Fall 2014 - French

Volume 28
L’Arc
New York University French Programs Newsletter
LETTER FROM THE CHAIR
This issue of L’Arc celebrates another remarkable year in
the French Department at NYU, which is more than ever
one of the principal centers for the study of French
language, literature, and culture in the United States.
First, the department of French had the pleasure and
honor to welcome Associate Professor Phillip J. Usher
amongst its ranks. An established scholar of Renaissance France, Professor Usher holds a Ph.D. in
French literature from Harvard University and came
from Barnard, where he taught for several years. The
department is also very proud of our colleague Lucien
Nouis, who was promoted to Associate Professor with
tenure. With the upcoming appointment of an Assistant
Professor in French/Francophone Contemporary Literature next year, the department is well positioned to
maintain its reputation of offering the most extensive
programs in French studies at the graduate and
undergraduate levels. Our language program also grew
stronger with the hiring of Fatiha Bali and Samira Jafour
who join our dynamic group of language lecturers. Our
faculty's list of publications, conference organization
and participation, honors and prizes is, once again this
year, very impressive and can be found in the pages of
this newsletter. Amongst the distinguished honors, I
will simply mention that Professor Sarah Kay received a
Guggenheim Fellowship for a project on medieval
bestiaries entitled Animal Skins and Human Selves in
Medieval French and Latin Bestiaries. It is the second time
in three years that this prestigious fellowship has been
awarded to one of our colleagues.
Fifteen Ph.D. students defended their dissertations in
2013-14, an exceptional year. Despite a difficult job
market, our graduates have been awarded tenure-track
Fall 2014
jobs (at the University of South Carolina, Dartmouth
College, and Wagner College), one-year appointments
(at Vassar College), two-year appointments (at Bard
College), post-doctoral instructorships at NYU,
language lecturer positions (at Columbia University and
Barnard College), and teaching positions (at Mary
Institute and Country Day School in St. Louis and the
Lycée René Cassin in Mâcon).
Of the two thousand students who took undergraduate courses in the department, twenty-six have
graduated with a major and seventy-five with a minor
in French. Three of these students have received honors
for writing theses on food and art, Marguerite Duras,
and late 19th-century French decadence. Highlights of
academic and cultural events organized by members of
the department include several conferences: the
20th/21th Century French and Francophone Studies
International Conference, co-organized by Ludovic
Cortade; “Re-thinking Literature,” a conference organized by Tom Bishop; “Barthes’s Attachments”, a oneday conference organized by Emily Apter, and “Center,
Periphery, Constellation,” with a keynote presentation
by Efthymia Rentzou (Princeton) organized by our
third-year cohort of graduate students. Our graduate
students’ contribution to the intellecual life of the department also included the screening and discussion of
Nurith Aviv’s film “Announcements,” moderated by
Raphaël Sigal, and a new luncheon series on postcolonial theory and Francophone literature organized by
Suzy Cater and Chris Bonner (see p. 14).
After careful and attentive planning (under the supervision of Henriette Goldwyn who acted as interim
Director for one year), our center in Paris moved from its
beloved location on Rue de Passy to its new location on
the Boulevard Saint-Germain, in the heart of the Latin
Quarter. This move will have a major impact on several
NYU programs, but most particularly on the French
department, as new courses are developed and exciting
research opportunities open up for faculty and students
alike.
Benoît Bolduc
DEPARTMENT OF FRENCH HIGHLIGHTS
FLORENCE GOULD EVENTS
Catherine Millet (art critic)
Art Press, 40 ans. Une revue d’art très littéraire.
Marc Fumaroli de l’Académie Française (historian, essayist)
Rhétorique ancienne; rhétorique post moderne
Jean Echenoz (novelist)
in conversation with
Catherine Cusset (novelist)
Marie Darrieussecq (novelist)
Le Trajet d’une phrase
Catherine Cusset with Jean Echenoz
Marie Darrieussecq
Photo: Jacques Baudrier
French Literature in the Making: contemporary French writers in conversation with Olivier Barrot
FALL 2013
Joy Sorman
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
Jean-Paul Kauffmann
SPRING 2014
Eugène Nicole
Jérôme Ferrari
Patrick Deville
Colette Fellous
with Jérôme Ferrari
Olivier Barrot with Jean-Paul Kauffmann
Photo: Jacqueline Chambord
VISITING PROFESSORS
CHRISTIAN BIET
(U. Paris Ouest Nanterre)
Fall seminar : “La question
de l’espace théâtral depuis
la période early modern
jusqu’à aujourd’hui.”
2
2014-2015
FRANÇOIS NOUDELMANN
(U. Paris 8) Spring seminar:
“Le tintamarre de la
musique.”
RÉDA BENSMAIA (Brown)
Spring seminar: “Figures
de l’étranger dans la
littérature francophone
du Maghreb.“
LA MAISON FRANÇAISE HIGHLIGHTS
LECTURES
Clément Hervieu-Léger and Loïc Corbery (Comédie-Française)
in conversation with
Florent Masse (Princeton)
La Comédie-Française aujourd’hui
Left to right: Loïc Corbery, Florent Masse,
Clément Hervieu-Léger
Marilyn Lawrence (visiting scholar, NYU) with Jacques
d’Amboise (former principal dancer, New York City Ballet;
founder, National Dance Institute; author)
Encounter with Dance
Marilyn Lawrence and Jacques d’Amboise
Peter Szendy (philosopher, musicologist)
Kant in the land of the Extraterrestrials. Cosmetics and Cosmopolitics
Revisiting the Armory Show
Roundtable with Marilyn S. Kushner (New York
Historical Society), Patricia Mainardi (CUNY),
Jeffrey Trask (Georgia State University)
Jeffrey Trask and Patricia Mainardi
Susan Crane (Columbia)
Medieval Dogs at Work
Susan Crane
Steven Crumb (NYU)
Denis Roche, rhythmisch
François Cornilliat (Rutgers, NYU)
“Curieuses invencions, des espritz fatiguez recreatives”:
vertus et périls de la fiction chez Lemaire, Bouchet et Rabelais
Charlotte Daudon Lacaze (art historian)
St. Denis, the “most glorious Patron” of France and its Kings
Jean-Louis Cohen (Institute of Fine Arts, NYU)
Architecture in Uniform
Philippe Roger (Global Distinguished Professor of French,
NYU; editor, Critique)
Malraux et la Résistance: le roman qui manque à l’appel
Marc Crépon (CNRS, Ecole Normale Supérieure)
L’avant-dernier jugement: une lecture croisée de Camus
et Derrida
Co-sponsored by Dept. of Art History
Yves-Charles Zarka (Sorbonne, Université Paris Descartes)
Après Derrida: la reconstruction. Position dans la philosophie
française
Racism in Soccer: A Discussion with
Lilian Thuram (FIFA World Champion, 1998, President,
Fondation Lilian Thuram: Education contre le racisme)
Co-sponsored with NYU Institute of African American Affairs and Institute
for Public Knowledge
Charles Dantzig (novelist, poet, essayist)
Proust et l’imbécilité
Co-sponsored with AIANY and Center for Architecture
Gilles Bourdos (film director)
in conversation with
Anne Deneys-Tunney (NYU)
Renoir (le film) ou l’exercice de la sensualité au cinéma
Marielle Macé (CNRS-EHESS, NYU)
L’altérité incluse
Didier Eribon (Université d’Amiens)
in conversation with
Léo Bersani (UC Berkeley), Joan W. Scott (Institute for
Advanced Study), Eric Banks (Director, New York
Institute for the Humanities)
Catherine Perret (U. de Paris VIII)
L’Enseignement de la torture
Co-sponsored by New York Institute for the Humanities
Peter Brooks (Professor Emeritus, Yale)
Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris
La Maison Française participated once again this year
in the annual PEN World Voices Festival of
International Literature.
Peter Sramek (Ontario College of Art & Design)
Rephotographing Marville’s Paris: A Study of Urban Change
Peter Brooks
Laurent Jenny (U. de Genève)
La Photo contre l’image (de Proust à Ernaux)
3
CONFERENCE
RE-THINKING LITERATURE
Hemmerdinger Hall
September 19-21, 2013
RE-THINKING LITERATURE brought together philosophers, writers, critics and theoreticians of
literature and art, to examine what, in the 21st Century, is understood when we speak about
“literature.” We still ask familiar questions such as “What is the situation of the writer today? What
does literature mean today?” but asked them today undetermined by preexisting “isms,” past the
dogmas of recent years, post-Post, as it were. RE-THINKING LITERATURE sought new, multiple
perspectives for the meaning and significance of the cultural construct “literature” today—and
examined how a younger generation of literary thinkers and practitioners deals with it.
