviewed publications and the securing of external research funding, and to contribute to the education and training of undergraduate as well as graduate students.

Additional information about the UBC Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies may be found at https://fhis.ubc.ca.

Applications are to be submitted via this online form: https://fhis.air.arts.ubc.ca/?p=1451. Applicants should be prepared to upload in the following order and in a single PDF: a letter of application, a curriculum vitae, a description of current and future research and teaching interests, one writing sample (20-30 pages), and a teaching portfolio (statement of teaching philosophy, student evaluations, peer assessments, one graduate course syllabus and one undergraduate course syllabus).

In addition, applicants should arrange to have three confidential letters of reference sent directly by their referees, by the above deadline, via email to fhis.search@ubc.ca with the subject line “Assistant Professor of French.” Enquiries may be made to the Head of the Department of FHIS, Dr. Joël Castonguay-Bélanger, at fhis.search@ubc.ca.

Review of applications will begin soon after December 1, 2018 and will continue until the position is filled.

This position is subject to final budgetary approval.  Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.

Equity and diversity are essential to academic excellence. An open and diverse community fosters the inclusion of voices that have been underrepresented or discouraged. We encourage applications from members of groups that have been marginalized on any grounds enumerated under the B.C. Human Rights Code, including sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, racialization, disability, political belief, religion, marital or family status, age, and/or status as a First Nation, Métis, Inuit, or Indigenous person.

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.

 

3. Announcements 

3.1 Experiences of Exile (University of Stirling)

The University of Stirling is hosting a week of events on the theme of ‘Experiences of Exile’ as part of Fiona Barclay’s AHRC project ‘Narratives and Representations of the French Settlers of Algeria’ and to launch the project’s exhibition at the Pathfoot Gallery. Here is the programme of events:

Film Screening: A View of Love/Un Balcon sur la mer (2010 dir. Nicole Garcia)

Thursday 8 November at 5.30 (4.30 start for the lecture), £8.

Macroberts Art Centre, Stirling

A View of Love/Un Balcon sur la mer (2010) is a romantic mystery film about three French children who left Algeria very suddenly during the last violent months of the War of Independence in 1962. The film moves between past and present as the characters, now adults in France, rediscover each other and their past. The film illustrates how the nostalgia of the French settlers who lived in Algeria opens the door to the unexpected return of the past.

The film will be preceded at 4.30pm by an introductory talk by Dr Fiona Barclay. The talk unpacks the emotional and historical attachments which linked Algeria to France for over a century, and which continue to shape the lives of millions living in France today.

https://www.pieds-noirs.stir.ac.uk/week-of-events-film/​
Photographer Anna Pantelia Presents:  The European Dream
Tuesday 13^thNovember, 3pm – 4pm, Free

Oscars, Pathfoot Building

Anna Pantelia is an award-winning photojournalist and the Field Communications Manager for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). She was the official photographer for CERN between 2012-2014. Her photography and interviews have appeared in Newsweek, CNN, Al Jazeera, BBC,The Telegraph, The Guardian, Vice News etc. She has worked in Europe, Turkey, South Sudan and Mozambique as a freelancer photographer with international NGOs such as Action Aid, Save the Children, and CARE International.

Her talk will discuss her current exhibition The European Dream which is on display in the Pathfoot Gallery.

https://www.pieds-noirs.stir.ac.uk/week-of-events-talks/

Autumn Art Lecture
Thursday 15^thNovember,  5.30 – 6.30pm, Free

Pathfoot Lecture Theatre, Pathfoot Building

The University of Stirling will welcome Professor Alison Phipps, UNESCO Chair: Refugee integration through languages and the arts (University of Glasgow), for the Autumn Art Lecture.

Entitled ‘Drift. Float. Drown. Dance: Reflections on refuge from a calabash’, the lecture will reflect on a translational study in Ghana. It saw researchers work alongside a dance company, who expressed the themes of the research in dance form.

Places are free for the event – at Pathfoot Lecture Theatre, on Thursday 15 November, 5.30pm – but must be booked in advance, via the events booking page.

https://www.pieds-noirs.stir.ac.uk/autumn-art-lecture/

The project’s website also hosts a range of features that will be of interest to colleagues working on France and Algeria: an interactive map highlighting locations, artefacts, and events; audio recordings and transcripts of interviews with repatriated French settlers; and the project blog.

 

3.2 Tummy Trouble – The Gut in French and Francophone Literature, Theory, and Art (10 November 2018)

10 November 2018, 9.00am – 6.00pm

Room 243, Second Floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

The annual London Postgraduate French Conference will bring together postgraduates working in all areas of French studies in order to explore and demystify representations of the gut in French and Francophone Literature, Theory, and Art. Since the awkward outburst of Aristophanes’s hiccups into the discourse of Plato’s ‘Symposium’, our innards have long been linked to a sense of perplexity and anti-rationalism in the Western literary and philosophical canon. Heartburn, burping, vomiting, indigestion, IBS, diarrhoea, constipation, flatulence and fatness are considered shameful, dirty signs of bodily, moral and social failure. Yet consumption is also one of life’s greatest pleasures, food is an indispensable part of our cultural identity, and our guts are primed as the locus of our true feelings and instincts: when in doubt, follow your gut. What to make of these contradictions?

For more information regarding the programme and registration, visit: https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/event/16180.

