Announce

Cosmopolis and Beyond. Literary Cosmopolitanism after the Republic of Letters

Trinity College, Oxford (18-19 March 2016)

Cosmopolitanism, derived from the ancient Greek for ‘world citizenship’, offers a radical alternative to nationalism, asking individuals to imagine themselves as part of a community that goes beyond national and linguistic boundaries. Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in cosmopolitanism in the humanities and social sciences, especially within philosophy, sociology and politics. Cosmopolitanism, however, has also exercised a shaping influence on modern literary culture. It is well known that during the Enlightenment it found an embodiment in the Republic of Letters. Its evolution thereafter included uneasy alliances with the idea of Empire in the nineteenth century, and with the experiments of the international avant gardes and modernist circles, and the phenomenon of globalisation in the twentieth. Through these, and more, cultural formations cosmopolitanism has given rise to new ways of writing, reading, translating and circulating texts; these processes have, in turn, led to new understandings of individual and national identity, new forms of ethics and new configurations of aesthetic and political engagement. From Kant to Derrida, cosmopolitanism has in the course of history been seen as fostering peace and communication across borders. Far from being uncontroversial, though, it has also been attacked by those who have denounced its universalism as impossible and its social ethos as elitist.

This conference intends to explore different literary manifestations of the cosmopolitan ideal, broadly conceived, and its influence on modern literary culture. It seeks to tease out elements of continuity and rupture in a long history of literary cosmopolitanism that goes from the decline of the Republic of Letters to the era of globalisation. In order to do so, it aims to foster a dialogue between experts in different fields of literary studies (English, modern languages, comparative literature) and different historical periods.

Proposals are sought from all areas of literary studies, and cross-disciplinary and comparative approaches are particularly welcome. Possible angles on literary cosmopolitanism might include: translation; the media, transport and communication technologies; networks; migration and rootedness; nationalisms; provincialism; political and social spaces (city, nation, empire); places and institutions; emotions, gender and sexual identity.

Keynote address by Emily Apter (NYU).

Organised by Stefano Evangelista (Oxford).

Deadline for abstracts: 15 November 2015. Please send a title and 300-word abstract to the conference administrator, clement.dessy@gmail.com.

This conference is part of the AHRC-funded research project The Love of Strangers: Literary Cosmopolitanism in the English Fin de Siècle, led by Stefano Evangelista.

Call for Papers

Annual Meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society

Ottawa, Canada

18-21 May 2016

The 42nd annual meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society (FCHS) will take place in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, from 18 to 21 May 2016. The event will be hosted by the University of Ottawa.

This year’s theme will be “Forgotten francophonies,” in order to include and highlight groups and peoples usually hidden within broader categories. However, as usual, proposals on all aspects of overseas France will be considered. The Society encourages students, scholars, and educators from all disciplines to submit proposals.

Individual paper proposals must include a 100-200 word summary with the title of the paper, name, institutional affiliation, e-mail address, and phone numbers, and a brief curriculum vitae, all integrated into a single file, preferably in MS-Word.

Proposals for entire sessions or panels must contain the same information on each participant, as well as contact information and a short C.V. for the moderator if you suggest one. The program committee can help find moderators, if necessary.

Please indicate if you require audiovisual equipment in your proposal.          

Individual or panel proposals should be sent to ottawafchs@yahoo.ca; they will then be forwarded to the selection committee. Individuals wishing to moderate a session should send a statement of interest, contact information, and a brief c.v. as well.  

The deadline for proposals is 1 November 2015.              

The FCHS depends on membership dues. All conference participants must be or become members at the time of acceptance (January 2016). Unfortunately, the FCHS does not have funds to subsidize scholars’ participation at the meeting. Graduate students, however, may apply for the Shorrock Travel Award; details are provided on the FCHS website (the application must be sent with the proposal).

Additional information about the Society’s scholarly activities, fellowships, and past conferences is available at www.frenchcolonial.org.

If you have any questions about membership, please contact Jennifer Boittin at treasurer@frenchcolonial.org.

If you have any questions about conference logistics and local arrangements, please contact Micheline Lessard at mlessard@uottawa.ca.