Keynote from Peter Schjeldahl
Camille Laurens
Keynote from Hélène Cixous
Left to right: Avital Ronell, Tom Bishop, Paul Audi, Emily Apter
Left to right: Stathis Gourgouris, Camille de
Toledo, Donatien Grau, Wayne Koestenbaum
Simon Critchley
4
Photos: Beowulf Sheehan
LA MAISON FRANÇAISE HIGHLIGHTS
SPECIAL EVENT
Marcel Bozonnet (actor, director: La Princesse de Clèves, director,
Conservatoire National d’Art Dramatique de Paris (1993-2001);
general administrator, Comédie Française (2001-2006)
La Langue et le sentiment
CINEMA
Rendez-vous with French Cinema 2014
The Marchers (La Marche) by Nabil Ben Yadir
Eastern Boys by Robin Campillo
Love Battles (Mes séances de lutte) by Jacques Doillon
Apaches (Les Apaches) by Thierry de Perreti
Tip Top by Serge Bozon
CONCERTS
Contemporary Music from the Conservatoire Américain
Fontainebleau Contemporain
CAROL MCGONNELL, clarinet
CLARA LYON, violin
SOFIA NOWIK, cello
Works by François Paris, Mahir Cetiz, Henri Dutilleux, Elliot
Carter
Marcel Bozonnet
EXHIBITION
Photographs 1980-2009
Dominique Nabokov
The World of The New York
Review of Books
Les Délices
DEBRA NAGY, baroque oboe
JULIE ANDRIJESKI, baroque violin
SCOTT METCALFE, baroque violin
MICHAEL SPONSELLER, harpsichord
EMILY WALHOUT, viola de gamba
Conversations galantes, a program which explores
instrumental gems from the salons of 1750s Paris.
Le Médecin malgré lui
Semi-staged performance by Utopia Opera
Fontainebleau Contemporain
Soirée Musicale: A Celebration of French Art Song
ELANA GLEASON, soprano
NATHAN LÉTOURNEAU, tenor
ELENA MERKEL, soprano
HANS TASHJIAN, bass
JOHN SPENCER IV, piano
Utopia Opera
GALA BENEFIT OF LA MAISON FRANÇAISE
Hélène and Michel David-Weill were the honorees at the 2014 Maison Française Gala Benefit.
Hélène David-Weill, Michel David-Weill, Francine Goldenhar, director of
La Maison Française
5
DEGREES AND AWARDS (SEPT. 2013 - AOUT 2014)
PH.D. IN FRENCH LITERATURE
Nicky Agate A Crisis of Distinction: Reading Fin-de-Siècle
Anxieties through Les types de Paris
Matthew Amos Sharing Absence: Experience and Entretien
through Maurice Blanchot
Alexandre Bonafos Impressions savantes: voyages
archéologiques en France à l'âge romantique
Annie Brancky Marguerite Duras: Rewriting the Crime
Iris Brey Les Mères Déchaînées dans le Cinéma Français et
Francophone Post-2000, chez Arnaud Desplechin, Christophe
Honoré, Joachim Lafosse et Claire Denis
Aurélie Chatton Vers la pensée archipélique: Variations
théâtre/cinéma chez Marguerite Duras, Robert Lepage et
Wajdi Mouawad
Niamh Duggan Solitary Relation; the Ethics of Sexual
Retreat in Huysmans, Rachilde and Colette
Wesley Gunter Contemplation in the Early Works of JeanPaul Sartre
Kathrina LaPorta Striking the King’s Two Bodies: The
Aesthetics and Politics of Late Seventeenth-Century AntiMonarchical Pamphlet Literature in France (1667-1714)
Seth Lobdell Grave Instincts: The Psychoanalytic Novels of
Pierre Jean Jouve
Kevin McCann After Nietzsche: The Innocence of Becoming
in André Gide, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault
Fredrik Ronnback Mourning the Sacred: Poetics of Loss in
the Works of Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris and Georges
Bataille
Megan Russell The politics of document in Jean Vigo’s A
propos de Nice
Max Shrem Gourmands in Transition: Exploring the Social
Imaginary of French Gastronomy (1783-1837)
Maria Soledad Sklate Embodied Resistance and Resisting
“The Body” in Francophone Caribbean literature
Graduate students picture on front page:
Front left to right: Megan Russell, Fredrik Ronnback, Annie
Brancky, Niamh Duggan, Dane Stalcup, Emily Teising
2nd row left to right: Natalia Wodnicka, Nicky Agate,
Alexandre Bonafos, Steven Crumb
M.A. IN FRENCH LITERATURE
Maria Beliaeva
Amelia Fedo
Camilo Frias
Janos Kun
Kaliane Ung
MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY IN FRENCH LITERATURE
Nicholas Truesdale
Susan Cater
Christopher Bonner
Tristan Jean (expected in September 2014)
M.A. IN LITERARY TRANSLATION: FRENCH - ENGLISH
September 2014
Emily D. Harris
Brett Ray
Yareli Servin
Victoria Leigh Sheehan
Eleanor Jean Thompson
Bonnie Newton Zaleski
FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS
Mellon Dissertation Fellowship: Laura Hughes
GSAS Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship: Raphaël Sigal,
Daniel Benson
Honorary Graduate Fellow of the Humanities Initiative:
Raphaël Sigal
Georges Lurcy Fellowship: Arianne Urus
Andrew Dulau Fellowships: Youna Kwak
Michel Beaujour Fellowships: (French) Manoah Finston,
Virginie Lauret, Michelle Lanchart, Andrew Dubrov
French Department Fellowships: Christopher Bonner,
Downing Bray, Susan Cater, Manoah Finston, Laura
Hughes, Virginie Lauret, Tina Montenegro, Anna Raff
Miller, Sophia Wilson
Ecole Normale Supérieure Exchange: Nicholas Truesdale
and Myron McShane
GSAS Summer Fellowship: Susan Cater
French Department Summer Fellowships: Wes Gunter,
Joshua Jordan, Ana Christina Celestino Montenegro,
Max Shrem, Dane Stalcup, Sophia Wilson, Tamara
Wood
Bradley Rubidge Prize: Manoah Finston
Woodrow Wilson Women’s Studies Doctoral Dissertation
Fellowship: Laura Hughes
American Society French Legion of Honor Fellowship:
Rachel Watson
6
A PORTRAIT OF PHILLIP USHER
Je “débarque“ à NYU après
maintes pérégrinations des
deux côtés de l’Atlantique:
après des études de premier
cycle à l’Université de Londres (où j’ai découvert la littérature du XVIe siècle grâce à
John O’Brien dont la bibliophilie s’est avérée contagieuse) et après une année
studieuse à Paris, je me suis
envolé pour les Etats-Unis
afin de poursuivre des études doctorales à l’Université
de Harvard. Là, j’ai rédigé sous la direction de Tom
Conley une thèse sur les récits de pèlerinage à la
Renaissance que j’ai eu le bonheur de lire dans la
Réserve des livres rares à la BnF (Gallica n’existait pas
encore). J’ai ensuite mis le cap sur New York pour
occuper un premier poste à Barnard College,
Columbia University.
Il faut dire que j’arrive à NYU, pour occuper l’ancien
poste de Michel Beaujour, avec une grande humilité:
son étude Miroirs d’encre (1980) était le premier livre
d’analyse littéraire que j’ai lu, dans le cadre d’un cours
sur Montaigne, au cours de mon premier semestre
d’université. A l’époque de mes dix-huit ans j’ai retenu
de cette lecture deux leçons essentielles qui
nourrissent toujours, vitalement, ma conception de la
littérature : d’une part, l’importance et l’omniprésence
inévitable de l’intertextualité ; d’autre part, le rapport
intime entre les questions Qui suis-je ? et Que sais-je ?
D’une certaine façon—et c’est la première fois que je
me le formule ainsi—tous mes travaux de recherche
ont consisté à ce jour à explorer l’intertextualité
(surtout virgilienne) et à greffer sur ces deux questions, (qui suis-je ? / que sais-je ?) une troisième qui me
semble être tout aussi fondamentale, voire plus fondamentale encore : Où suis-je ?