 

3.3 Bilingual Life Writing by Contemporary Women Writers

Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing, Institute of Modern Languages Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Friday 30 November 2018

Room G37, Senate House, 11:00-18:00

Programme

11:00   Registration and welcome

11:10   Panel 1 – Chair: Shirley Jordan (Newcastle/CCWW)

Antonia Wimbush (Birmingham): “Gisèle Pineau: A Transnational, Translingual Writer?”

Christopher Hogarth (South Australia): “‘Causer des migraines à Léopold Sédar Senghor?’ The use of African languages in Fatou Diome’s prose”

Natalie Edwards (Adelaide): “Bilingual Life Writing by Maryse Condé”

12:30   Lunch (own arrangements)

13:15   Panel 2 – Chair: Natalie Edwards (Adelaide)

Fiona Cox (Exeter): “Translation, Creativity and Grief in the work of Josephine Balmer”

Julia Waters (Reading): “Ananda Devi and Self-Translation”

Julie Rodgers (Maynooth): “Ying Chen and the linguistic ‘entre-deux’”

14:45   Tea and coffee

15:00   Panel 3 – Chair: Christopher Hogarth (South Australia)

Nicole Fayard (Leicester): “Translating Words into Action: The Suggestive Power of Language in Marie Nimier’s L’Hypnotisme à la portée de tous” 

Sandra Daroczi (Bath): “Autobiographical projections in Julia Kristeva’s fiction”

16:00   Workshop on Lydie Salvayre

16:40   Concluding remarks and future research

Antonia Wimbush (Birmingham) and Ashwiny Kistnareddy (Cambridge)

17:00   Wine Reception

This event is generously supported by the Cassal Endowment Fund

Registration fee £10 | Students/unwaged £5

Registration required at: https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/event/16604

 

4. New Titles

4.1 The Algerian War in French/Algerian Writing: Literary Sites of Memory (University of Wales Press, 2018)

By Jonathan Lewis

This is the first study to analyse and problematize the notion of literary texts as ‘sites of memory’ with regard to the representation of the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62), and memories of it, in the work of French authors of Algerian origin. Considering a primary corpus spanning over forty literary texts published between 1981 and 2012, the book assesses the extent to which texts are able to collect diverse and apparently competing memories, and in the process present the heterogeneous nature of memories of the Algerian War. By setting up the notion of literary texts as ‘sites of memory’, where the potentially explosive but also consensual encounter between former colonizer and colonized subject takes place, the book contributes to ongoing debates surrounding the contested place of narratives of empire in French collective memory, and the ambiguous place of immigrants from the former colonies and their children in dominant definitions of French identity.

For further details, please see the publisher’s website: http://www.uwp.co.uk/book/the-algerian-war-in-french-algerian-writing-paperback/. 

 

4.2 Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality, 1848-2016 (Combined Academic, 2o18)

Edited by Félix Germain and Silyane Larcher, Foreword by T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting

Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality, 1848–2016 explores how black women in France itself, the French Caribbean, Gorée, Dakar, Rufisque, and Saint-Louis experienced and reacted to French colonialism and how gendered readings of colonization, decolonization, and social movements cast new light on the history of French colonization and of black France. In addition to delineating the powerful contributions of black French women in the struggle for equality, contributors also look at the experiences of African American women in Paris and in so doing integrate into colonial and postcolonial conversations the strategies black women have engaged in negotiating gender and race relations à la française.

Drawing on research by scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds and countries, this collection offers a fresh, multidimensional perspective on race, class, and gender relations in France and its former colonies, exploring how black women have negotiated the boundaries of patriarchy and racism from their emancipation from slavery to the second decade of the twenty-first century.

For more information, see http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/black-french-women-and-the-struggle-for-equality-1848-2016.

 

4.3 Algérie, les écrivains de la décennie noire (CNRS Editions, 2018)

Par Tristan Leperlier

Il y a trente ans, en octobre 1988, le monde arabe connaissait son premier « Printemps » en Algérie, suivi d’une guerre civile d’une rare violence qui saigna le pays, par l’assassinat ou par l’exil, d’une grande partie de son intelligentsia. L’une des premières victimes, le poète et journaliste de langue française Tahar Djaout tomba, en 1993, sous les balles de djihadistes islamistes. Entre études littéraires et sociologie des intellectuels, ce livre montre les conséquences de cette crise politique sur les écrivains algériens. Cette guerre civile a-t-elle été une guerre des langues, opposant anti-islamistes francophones soutenus par la France, et pro-islamistes arabophones, choc de civilisations qu’un certain discours de l’époque s’est plu à diffuser ? Il est vrai que l’ancienne puissance coloniale est redevenue à l’occasion de cette « décennie noire » un espace central pour l’exil, le débat politique, et la reconnaissance littéraire des Algériens. C’est plus largement la place de ces écrivains dans les sociétés algérienne et française qui est interrogée. Exceptionnelle par l’ampleur et la diversité de ses sources, cette étude s’adresse aux lecteurs curieux de découvrir une littérature à la fois si proche et lointaine (de langue française ou arabe : Rachid Boudjedra, Mohammed Dib, Assia Djebar, Tahar Ouettar…) ; et qu’intéressent les enjeux particulièrement actuels de l’engagement politique en période de censure religieuse, de migrations intellectuelles, et d’identités postcoloniales à l’heure de la mondialisation.

En savoir plus: http://www.cnrseditions.fr/societe/7677-algerie-les-ecrivains-de-la-decennie-noire.html.