Appel à communications

Congrès annuel de la Société d’histoire coloniale française

Ottawa, Canada

18-21 Mai 2016

Le 42^e congrès annuel de la Société d’Histoire coloniale française (SHCF) se tiendra du 18 au 21 mai 2016 à Ottawa.Cette manifestation sera accueillie par l’Université d’Ottawa

Le thème de cette année portera sur les  « Francophonies oubliées», afin d’inclure et de souligner l’existence de groupes et de peuples habituellement invisibles à l’intérieur de catégories plus larges. Cependant comme tous les ans, les propositions de communication sur d’autres aspects de l’histoire coloniale française seront considérées.

La Société encourage les enseignants, chercheurs et étudiants de toutes disciplines à soumettre des propositions de communication.

Les propositions individuelles doivent comprendre un résumé de 100 à 200 mots et indiquer titre de la communication, nom, institution de rattachement, coordonnées (e-mail, téléphone) et un bref curriculum vitae, en un seul document, de préférence en MS-Word.

Les propositions de sessions complètes ou de tables-rondes doivent contenir ces éléments pour chacun des participants, de même que pour le président/modérateur (le comité scientifique peut aussi aider dans la recherche d’un président/modérateur).

Merci d’indiquer d’emblée si vous avez besoin d’équipements audiovisuels.

Les propositions doivent être envoyées par mail à ottawafchs@yahoo.ca. Ellesseront ensuite transmises au comité scientifique. Les personnes souhaitant présider une séance sont priées d’envoyer une déclaration d’intérêt, leurs coordonnées ainsi qu’un bref CV.

La date limite d’envoi des propositions de communication est le 1er novembre 2015.

La SHFC est une association indépendante, sans autre source de financement que les cotisations de ses adhérents. L’adhésion à l’association est obligatoire pour participer au congrès. L’adhésion doit donc être effective pour tous les participants au moment de l’acceptation de leur proposition (Janvier 2016). Malheureusement la Société française d’histoire coloniale n’offre de pas de financement pour participer au congrès. Les doctorants peuvent cependant concourir au prix Shorrock. Les modalités sont indiquées sur le site de la FCHS (la demande doit être faite au moment de l’envoi de la proposition de communication).

Des informations complémentaires sur les activités de la Société d’histoire coloniale française, les bourses, et les précédentes conférences sont disponibles ici: www.frenchcolonial.org.

Pour les questions concernant l’adhésion à la Société, merci de contacter Jennifer Boittin à treasurer@frenchcolonial.org.

Pour les questions concernant l’organisation sur place à Ottawa, merci de contacter Micheline Lessard à mlessard@uottawa.ca.

Project on Performance and Philosophy

Dear colleagues, 

We are pleased to announce the re-launch of the Early Modern French Studies Reading Group, a virtual reading group run through the MLA Commons (http://commons.mla.org/groups/early-modern-french-studies-reading-group/). Previously, we've read and shared posts about texts such as Corneille’s Médée, Descartes’ Les Passions de L'âme and Pascal's Les Provincales. This work led us to reflect on the philosophical import of theatrical texts as well as the theatrical qualities of some philosophical texts. Our current goal is to ground our on-going collaboration by exploring the pedagogical possibilities offered by the overlap between performance and philosophy.

During the 2015-2016 academic year, we are embarking on a series of readings aimed at helping us brainstorm creative ways to teach French philosophical texts using performance. We warmly invite your participation. Our discussions take place in written form on the MLA Commons blog (which is set to private) to accommodate varying schedules across many time zones. The format is flexible and conversational.

Our first reading for the fall semester will be a chapter by Laura Cull, "Performance Philosophy: Staging a New Field," which is available on our MLA Commons site. We will encourage participants to post their comments on the piece during the last week of October (Monday 10/26-Friday 10/30). However, participants should feel free to join the conversation at a later moment that better suits their schedule. Our initial conversation will be centered around the following questions: 

1)  How might Cull's description of 'Performance Philosophy' as a field help us think of new ways to teach early modern philosophical texts? 

2) Do French philosophical texts from the 16th-18th centuries have any special characteristics to which we should attend when considering their performativity?

Please feel free to contact us about joining the group or with any further queries.

Sincerely,

Joy Palacios and Anna Rosensweig

(joy_palacios@sfu.ca, rosenswe@usc.edu) 

Tradition and / or Modernity:

Literary, Historical and Cultural Perspectives (1660 – 1940)

International conference, Radboud University (The Netherlands)

26-27 May 2016

Call for papers

What did it mean to define oneself as ‘modern’ in Europe during the period extending from Enlightenment ‘modernity’ to the early 20^th-century modernist movement in the arts? How were national self-definitions in Europe linked during this period to (perceived) modernity, most often in opposition to (perceived) tradition? In other words, what is modernity, when and how did it begin (and has it already ended)? Have we in fact ever been modern?  Is there one modernity, or are there  multiple modernities?