Mon premier livre, Errance et cohérence, publié en 2010,
étudie ce que j’ai baptisé la “littérature transfrontalière”, c’est-à-dire un ensemble de textes publiés
au XVIe siècle (Affagart, Rabelais, Léry, etc.) qui, d’une
manière ou d’une autre, interrogent le “continuum du
monde“, qui cherchent à “dire“ la distance et à
“articuler“ le rapport que peuvent entretenir deux
“lieux“ de part et d’autre de frontières qui se constituent toujours de ce qui se situe au-delà, ailleurs. Je
voulais démontrer, au-delà d’un certain nombre
d’éléments d’intérêt plutôt historique, que l’idée
même de “monde“ ou de “terre“ à l’époque de la
première modernité dépendait intimement, au niveau
de la phrase ou d’une figure de style, de la façon dont
on conçoit le rapport entre “le texte” et “la réalité”,
entre les “lieux” littéraires et les “lieux” réels. Dire où
l’on est n’est pas simple. Mon deuxième livre, Epic Arts,
publié cette année, peut sembler très différent
puisqu’il s’intéresse au rapport entre la littérature
épique (Ronsard, D’Aubigné, Dolet) et l’histoire de
l’art (peinture, architecture, sculpture, etc.). Il s’agissait
surtout de repenser l’histoire de l’épopée française,
genre largement écarté par Sainte-Beuve au XIXe siècle
malgré sa grande popularité à la Renaissance, en
étudiant les rapports entre le genre épique et des
œuvres d’art et des artistes. Mais cette méthode
reposait à sa façon la question encore plus essentielle
des rapports entre la littérature et l’espace (surfaces,
galeries, etc.), entre l’événementiel et la citation, entre
le texte et le monde. Le choc des mots et des choses,
qu’il s’agisse de la terre à “portraire“ou d’un tableau à
mettre en vers, reste pour moi le grand “mystère“de la
littérature.
Tout cela pour dire donc que j’arrive à NYU avec une
grande humilité et avec une grande motivation, hanté
par mes (bons) souvenirs de Miroirs d’encre et très
heureux de poursuivre à 19 University Place, dans un
cadre stimulant, un lieu multiple, “transfrontalier“,
situé au Nouveau Monde mais tourné vers l’Europe,
mes activités d’enseignant, de chercheur et de
traducteur. La première année s’annonce passionnante: à l’automne, un cours “gradué“ sur les Géographies de la Renaissance et un cours “sous-gradué“ sur
l’histoire de la France depuis la grotte de Lascaux
jusqu’à la Révolution ; puis au printemps un cours de
traductologie (où Dolet et Amyot auront certainement
leur place) et un dernier cours sur un sujet encore
indéterminé. Côté recherches j’espère terminer plusieurs projets, un livre intitulé L’Aède et le géographe
dont j’ai à remettre le manuscrit avant le 31 décembre
et une traduction de l’Antigone de Robert Garnier, une
excellente tragédie où dominent les voix pacifiques de
Jocaste et de sa fille à l’époque des guerres de religion.
Je voudrais surtout, cette première année, prendre le
temps de connaître mes nouveaux collègues ainsi que
tous ceux qui, étudiants, doctorants, administrateurs,
font vivre et vibrer ce département où je suis ravi
d’arriver.
7
FACULTY NEWS
Emily Apter
Academic Honors:
Awarded Humanities Council Fellowship, Princeton
University, for Fall 2014.
Elected Delegate for New York, MLA.
Publications:
Co-editor with Jacques Lezra and Michael Wood of the
English edition of the Vocabulaire européen des philosophies:
Dictionnaire des intraduisibles ed. Barbara Cassin. Title of
Translation: Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical
Lexicon (Princeton University Press, 2014).
Against World Literature. On the Politics of Untranslatability
(Verso, 2013)
Review of the Whitney Biennial, Artforum Spring 2014.
“Fictions politiques/démarches impolitiques,” in French
journal Raison Publique and co-editor with Emmanuel Bouju
of special issue of the journal on Political Fiction (Spring,
2014).
Preface, English edition of the Vocabulaire européen des
philosophies: dictionnaire des intraduisibles (Dictionary of
Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon). Princeton Uni-versity
Press, 2014, vii-xv.
“Translation at the Checkpoint,” in Journal of Postcolonial
Writing (Fall, 2014)
Lectures and Conference Events:
Panelist, Discussion of Dictionary of Untranslatables,
Kingston University, London, May, 2014. “On Translating a
Dictionary of Untranslatable Terms,” conference on the
Dictionary of Untranslatables at the University of
Nottingham, UK. May 2014. “Philology of the Plea, the
Prayer, the Political Desire,” lecture at SOAS, London, May
2014. “Translation and Event: Re-reading Reading
Capital,”paper at conference “Crossing Worlds: Translation,
Eventfulness and the Political,” Barnard and Columbia, May,
2014.
Conference Organizer, “Barthes’s Attachments,” Maison
Française, NYU, April, 2014.
Panelist (with Patrice Maniglier, Tristan Garcia and Patricia
Falguières) on “New French Existentialism,” at The Kitchen,
NYC, March 2014.
“Urban Untranslatables: On Reading Mike Davis’s Planet of
Slums” ACLA, New York University, March 2014.
Panel Organizer, “Translating the Dictionary of
Untranslatables,” ACLA, NYU, March, 2014.
Conference Keynote: “Recent French Theory: Modes of
Existence, Measured Worlds,” at the Twentieth and Twentyfirst French and Francophone Conference,” Columbia
University, March 2014.
“Just Translation: Of Quantities and Measures” Invited
Speaker at conference “Translating in/justice” Dar alma’mûn and Eva International Biennial, Jan. 24-25,
Marrakech. Morocco.
Respondent, Conference on “Auerbach’s Afterlives” at UC
Irvine, Jan. 2014.
“Untranslatability and the Analytic of Singularity: Cassin,
8
Foucault, Guattari, Derrida” (MLA, Chicago, Jan. 2014)
“Althusser’s Untranslatables” at Conference “Reading
Capital 1965-2015,” Princeton University, Dec. 6, 2013.
Keynote: “Sex and Gender as Untranslatables” Conference
on “Genre” at Université de Paris-Creteil, Nov. 22, 2013.
CUNY Q & A with Peter Hitchcock about my book Against
World Literature (CUNY Grad Center, Nov. 2013)
Reader for “Proust, Nomadic Readings” (Swann’s Way at the
Le Baron Club, NYC, Nov. 13, 2013.
“Translation and Sovereign Borders” Invited Lecture,
Columbia University, Oct. 2013.
“Proust, Militant of the Social,” Nineteenth-Century French
Studies Conference, Richmond, Virginia Oct. 2013.
“Rethinking the Textual Object: Translated, Curated,
Punctuated, Looked at, Listened to…” Conference, “Rethinking Literature,” NYU, Sept. 2013.
Keynote: “On Translating the Dictionary of Untran-slatables”
Clifford Symposium, Middlebury College, Sept. 2013
Panelist: “Great Books in the Humanities: New Directions in
Comparative Literature,” Humanities Initiative, NYU Sept.
2013
Two papers at the International Comparative Literature
Association Conference, Paris, (Sorbonne) July, 2013
“Eurochronology and the Politics of Periodization,”
Conference, “Transcultural Entanglements and Global
Perspectives,” Berlin, Haus der Kulturen der Welt/Free
University, July, 2013
Keynote: “Translation at the Checkpoint: The Problem of
Sovereign Borders in Literary Theory,” Society for French
Studies Annual Conference, University of Nottingham, UK,
July 2013
Claudie Bernard
Book published : Le jeu des familles dans le roman français du
dix-neuvième siècle, Publications de l’Université de SaintEtienne, collection Le XIXe siècle en représentation(s), 2013.
Article on line : “Les masques de la Pompadour dans
Madame Putiphar de Pétrus Borel,” in Grandes figures
historiques dans les Lettres et les Arts [En ligne], 03/2013, URL :
http://figures-historiques.revue.univlille3.fr/n-3-2013/.
Review : On Yvonne Knibiehler’s La Virginité féminine (Odile
Jacob), French Politics, Culture, and Society Vol.32, issue 1,
Spring 2014.
Talks : “Le mariage, seuil fatal ou dérisoire ?”, L’Etape de Paul
Bourget,” Colloquium on Nineteenth-Century French
Studies, Richmond University, October 2013; “Mariage et
malheur dans Le Malheur d’Henriette Gérard de Duranty,”
Colloquium “Ecrire le mariage des lendemains de la
Révolution à la Belle Epoque,” Université de Lyon II, January
2014; “Le Jeu des familles dans le roman du XIXe siècle,” Café
littéraire, New York University in Paris, March 2014;hjg “Le
mariage romanesque au XIXe siècle : Le Compagnon du Tour de
France de George Sand,” Université de Saint-Etienne, May
2014.
Claudie Bernard taught at NYU Paris in the Spring of 2014.
FACULTY
NEWS
FACULT
Y NEWS
Tom Bishop directs the Center for French Civilization and
Culture whose mission it is to organize cultural events and
to raise funds to facilitate the work of the Department of
French and La Maison Française ($185,000 raised in 201314). With Olivier Barrot, he organized seven yearly evenings of French Literature in the Making. Tom Bishop coorganized with Donatien Grau a conference called “ReThinking Literature” in September 2013. Among the
participants were Hélène Cixous, Peter Schjeldahl, JeanPhilippe Toussaint, Camille Laurens, Simon Critchley, Paul
Audi, Emily Apter, Wayne Koestenbaum, Camille de
Toledo, Stathis Gourgouris, Boris Groys, Shelley Jackson,
Laurent Dubreuil, Avital Ronell, Joshua Cohen, Tristan
Garcia, Jesse Ball, Ben Lerner, and he also hosted 3 Florence
Gould events by Catherine Millet, Marie Darrieussecq, Jean
Echenoz. He participated in Nomadic Reading of Swann’s
Way, organized by the French Cultural Services, at Le
Baron’s club in Nov. 13. Tom Bishop also hosted the annual
luncheon of the Friends of New York University at the
Senate in Paris with Isabelle Huppert as guest of honor, to
whom he presented the Center’s Medal of Honor
Bishop served on the Department’s Advisory Committee.
He is a member of NYU’s Commmitee and Rules and of
C.A.S.H (The Council of Arts and Science Chairs and
Directors).
During his second year as chair of the French department,
Benoît Bolduc conducted a successful search to recruit a
new tenure-track professor in early-modern literature,
oversaw the promotion and tenure of one faculty member
and hired two additional language lecturers. He continued
to advise the Office of the Global Network University on
the restructuration of NYUParis. He presented a paper
entitled “True to Form: Words and Images in French
Festival Books,” at the 2014 Conference of the Renaissance
Society of America in New York, 27 March 2014, and a
paper entitled “Entre allégorie et fiction romanesque:
l’inscription du carrousel de la Place Royale (1612) dans Le
Roman des Chevaliers de la Gloire,” at the 13th Annual
conference of the Centre International de Rencontres sur le
17e siècle in Toronto. Most importantly, he finished the
manuscript of his upcoming book on early-modern French
festivals, which is schedule to come out during this
academic year.
Ludovic Cortade published three book chapters:
“Fonctions du paysage dans Partie de campagne de Jean
Renoir ” (Revue de la société coréenne d’études françaises,
Séoul, Corée du Sud); “Le Mépris: Landscape as Tragedy ”in
Tom Conley and Thomas Jefferson Kline, A Companion to
Jean-Luc Godard. Hoboken (Wiley-Blackwell); “André Bazin
et l’Ecole française de géographie,“in Dudley Andrew et
Hervé Joubert-Laurencin, Ouvrir Bazin (Paris : Editions du
regard). Prof. Cortade was invited to give a talk on translation in film in the department of Comparative Literature
at Princeton University. He also co-organized the 20th/21st
Century French and Francophone Studies International
Conference which took place at the NYU Kimmel Center in
March 2014. The three-day conference, which was cosponsored by the NYU French Department, Columbia University and The Graduate Center of CUNY, brought together 400 distinguished scholars and doctoral candidates
who presented and discussed their research.
Michael Dash
Publications:
“Sugar and its Secrets, the Caribbean Contexts of
Creolization,” Research in African Literatures, Vol.45, No.1,
Spring 2014, 161-169; “Présence Haitienne : The Revolutionary Beginnings of Littérature-Monde,” in At the Crossroads, The Postcolonial and the Global in African Lite-rature
and Visual Art, Negash, Frohne and Zadi eds. Trenton,
Africa World Press, 2014, 35-46; “Hybridité heureuse ou
tragédie féconde: le lieu, l’espace et l’archipel caraïbe,” in
Le postcolonial comparé, dir. Claire Joubert, Paris, Presses
Universitaires de Vincennes, 2014, 100-106
“Neither Magical nor Exceptional: the idea of the Ordinary
in Caribbean Studies,” Journal of Haitian Studies, Vol.19,
No.2, 2013, 23-32; Emilio Jorge Rodríguez, Haiti and TransCaribbean Literary Identity / Haiti y la transcaribenidad
literaria. In The New West Indian Guide, Vol. 87, no. 3&4,
2013, 100-03.
Conferences:
“The painted word: Painting, Poetry and Haiti’s Other
Avant-Garde,“ February 14-16 2013 (Keynote lecture) Haiti
in a Globalized Frame, Florida State university
“Trois Laminaires: Performing the Collective in Une
Tempete” April 6, 2013, (invited Lecture) Césaire at 100,
Wesleyan University
“La Maison de la Mer, Exile and the Space of writing” April
13 2013 (Keynote Lecture), (Ex)Isles/(Ex)Iles, Brown
University
« Recomposer par trace : Translating without an original »
April 26, 2013 (paper) NYU Translation colloquium
« The Idea of the Ordinary in Caribbean Studies »
November 8, 2013, (Plenary Session paper) Haitian Studies
Association Conference, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Activities:
Editorial Committee: Research in African Literatures,
Journal of West Indian Literature, Small Axe, Mondes
Francophones, New West Indian Guide and the Journal of
French and Francophone Philosophy
Editor of New World Studies Series, University Press of
Virginia.
Permanent Member of Jury of Prix Carbet de la Caraibe.
Department Service:
Member of Undergraduate Studies Committee
Chair, Salary Committee
9
FACULTY NEWS
Anne Deneys-Tunney writes:
I have published 3 chapters in books, and 1 book review:
“Mettre en scène La Dispute de Marivaux : “dance with
words” entre savoir et vérité, le bouger trembler des corps”
dans Marivaudages, théories et pratiques d'un dicours, Catherine
Gallouet editeur, Oxford University, 2014
“La création de Narcisse en Opéra Rock, au Theater for the
New City, à New York, en Avril 2005” dans Rousseau et le
Spectacle, édité par Jacques Berchtold, Christophe Martin et
Yanick Seité, Armand Colin, 2014
“Le mariage, la loi et le désir dans La Nouvelle Héloise de
Rousseau” dans Le Mariage, édité par Françoise Lavocat,
2014
Pierre Macherey, Proust entre littérature et philosophie , Revue
Cités, forthcoming
Talks and Master class of theater given:
“Sollers - Diderot”, conversation avec Le videaste Jean-Paul
Fargier, Bourgogne, France, Juillet 2013
Theatre Master Class, “Dance with words”, Bourgogne,
Juillet 2013
“Le XVIIIème siècle libertin”, guest speaker, NY, Novembre
2013, Union des Français de l'Etranger.
“Diderot et la vérité,” guest speaker, Université d'Upsala,
Sweden, December 2013
“Rousseau, entre Nature et Culture,” guest speaker,
University of Upsala, Sweden, December 2014
Anne Deneys-Tunney in conversation with filmaker Gilles
Bourdos : Renoir (le film) ou l’exercice de la sensualité au
cinéma, NYU, Maison Française, Mars 2014
“La philosophie Française aujourd'hui,”17 Juin 2014,
Librairie L'Ecume des pages, Boulevard Saint Germain à
Paris, Présentation avec les autres Membres du Comité de
Rédaction de la Revue Cités, des n. 56 et 58 de la Revue Cités
consacrés à la Philosophie Française aujourd'hui.
Talks organised at the Maison Française at NYU:
I organized 3 visits from France and 3 talks :
Yves Charles Zarka, Professeur de Philosophie, Chaire de
Philosophie Politique, Université Paris 5 Sorbonne, (October
2014),
Catherine Perret, Professeur de Philosophie, Chaire
d'esthétique, Université de Paris 8, (December 2014),
and Gilles Bourdos, Filmaker , author of the film “Renoir, “
selected by France for the Film Academy Awards (March
2014).
Outside activities:
Membre du Comité de Rédaction de la Revue de Philosophie
Cités, PUF, France
Membre de 2 centres de recherche en France :
Philépol, Université Paris 5, Sorbonne, Directeur YvesCharles Zarka
Littérature et Morale, ENS Ulm et Paris 4 Sorbonne,
Directeur Jean-Charles Darmon
Stéphane Gerson published “Le Patrimoine Local Impossible: Nostradamus à Salon-de-Provence, 1980-1999” in
10
Genèses. Sciences sociales et histoire 92 (September 2013): 52-76.
Picador published a paperback edition of his Nostradamus:
How an Obscure Renaissance Astrologer Became the Modern
Prophet of Doom and Tallandier acquired the French rights for
an upcoming translation. He spoke about the book on RadioFrance (“Une vie, une oeuvre”) and in a Lapham’s Quarterly
podcast. Gerson participated in two panels at the meeting of
the Society for French Historical Studies, one on “Modernity
and Its Discontents in Nineteeth-Century France,” the other
on “Teaching History and Social Sciences in a French
Department.” He co-organized (with Sarah Gensburger,
CNRS) and moderated a panel at the Maison française
entitled “Robbing the Jews in WWII Paris: Places, Traces, and
Images.” With Frédéric Viguier, he co-organized a series of
IFS workshops on “Ecrire l’histoire des siens,” moderating
discussions with Ivan Jablonka (Paris XIII) and Atina
Grossman (Cooper Union). He was delighted to give the
welcome address at the department’s graduate conference,
“Camille Flammarion’s Plurality of Worlds.” In the spring,
he taught a new graduate research seminar, “Catastrophes in
Modern France,” which included a seminar with Vanessa
Schwartz (USC). This cross-listed course will be offered
again next spring. Gerson finished his three-year term as
Director of Graduate Studies of the IFS. During this time, the
doctoral program remained as strong and selective as ever
while the number of MA students more than doubled.