Modernity is without a doubt one of the most vexed concepts in present-day scholarship. Yet it continues to be used across the humanities, in philosophy, political theory and in a variety of other fields as well. Since the first introduction of the term ‘modernity’, the category of the modern has been used variously to polemically denote a decisive break with the past, the new superseding the old, and a linear view of historical progress onward and upward that succeeded in replacing older, cyclical views. Historically, the role of science, religion, the Enlightenment and political economy add further degrees of complexity to any deployment of the concept.

As scholars in the humanities, understanding and interrogating the concept of modernity is therefore of critical importance for our work. Changing concepts of modernity help us capture and define elements of the past in changing ways, as well as modify the way historians relate to the past. Heritage studies have sharpened our sense of the extent to which the past and its traditions can haunt even the most ‘modern’ societies. Perhaps the most radical change has occurred in the way historians understand the relationship between religion and the modern: a clear dichotomy between past and present has yielded to a fascinatingly complex history of interrelated developments.  Even in the history of philosophy, the evolution of what it means to be modern has changed: calling Spinoza modern does not mean today what it did thirty years ago. Lastly, the subject of modernity has important implications for the humanities at the epistemological level: is there a specifically post/meta/late modern epistemology for the humanities?

The Radboud University Faculty of Arts is pleased to present a conference that will address these questions related to the concept of modernity from the Enlightenment to the early 20^th century. Bringing together scholars from different disciplinary traditions, the purpose of this conference is to take stock of the latest developments in discussions on modernity, and examine their implications for our understanding of history, religion, national identities and literature. 

We invite 20-minute papers or (interdisciplinary) panel proposals (three papers and a panel chair) that explore one or more of the following themes: 

-          - the New and the Old, from theology to history

-          - classic narratives of modernity, and their related concepts: pre-modern versus modern, Dark Ages versus Enlightenment, modernity versus tradition, etc.

-          - modernity and national identities in Europe

-           - the problem of continuities: how do narratives of modernity deal with historical continuities?

-      - modernity and secularization: how does recent work on the religious Enlightenment, among others, render problematic the traditional identification of modernity with secularization?

-          - modernity and artistic and / or literary avant-gardes: how has the concept of modernity contributed to the (self-)representations of avant-garde cultural movements?

-          - anti-modernity and national or cultural conservatism: how have the proponents of modernity defined their own movement in relation to other movements, and how have anti-modern movements conversely positioned themselves in the socio-political field?

Authors of papers presented at the conference will be invited to submit a revised version of their paper for publication in a peer-reviewed essay collection.

Please submit your 300-word paper proposal, accompanied by a brief bio-bibliographical statement listing your position and institutional affiliation, by October 15, 2015, to the conference organizers at: tradmod@let.ru.nl.

The conference is scheduled to take place in May 2016. Confirmed key-note speakers include Véronique Gély (Université Paris-Sorbonne), Suzanne Hobson (Queen Mary University of London), Ulrich Lehner (Marquette University) and David C. Lloyd (University of California Riverside).

Conference organizers:

Dr. Marguerite Corporaal

Jordy Geerlings, MA

Prof. Dr. Maarten DePourcq

Prof. dr. Alicia C. Montoya

Dr. Mathijs Sanders

46e Congrès Annuel de la North American Society for Seventeenth Century French Literature

Rollins College, the University of Central Florida, Winter Park and Orlando, FL, USA

1-3 Juin 2016

Création, recréation, et récréation : pré-modernité et post-modernité.

Orlando, Floride, peut se considérer très privilégiée d’inspirer une discussion sur la création et la recréation engendrant une récréation: en effet, la ville vit à l’ombre de Disney Corporation, dont les plus célèbres recréations sont basées sur des textes du dix-septième siècle français, et notamment les contes de Charles Perrault. De ce point de vue, que ce soit un feu d’artifice extraordinaire au détour d’un château princier, une histoire moralisante à en régaler enfants comme parents, ou encore une représentation théâtrale qui ressort de la magie, les trois cents ans qui séparent Orlando de Versailles semblent être anéantis devant le même résultat : les parallèles entre les dix-septième et vingt-et-unième siècles se fondent dans la perspective égale d’amuser tout en instruisant son monde.