Finally, he continued to serve on French Voices, a program of
the French Cultural Services that selects and subsidizes
French books for translation into English, and the committee
of the Wylie Prize for best book in French cultural studies.
Henriette Goldwyn was appointed Acting Site Director of
NYUParis during the 2013-2014 academic year. During her
tenure, she focused primarily on academics and academic
quality by creating new courses, fine-tuning existing ones
and working closely with the local faculty thus generating
new and unprecedented opportunities for them. She re-built
the administrative staff by re-designing and clarifying the
organizational structure and instituting professional standards, which ensured greater transparency in all matters related to the day-to-day functioning of the Center. She helped
select and appoint instrumental members in key positions
(Graduate Studies, Language Programs and Finance). Also,
she restored good and amicable working relations among
senior staff and colleagues in the Office of Global Programs in
New York, and helped establish parameters for the NYUParis
Site Specific Committee. She put in place and oversaw procedures for the enormous project that was the move to the
new state of the art center at 57 Boulevard Saint Germain and
closed down the charming Passy site with a memorable and
emotional farewell party. While directing NYUParis, she
continued to further her own scholarship : The first volume
of the series of Théâtre de femmes de l’ancien régime (Renaissance) which she is co-editing was reprinted by Garnier,
Paris, 2014.
FACULTY NEWS
She published the following articles: “Strange Language
and Practices of Disorder: the Prophetic Crisis in France
following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685,” in
Women Telling Nations, Eds. Amelia Sanz and Suzan Van
Dyke, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2014, and “Madame Du Noyer
“Presenting and Re-presenting the Peace of Utrecht,” in a
special commemorative volume on the tricentenial of the
Peace of Utrecht: Performances of Peace: Utrecht 1713, Eds.
Renger de Bruin, Lotte Jensen and David Onnekink, Brill,
Leiden, 2014. She gave a talk at Barnard in June 2014 on
“Female Prophesying in France after the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes.”
Denis Hollier is still working as a co-curator on the show
devoted to Michel Leiris (Leiris & Co.) that is scheduled to
open on April 1st 2015 at the Centre Pompidou/Metz
Museum. The second volume of Leiris’s writings in the
Bibliothèque de la Pléiade series, which he supervised, just
appeared at Gallimard’s. It includes L’Afrique fantôme, L’Âge
d’homme and Miroir de la tauromachie. He was also part of a
round table held at Beaubourg in connection with the architect Bernard Tschumi’s show.
Sarah Kay writes: This has been a positive year for me as
DGS, the main task being to keep a constant eye on the
implementation of the changes to the doctoral program that
were agreed last year. Our first-year students in French
literature, the first to take the MA under the new
regulations, proved fine collaborators with the innovations,
and collectively achieved an excellent set of results when
the exam was wrapped up at the end of May. A number of
third- and fourth-year students likewise successfully took
the new format of Qualifying Examinations. A record
number of defenses allowed many of our most advanced
students to graduate from the program, and the figure will
be high next year too as further defenses are already
scheduled through the summer. Aubrey Korneta, the
French Graduate Student Association representative on the
Graduate Studies Committee, was a constantly constructive
presence at our meetings, and many of the best decisions
we made this year resulted from her input. The year was
also marked by the departure of our much loved Elizabeth
Martignetti, who left to pursue her career as a professional
musician, and the arrival of Erin Brau, whose cheerful
efficiency and friendly involvement make her a wonderful
successor to Elizabeth as Graduate Aide.
From a personal standpoint, the highlights of my year were,
in chronological order, the publication of Parrots and
Nightingales. Troubadour Quotations and the Development of
European Poetry (UPenn Press), the arrival of a grandson
who rejoices in the moniker Finley John Goodman, and the
news that I am to be the recipient of a Guggenheim
Fellowship in 2014-15. Parrots and Nightingales is about the
contribution which the practice of quoting the troubadours
makes to transforming the status of poetry from the first
vernacular grammars at the turn of the 12th and 13th
centuries to Petrarch in the early fourteenth. Finley arrived
looking like a middle-aged comic actor after a bad night but
quickly became show-stoppingly cute. And the Guggenheim will support me as I work on my next book,
Animal Skins and Human Selves in Medieval French and Latin
Bestiaries, a study of the insistence of parchment in medieval books about animals, which is under contract to
Chicago. Beside these highlights everything else seems
somewhat shadowy, though I also remember having
enjoyed teaching my first ever College Core Curriculum
course, an enthralling (to me) graduate class on philology,
and (I think) a useful class for advanced graduates on
Professional Writing Skills that helped coach the successful
writing of documents hat are essential to professional
survival but that are not standardly taught – from cvs to
fellowship applications to articles.
Judith Miller completed her second year as Dean of Arts
and Humanities at New York University Abu Dhabi. She
helped firm up the 8 majors (Literature, History, Philosophy,
Arab Crossroads Studies, Film and New Media, Theatre,
Music, and Art and Art History) and 3 concentrations
(Ancient World, Anthropology, Interactive Media) under
her purview through changes in the curriculum and
through hires. (She has hired some 45 people since she
began working as Dean.) She has also helped to continue to
refine the Writing Program and language study (Arabic and
Chinese.) Her biggest challenge was getting Arts and
Humanities seniors through the first capstone/senior thesis
exercise. The division produced 12 theatre pieces, 7 films, 3
art installations, 2 concerts and some 18 theses. At present,
she is overseeing the move of her division to the new campus on Saadiyat Island, off the coast of Abu Dhabi City. She
will be returning to the Department full-time in 2016, after a
sabbatical leave. This year, she also published a translation
of a psychoanalytical memoire by Françoise Davoine:
Mother Folly: A Tale (Stanford University Press, 2014). She
also participated on a panel organized by NYU Phd.D.
Kathryn Kleppinger on the work of Abdulrhamane Waberi
at the annual African Literature Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa.
John Moran spent the last year serving as both the Language
Program Director and the Director of Undergraduate Studies
for the department. Along with hiring two new members of
the Language Lecturer team and piloting the testing of a new
method for use in the department's intermediate courses, he
co-presented “Papiers-Machés” with Aline Baehler at the
Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages
in Boston. John continues to serve as a Question Leader for
the College Board's Advanced Placement French Language
and Culture exam reading every year, and he is now the
Chair of the College Board's College-Level Examination
Program French Language Test Development Committee.
11
12
NEWS
FACULTY
John completed his eighth year as a Faculty Fellow in
Residence (FFIR) in Hayden Hall, where he was also a
Faculty Affiliate for the French Floor, winning September's
FFIR Of-the-Month award as well as October's FFIR Program
Of-the-Month award. In the spring of this year, John was
named the interim director of NYU Paris for the coming
academic year.
Eugène Nicole published Les Eaux territoriales, Éditions de
l’Olivier, (September 2013) and Le démon rassembleur, P.O.L.
(February 2014) and was on France Culture for a
“Feuilleton” de L’Oeuvre des mers, which consisted of ten
broadcasts of 25 minutes each : October 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28,
29, 30, 31 and November 1, 2013.
Eugène Nicole’s invited talks included:
“Avant-garde Aesthetics and Politics,” NYU-Paris, Nov 6,
2013; “Proust chez Simon,” Banquet d'automne, Abbaye de
Lagrasse, 9-10 Novembre 2013; “Autour de Claude
Simon,”Round table with Jean-Paul Goux and Michel
Neapels, Lagrasse, No 11, 2013; “La phrase proustienne et
ses variantes,” Séminaire de Sorbonne, 8 Janvier 2014;
“Proust est une fiction,” in dialogue with François Bon,
Proust Colloquium, Illiers-Combray, Janvier 2014;
“L'Argent dans La Quinzaine,” 20th and 21st Century
French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium,
Special session with Michel Deguy, Maison française NYU,
March 5, 2014
On Les Eaux territoriales:
-Du jour au lendemain, France Culture, 3 Octobre 2013
-La Marche de l’Histoire, France Inter, September 17, 2013
-Cosmopolitaine, France Inter, November 24, 2013
-Radio France International, October 16, 2013
Exposition: “Piétinés et Collages” Musée de l'Arche, SaintPierre, Octobre 2013
Honor's thesis supervised: Christopher Gellert
Lucien Nouis was promoted to Associate Professor and
given tenure after the evalution of his teaching and publications in the past six years. During the year 2013-2014, his
book, De l’Infini des Bibliothèques au livre unique: l’archive
épurée au xviiie siècle, came out in Paris with Classiques
Garnier. He also published “De l’hospitalité inconditionnelle à la xénélasie spartiate: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
et la fermeture des frontières,” (Migrations-Translations,
Maroussia Ahmed, Corinne Alexandre-Garner, Julian Toma
et Nicholas Serruys (éds), Paris, Presses Universitaires de
Paris-Ouest, collection “Chemins Croisés” dirigée par
Corinne Alexandre-Garner, 2013) and had another article
accepted in the proceedings of a Rousseau conference held
at NYU and at the CUNY Graduate Center: “Recomposing
the Diffracted Text: Rousseau and the Metaphor of the Book
of Nature.” He was invited to give two lectures: “Soi-même
comme un livre: Rousseau et l’épure intérieure” at the
Séminaire Rousseau, CNRS and Université Paris-Sorbonne;
and “Le présent du passé: Diderot et la représentation
historique” at the Northeast American Society for Eigh-
12
teenth-Century Studies annual conference at Syracuse
University.
Nancy Freeman Regalado has published two articles in the
past year, the first in a volume co-edited by Mark Cruse
NYU: French, (Ph.d. 2005) “Angels on the Right Bank: The
Celestial Ladder over Paris in BnF. fr. 146,” in The Social Life
of Illumination, ed. Joyce Coleman, Mark Cruse, and
Kathryn Smith. Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern
Europe, 21 Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013,. pp. 311-338
and “Le Kalila et Dimna de Paris, BnF, MS fonds latin 8504
(1313): Raymond de Béziers enseigne la fable orientale aux
princes français,” in D’Orient en Occident: Les recueils de
fables enchassées avant les Mille et une Nuits de Galland
(Barlaam et Josaphat, Calila et Dimna, Disciplina clericalis,
Roman des Sept Sages), ed. Marina Uhlig et Yasmina FoehrJanssens. Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the
Middle Ages, 17 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brépols, 2014), pp.
283-308.
Richard Sieburth contributed a “Chronology” and a dozen
new translations into English to Mary Anne Caws’s volume,
Pierre Reverdy, which appeared in the NYRB/Poets series last
fall, followed by a well-attended reading by its various
American translators at the MacNally-Jackson Bookstore.
Sieburth’s translation of Louise Labé’s Love Sonnets & Elegies
appeared in the same NYRB/Poets series this past April,
followed by a book launch consisting of a live discussion
(available on youtube) with Jane Tylus about Louise Labé
and Gaspara Stampa as emblematic Renaissance women
poets, sponsored by the NYU Institute of the Humanities and
the Humanities Initiative. A long interview on the subject of
translating Labé also appeared on the blog of the Poetry
Society of America. The same month of April (the official
Poetry Month, according to T.S. Eliot’s cruel estimation) saw
the publication of John Ashbery’s two-volume Collected
French Translations (FSG). Sieburth spoke of these volumes in
an impromptu review improvised for Ashbery at the launch
of his book at NYU’s Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House,
which was then redelivered at the colloquium on French
Poetry in American Translation held at the Maison Française
later that month, and subsequently published on the Bookforum blog. This past spring also saw the publication of
Sieburth’s translation of “Poor Belgium: The Arguments” in
the magazine Conjunctions—a ballon d’essai for his
forthcoming volume, Late Baudelaire, to be published by Yale
University Press. Other activities included a talk on
Nostradamus for the Mysticism & Translation colloquium at
the CUNY Graduate Center in September; a November
intervention on “Pound and the Rhetoric of Address” for the
Modern Working Group’s Colloquium on Rhetoric,
sponsored by NYU’s English department; and a moderation
of the mo(u)rning session of the “Barthes’ Attachments”
conference at the Maison Française this past April.
FACULTY NEWS
Evelyn (Timmie) Vitz writes: This past year in October I
traveled to South Africa, where I attended the International Ballad Conference at the University of Stellenbosch, where I gave a paper on “French Traditional
Ballads (Chansons) and the Passions.” In January, I cotaught (with Maurice Pomerantz) a course titled “Tales
that Travel” in a J-term at NYU-Abu Dhabi; we got to
take the students to India (Rajasthan) to see traditional
performers there, which was a marvelous experience. I
then co-organized (with Pomerantz) an international
conference on “Tales that Travel” in February, where I
gave a paper titled: “Walking in their Sleep: ‘The Seven
Sleepers of Ephesus.’”
In May, at the big medieval conference in Kalamazoo,
Michigan, I was part of two roundtables where I
presented on “Perspectives on the Emotions in Medieval
French Literature,” and on “Digital Media, Medieval
Texts and Traditional Verbal Art.” I also gave a paper
titled “Emotions in the Traditional Ballad: An
Attachment Theory Approach.”
In late summer, my co-edited book (with Arzu Ozturkmen) appeared: Medieval and Early Modern Performance in the Eastern Mediterranean (Brepols), containing my piece on “The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus’:
Can We Reawaken Performance of this Hagiographical
Folktale?”
Three other articles of mine appeared this year (2013-14).
One is “Medieval Storytelling and Analogous Oral Traditions Today: Two Digital Databases,” with Marilyn
Lawrence, special issue of Oral Tradition: 28.2;
http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/28ii (This article
will also appear in Project Muse.) Another is “Animal and
Human Appetites in Early Branches of Le Roman de
Renart,” in L'Humain et l'Animal dans la France médiévale
(XIIe-XVe s.): Human and Animal in Medieval France (12th15th c.), eds. Anna Russakov and Irène Fabry-Tehranchi,
Rodopi, 2014. The third is “Theatricality and its Limits:
Dialogue and the Art of the Storyteller in the Romances
of Chrétien de Troyes,” Le Dialogue au Moyen Age, ed.
Corinne Denoyelle. Orléans, Paradigme, 2013. .
This year, I continued to add to the video clips on the two
performance websites that I co-direct (with Marilyn
Lawrence): “Performing Medieval Narrative Today: A
Video Showcase” -mednar.org; and “Arthurian Legend
Performed - http://vimeo.com/user6874655/videos . I
also secured outside funding to start up a new
performance website consisting of performances of
excerpts from major medieval texts available in
anthologies. (Many students study the Middle Ages from
large, general anthologies. This website will allow them
to see performances of texts they read for class.)
As to my teaching: in fall, I gave a graduate seminar titled
“Passion, Performance, Cognition: An Introduction to
French Medieval Literature” and an undergraduate
course: “The Ballad, Medieval and Early Modern.”
In the spring I taught my “Acting Medieval Literature” class
(where the students perform from all the texts we read)—and
during the whole academic year I directed the French
Honors Program.
At NYU, on June 1, I began my work as Acting Director of
Undergraduate Studies in French, and I served as a consultant for the Research Challenge Fund at NYU.
I continued to serve on the Editorial Board of Consortium for
the Teaching of the Middle Ages (TEAMS).
“Barthes’s Attachments” left to right: Denis Hollier, Youna
Kwak, Philippe Roger, Ben Kafka, Emily Apter
Anne Deneys-Tunney in conversation
with filmmaker Gilles Bourdos
Hélène Cixous and Tom Bishop
13
STUDENT NEWS
Daniel Benson was the co-organizer of a film series entitled
“The Revolutionary Film: Between Politics and Aesthetics,”
which included screenings and discussions with scholars and
filmmakers such as NYU professor David Forgacs and
director Joshua Oppenheimer. Additional accomplishments
include two presentations in NYC: “Post-Marxism or PreMarxism? How The “Social Question” of the 1830s Informs
Contemporary Political Thought,” at the Annual 20th and
21st Century FFS International Colloquium; and “Narrating
the Social Question in France, 1831, 1995,” at the Annual
Conference of the ACLA.
Alexandre Bonafos defended his dissertation entitled
Impressions savantes : voyages archéologiques en France à l'âge
romantique and graduated in May 2014. He also gave a talk on
Mérimée and druidic archeology in the Société Mérimée's
seminar at the University Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle in
March 2014. He accepted a tenure-track position as Assistant
Professor of French Cultural Studies at the University of
South Carolina in Columbia, SC.
With the help of a Dean's Dissertation Fellowship, Anne
Brancky gave papers at the MLA, the NeMLA, and the 20th
and 21st Century conferences related to her dissertation,
Marguerite Duras: Rewriting the Crime, which she defended in
March. She taught a literature-in-translation course related to
this research entitled, “Written in Blood: Modern French
Writers and True Crime,” which studied 20th-century French
literature and the fait divers. She will be moving to Vassar
College in the fall for a post as a Visiting Assistant Professor.