Le but de ce congrès inter- et transdisciplinaire est d’investiguer le plus largement possible le concept et les pratiques de l’amusement pendant la formation du monde moderne. Nous cherchons à considérer d’un côté l’origine, l’économie, et la politique de la récréation dans les champs littéraires, artistiques, scientifiques, populaires, mondains, évènementiels, etc…, et leur évolution au cours du(des) siècle(s) de Louis le Grand.  Puisque cette époque est extrêmement importante dans la vie française, et parce qu’elle est inspirée par son passé et qu’elle est précurseur du monde moderne, nous voulons également explorer les procédés de recréations et la façon dont les sociétés et leurs cultures se sont transformées, afin de les mettre en rapport avec leurs inspirations, qu’elles soient antiques ou contemporaines, françaises ou autres. Cet aspect du congrès explore les relations entre la création et la recréation d’une œuvre, et transgresse les barrières éphémères du temps et de l’espace pour étudier aussi bien le dix-septième siècle lui-même que l’influence qu’il a toujours sur notre monde.

Dans l’esprit de ce congrès, nous encourageons les séances et les présentations les plus créatives, et récréatives. Nous souhaitons également des propositions venant de toutes les disciplines et ayant des perspectives inter- et transdisciplinaires adressant certains aspects de ce large sujet. Nous encourageons de même les communications sur l’éducation et la pédagogie.

Les propositions de communication(environ 300 mots) sont à envoyer avant le 20 octobre 2015.

Les propositions de séance, avec ou sans intervenants, sont à envoyer avant le 10 octobre 2015.

L’adresse est la suivante : nasscfl2016@gmail.com.

Organisateurs:

Benjamin Balak, Département d’Economie, Rollins College : bbalak@rollins.edu

Susan Libby, Departement des Arts, Rollins College: slibby@rollins.edu

Monica Montalvo, Département de Langues et Littératures Modernes, UCF : Maria.montalvo@ucf.edu

Charlotte Trinquet du Lys, Présidente de la NASSCFL, Département de Langues et Littératures Modernes, UCF : anne-charlotte.trinquetA@ucf.edu

46th Annual Congress of the North American Society for Seventeenth Century French Literature

Rollins College, the University of Central Florida, Winter Park and Orlando, FL, USA

June 1-3, 2016

Creation, Re-creation, and Entertainment: Early Modernity and Postmodernity

Orlando may be the best place to discuss the subject of creation and re-creation of entertainment: the city lives under the shadow of Disney corporation, whose most celebrated re-creations are based on French texts from the 17th century French literature, and in particular Perrault’s fairy tales. From this perspective, whether we speak of fireworks behind a prince’s castle, a morality tale to entertain children and parents alike, or even a theatrical representation that seems to appear from magic, the three hundred years that separate Orlando and Versailles seem to disappear: the parallels between the 17^th and 21st centuries are founded on the same drive to enliven and enlighten one's world.

The purpose of this inter- and transdisciplinary conference is to broadly investigate the concept and practices of entertainment during the formation of the modern world. We will consider the economics, the politics, and the institutions of literary, artistic, popular, scientific, and mundane works, as they evolved in 17th and early 18th centuries. This era being drawn from its past and having shaped the system of the modern world, we will want to also explore the processes of re-creations as societies and their cultural artifacts are transformed through their inspirations, whether antique or contemporary, French or not. This aspect of the conference explores the relationship between the creation and the re-creation of a work, and transgresses the ephemeral barriers of time and space to study the 17th century, its influences, and the impacts that it had and continues to have on the world.

In the spirit of the topic, we encourage the most creative (and entertaining) panels and presentations. We welcome submissions from all disciplines and inter/transdisciplinary perspectives that address some aspect of this broad topic. We also encourage you to submit papers and panels on education and pedagogy.

Abstracts proposals for presentations (about 300 words) have to be sent by October 20, 2015. Proposals for panels (with or without presentations) have to be sent by October 10, 2015.

The address is: nasscfl2016@gmail.com

Organizers:

Benjamin Balak, Department of Economics, Rollins College: bbalak@rollins.edu

Susan Libby, Department of Arts, Rollins College: slibby@rollins.edu

Monica Montalvo, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, UCF: Maria.montalvo@ucf.edu

Charlotte Trinquet du Lys, NASSCFL President; Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, UCF: annecharlotte.trinquet@ucf.edu