Suzy Cater presented two conference papers this year, at the
Northeast Modern Language Association’s 45th Annual
Convention, in Harrisburg PA, and at the 20th-/21st-Century
French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium
on “Money,” in New York City. She also co-organized a series
of Postcolonial Lunch Seminars, with invited speakers Sibylle
Fischer (NYU), Madeleine Dobie (Columbia), Nick Nesbitt
(Princeton) and Vivek Chibber (NYU). She co-founded and
ran a graduate student reading group on Francophone and
Postcolonial theory (see below).
Myron McShane held a doctoral award from the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He
edited a bilingual edition of Giannozzo Manetti's Apologeticus (A Translator's Defense), the first full-length treatise
ever written on translation theory, for the I Tatti Renaissance
Library (Harvard University Press). It will be published in the
fall of 2015. Myron has been invited to give a paper on this
work at the Renaissance Society of America in Berlin in March
2015.
Kaliane Helene Ung gave a paper entitled “Poetic exile from
the Muttersprache in Unica Zürn’s MistAKE” at the Draper
Student Organization Graduate Conference (NYU), and a
paper at the German Graduate Conference (NYU) entitled
“Fragmented Dolls enter the Age of Cyborgs: recovering
agency through technicity in the fashion industry”. At the
ACLA Conference (NYU), she performed with doctoral
student Dominik Zechner (NYU German) an epistolary paper
entitled “Writing With Neither Head nor Tail: une correspondance”. She also presented a communication on
anorexia, punctuation and plasticity at a graduate colloquium
at the University of Toronto. She is now writing a paper on
decadent dolls and gender to be presented in June 2014 in
Bialystok (Poland) during the 7th edition of the International
Festival of Puppetry Schools (Dean’s Student Travel Grant).
FRANCOPHONE GRADUATE STUDIES COLLOQUIUM
Since the temporary decamping of our much-esteemed Judith Miller to NYU Abu Dhabi, the French Department has
been one Francophone specialist down. To fill this gap, a graduate-student led initiative, organized by Chris Bonner and
myself, and kindly funded by the Department, got off the ground in September 2013. We sought to provide a forum of
discussion for Ph.D. students interested in postcolonial theory and Francophone literature, and to facilitate
conversations between students and academic specialists in these fields. To that end, the Francophone Graduate
Student Colloquium (FGSC) was born. Throughout last year, we organized fortnightly meetings of a reading group in
postcolonial theory, open to graduate students from both inside and outside the French Department. Together, we
studied some fascinating (and challenging!) contemporary works of theory, and collaborated with students in other
departments, gaining interdisciplinary perspectives onto our own research. Furthermore, Chris and I organized a series
of postcolonial lunch seminars at the Maison Française, in which talks were given by scholars such as Professors Vivek
Chibber (NYU), Madeleine Dobie (Columbia), Sibylle Fischer (NYU), and Nick Nesbitt (Princeton), on topics as diverse
as amnesty and the aftermath of trauma in Algerian film and literature, Toussaint Louverture’s Antislavery
Constitution of 1801, and the merits of the theories of the Subaltern Studies Group. Students interested in the Maghreb
also had the opportunity to attend an intimate lunch with CUNY Professor Andrea Khalil (author of The Arab AvantGarde and North African Cinema in a Global Context). Overall, it was a fantastic opportunity for dialogue and exchange,
and we look forward to continuing with FGSC in the 2014-15 academic year!
Suzy Cater
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GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE
Center, Periphery, Constellation: Relationality in French Studies
The third year cohort hosted the annual NYU French
Graduate Student Conference entitled “Center,
Periphery, Constellation: Relationality in French
Studies” at La Maison francaise on April 12th, 2014.
Our conference explored the imaginary geography of
French studies and the current relevance of the terms
“center”and “periphery” in French literature, history,
and culture. Our international panelists presented
exciting papers on political and literary
constellations, spectral (re)mappings, and shifting
legacies. We were pleased to welcome Professor
Efthymia Rentzou of Princeton University who
closed the conference with a fascinating keynote
speech on the confrontation of central and peripheral
perspectives of art and literature in the first half of the
twentieth century.
The Organizers, Aubrey Korneta, Anna Miller, Raina
Levesque, Erika Hendrix, Renée Kimble, Nick
Truesdale.
Efthymia Rentzou
ALUMNI NEWS
Natalie David-Weill (Ph.D.1987)’s book Jewish mothers never
die was published by Arcade in August 2014.
Jim Dahlinger, SJ (Ph.D. 1999), Associate Professor of
French and English at Le Moyne College, Syracuse, New
York, just published his second book, Saving France in the
1580s: Writings of Etienne Pasquier (Peter Lang, New York,
2014); and a book chapter, “Etienne Pasquier on Strategies
of Female Power,” in a book to appear with Palgrave
McMillan this year, in Palgrave's series on medieval
queenship studies.
Robert S. April (M.A. 2009) had a short communication
published in No. 88, October 2014, edition of Les cahiers
naturalistes....actualités de Thérèse Raquin, his review of the
Charley Stratton film adaptation ("In Secret") of Zola's novel
that played in NY last summer. He thinks this is really a
feather in his cap because Les cahiers naturalistes is such a
wonderful journal and he owes it all to you, the professors
at NYU.
Christopher Clarke (M.A. in Literary Translation, 2012)
published a translation of Olivier Salon's The Stations of the
Cry in the December 2013 issue of Words without Borders,
“Writing from the Oulipo.” In the same issue, he
collaborated on a translation of François Caradec's “The Life
You Save May Be Your Own.” Chris completed his second
year of a Ph.D. at the Cuny Graduate Center, and spent the
past year teaching and studying in Paris.
Willemijn Don (Ph.D. 2012) is enjoying her second year as
a Visiting Assistant Professor at Bryn Mawr College. Her
article “Suffering for the Novel’s Sake: Female “Mystical
Substitution” in Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Un prêtre marié and
Bloy’s Le Désespéré “came out in the Fall/Winter 2014-15
issue of Nineteenth-Century French Studies.
Scott M. Sanders (Ph.D. 2012) began a tenure track position
in July 2014 as an Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College.
Dane Stalcup (Ph.D. 2013). In the spring of 2014, Dane's
position of Visiting Assistant Professor of French at Wagner
College was converted to a tenure-track position. Dane also
attended the 2014 AATF (American Association of Teachers
of French) conference in New Orleans and is currently
writing an article on Berlioz translating Virgil.
15
INSTITUTE OF FRENCH STUDIES HIGHLIGHTS
COLLOQUIA
Jean-François Klein (Université de Nantes)
La Pacification de l’Indochine et de Madagascar. Le général
Théophile Pennequin (1849-1916) et la guerre des races
Pascal Ory (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Présentation du Dictionnaire des étrangers qui ont fait la
France
Sarah Gensburger (CNRS-Paris) and Beth Karlsgodt (U. of
Denver)
Moderated by Stéphane Gerson (NYU)
Robbing the Jews in WWII Paris: Places, Traces, and Images
Mary Lewis (Harvard)
Divided rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia
Herrick Chapman, Frédéric Viguier, Pascal Ory
Vanessa R. Schwartz (USC))
Dancing rabbis and Bar Mitzvah Cats: On Jewish Humor in
French Popular Film
Antoine Vauchez (CNRS/Université Paris 1 Panthéon
Sorbonne)
Can the European Union be Democratized?
CONFERENCES
Memories of Indochina
Beth Karlsgodt and Sarah Gensburger
Panel discussion with M. Kathryn Edwards (Bucknell University),
Jean-François Klein (Université de Nantes), Lam Lê (film director), Stéphanie Ponsavady (Wesleyan
University), Todd Shepard (Johns Hopkins)
Moderated by Frédéric Viguier (NYU)
Co-sponsored by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy
Shaping Immigration News: A French American Comparison
Rodney Benson (Media Studies and Sociology, NYU), with Frédéric Viguier (NYU), Gaye Tuchman (UConn),
James Graff (Executive editor, The Week)
Co-sponsored by NYU (Institute of French Studies; Dept. of Media, Culture, and Communications; Institute for Public Knowledge;
Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute) and the French-American Foundation.
History, Memory, and Scaling the Past: A Tribute to Jacques Revel
Barbara Weinstein (NYU)
Ed Berenson (NYU)
Florent Brayard (EHESS)
Jerrold Seigel (NYU)
Herrick Chapman (NYU)
Francesca Trivellato (Yale)
Pierre Bouretz (EHESS)
keynote by Lynn Hunt (UCLA):
Jacques Revel and the Question of Scale
16
Richard Sieburth, Jacques Revel, Pierre Bouretz
17
IFS - DEGREES AND AWARDS
JOINT PH. D. STUDENTS
Michelle Pinto (IFS/History) Employment, Education, and the Reconfiguration of Empire: Africanization
in Postwar French Africa
Jessica Pearson (IFS/History) From the Civilizing Mission to International Development: France, the
United Nations, and the Politics of Family Health in Postwar Africa, 1940-1960
Matthew Watkins (IFS/History) “You've Got to Be Modernistic”: The Myth of Pierre Mendès France
and the Modernization of France
Stella Amelie Vincenot (IFS/French) Célébrer. honorer, commémorer: la culture politique après
l’émancipation
Paul Sager (IFS/History) Indigenizing Indochina: Race, Class, and the French Colonial Employer-State,
1848-1945
Lindsay Kaplan (IFS/French) When Fiction Made History: Cultural Memory and the Fictional
Representations of October 17, 1961
Jessica Pearson (IFS/History) From the Civilizing Mission to International Development: France, the
United Nations, and the Politics of Family Health in Postwar Africa, 1940-1960
MA STUDENTS GRADUATED IN 2013-2014
Marie-Charlotte Allam
Melissa Haveen Bailey-Diallo (Journalism)
Allison Beres
Heather M Donato
Ronald Dorville
Charles Begue Fawell
Finora Josee Ellen Franck
Patrick Diran Kochyan
Andrew Corbin Kotick
Amy Y Omar
Anthony Rao
IFS professors, students and staff
VISITING PROFESSORS
2014-2015
Fall 2014
CHOUKRI HMED
(Université Paris-Dauphine)
JOHANNA SIMÉANT
(U. Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne)
Spring 2015
MARIE-EVE THÉRENTY
(Université de Montpellier)
MURIEL DARMON
(CNRS/Université de Lyon)
17
NYU PARIS
NYUParis Academic Year 2013-2014
This was an important and exciting year for NYUParis, the
most significant change being our move from the charming
rue de Passy, where our center had been housed since 1969,
to an expanded, state of the art facility on the boulevard
Saint Germain. With bigger and a greater number of
classrooms, elegant student and faculty lounges, a stunning
library, and magnificent 360 degree views of Paris, the new
center stands poised to accept up to 400 students and to
assume its place in the heart of the GNU. The new center is
located in the heart of the Latin Quarter, mere steps from
the Sorbonne, the Collège de France, the Cluny Museum,
the Pantheon, Notre Dame, and in close proximity to the
innumerable resources Paris offers.
In late May, colleagues and friends of NYUParis gathered
for a lovely and emotional farewell to the beautiful townhouse and garden in the 16th arrondissement that had been
our home, and in particular to say goodbye and thank you
to Marie-France Benoist, our gracious landlady for so many
years.
The year was also marked by other important transitions.
Under the leadership of Professor Henriette Goldwyn,
Acting Director from September 2013 to May 2014,
academics and academic quality became the primary
objective of the Center. Significant progress was also made
on numerous staffing, administrative, and cultural affairs
fronts. In particular, we are pleased to welcome Valérie
Michelin as the new Associate Director for Finance and
Administration, Professor Jasmine Getz as Acting Coordinator of the Graduate Program, and David Uhrig as
Acting Coordinator of the Language Program. David Uhrig
replaces Michelle Boularès, who this year stepped down
from her position as Director of the Language Program after
24 years of dedicated service building up the excellent and
extensive language offerings at NYUParis. Last but not
least, Professor John Moran assumed with panache and
great finesse his new role as Acting Director in June.
As NYUParis integrates ever more completely into NYU’s
global network, the challenge remains how to respond to
the interests and demands of an expanding student body
while staying true to our central mission of providing an
immersion experience in French language and society. In
Fall 2013, we launched the new required course for all
NYUParis
undergraduates,
“Global
Orientations:
Reflections on Modern France”. In spring 2014, we
welcomed our first cohort of 3rd year students in the Law
School, who followed a rigorous 2nd semester program in
conjunction with students from HEC and Sciences Po. Also
in spring 2014, the NYU Paris site-specific committee was
finalized, bridging various intellectual and academic
endeavors and bringing together schools and departments
with a shared curricular interest in things French.
A complete list of NYUParis Partners and Affiliates can be
found at http://www.nyu.edu/global/global-academicpartnerships-and-affiliations.html).
18
French Connections
NYUParis continues to honor its deep ties to the French
Department as reflected in its leadership, as well as through
the regular rotation of Visiting Professors from the
Department. These included Eugène Nicole and Claudie
Bernard in 2013-2014, and Richard Sieburth and Denis
Hollier for the upcoming academic year.
The strength of our language courses, and in particular the
immersion opportunities allowed by our all-French Program II, as well as our graduate programs, reflect our ongoing commitment to maintaining a strong French focus.
We were pleased this year to welcome our first student to
the new collaborative M.A. in French Language &
Civilization/Advanced Certificate in Museum Studies, and
gratified to receive many strong applications for our 20142015 graduate cohort.
A view of Notre Dame from the 8th floor of the new
NYUParis location
Events
Students who attended NYUParis in 2013-2014 had the
opportunity to choose among a wide array of exceptional
activities, presentations, commemorations and trips organized with the assistance and advice of our very active
teaching staff. These included, among others;
• Literary soirées with Eugène Nicole, Chantal Thomas and
Claudie Bernard
• Lectures by Gérard Gengembre, Eugène Nicole, and
Sophie Body-Gendrot, among others, within the context of
the new required course for all NYUParis undergraduates,
“Global Orientations: Reflections on Modern France”.
Students also attended a screening of Luis Bunuel’s L’Age
d’Or, with an introduction by NYUParis professor Sam
Azulys.
• An evening with Marcus Rediker and Yves Citton, hosted
by NYUParis professor Martial Poirson.
• Brown-bag lunch discussions with NYUParis professor
Mansouria Mokhefi on the crisis in Syria, and Kerstin
Carlson from the American University of Paris on the Roma
crisis in France.
• A day-trip to Chartres
• A 3-day study trip on the French Resistance in Grenoble
and the Vercors
NYU PARIS
• A graduate student trip with Professor Dominique Kalifa
to Peronne and World War I memorial sites.
• A very emotional trip to the liberation beaches in Normandy and the American cemetery hosted by our previous
landlady, Mme Benoist.
• A lecture on “Post-Humanism” with sociologist John Crowley from UNESCO.
• Thanksgiving Dinner on the Tour Eiffel
• L’histoire terrible mais inachévé de Norodom Sihanouk, roi du
Cambodge at the Théâtre du Soleil ; The Old Woman, directed
by Robert Wilson at the Théâtre du Châtelet; Une Saison au
Congo by Aimé Césaire at the Théâtre les Gémeaux, Dom Juan
at the Comédie Française, Les Fausses Confidences at the
Théâtre de l’Odéon, La Bohème at the Opéra Bastille.
• Screenings of the documentary series Juif et Musulman in
the presence of the film’s Director, Karim Miské
• Discussions with filmmakers Alain Cavalier, Julie
Bertucelli, Claire Simon, the Dardenne brothers, and Agnès
Varda at the BNF as part of a Meet the Director series
sponsored by NYUParis, Positif, and l’Université de Paris I
Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Student lounge of the 8th floor
Tom Bishop honors Isabelle Huppert during the
annual Senate luncheon in Paris, June 2014
New NYUParis location, Boulevard Saint-Germain
OBITUARIES
NINA BURNELLE (1926-2013)
We mourn the passing of NINA BURNELLE, who worked at
La Maison Française from 1976 to 1993, and remained a
neighbor and friend, attending events throughout her retirement years. Born in Vienna, she survived the war years
in Belgium, and came to the United States in
1964. Current and past members of the French Department
community remember with great fondness her enormous
energy and devotion, her strong French accent, and her
pleasure in contact with students and guest speakers. She is
survived by daughters Helen and Marjorie, both of whom
attended NYU, and four grandchildren.
We mourn the loss of our longtime friend and
colleague, KATHY TALARICO. Kathy earned her
Ph.D. from our department and went on to a
successful career in academia as professor and
department chair at the College of Staten Island.
She retained her connection to NYU's department
and continued her professional and personal
rapport with us.
We shall miss Kathy's warmth and gentleness.
19
Prof. Bolduc conducts an honors seminar with an
NYUParis student via Skype
“The Literary Mews” PEN World Voices
Festival of International Literature, spring 2014
Books published by faculty this academic year
L’Arc
NYU Department of
French
Volume 28, Fall 2014
Editor: Lise Landeau
Photographs:
Francine Goldenhar
Lise Landeau
Beowulf Sheehan
Visit the NYU Department
of French on the web:
http://french.as.nyu.edu/
page/home
Please submit updates and address changes to:
Department of French
New York University
13-19 University Place, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10003
Tel: 212-998-8758
Fax: 212-995-4187
E-mail: lise.landeau@nyu.edu