Interdisciplinary Approaches to France and the Francophone World

January 26

Léon Pradeau, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Chicago, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

Location: Cobb Hall 319

February 2

Leila K. Blackbird, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Chicago, Department of History

“Baptized Only With Fear and Trembling”: French Settler Colonialism in the Lower Mississippi Valley, 1682-1729

Location: Cobb Hall 319

February 16 

Rafe Blaufarb, Professor, Florida State University, Department of History

Special Guest Lecture: Cahiers de doléances

Location: Tea Room, SSRB

March 1

Jennifer Tamas, Associate Professor, Rutgers University Department of French

“Peut-on encore être galant?”

Location: Tea Room, SSRB

October 6

Robin Mitchell, University at Buffalo, Department of History and Africana and American Studies

Suzanne Simon Baptiste Louverture, A Microbiography: The ‘Wife of’ and Other Such Nonsense*

Location: John Hope Franklin Room, SSRB

October 13

Nicholas O’Neill, University of Chicago, Department of History

Scientists, Spies, Artisans, and the State: (Re)Inventing Porcelain in France

Location: Rosenwald 301

November 3

Arthur Clement, University of Chicago, Department of History

Instituting the Sciences of Religion as Reinforcement to the Laïque Social Bond

Location: Rosenwald 301

November 10

Alison James, University of Chicago, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

Biofiction Against History

Location: Rosenwald 015

December 8

Peadar Kavanagh, University of Chicago, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

Relation curieuse de l’Île de Bornéo: Fontenelle’s Curious Response to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685)

Location: Stuart Hall 20

Friday, January 13th, 12.00pm CT – Zoom (in French)

“Une généalogie de la facilité dans les théories et pratiques poétiques françaises”, par Léo Dekowski, doctorant à l’Université de Paris-Cergy (CY Héritages).

Friday, January 27th, 12.00pm CT – In person/Hybrid (Room TBD)

“A Gendered Frontier: Métissage and Indigenous Enslavement in Eighteenth-Century Basse-Louisiane”, by Leila Blackbird, PhD Candidate in History, The University of Chicago.

Friday, February 17th, 12.00pm CT – In person/Hybrid (Room TBD)

“Enslaved Marketers, Policing, and Commercial Connections in the Eighteenth-Century French Atlantic”, by Rachel Tils, PhD Student in History, The University of Chicago.

Friday, March 10th, 12.00pm CT – In person/Hybrid (Tea Room) 

“From Flâneuses to the Frontlines: Jewish Women’s Everyday Lives from the Vichy-Era to the Decolonial Age”, by Kyra Schulman, PhD Student in History, The University of Chicago.

Friday, April 15, 3.30pm
“The Archipelagos of Doubt: A Global History of French Skeptical Cultures (1620-1820)”, a talk by Stéphane Van Damme, Professor of History, École Normale Supérieure. Colin Jones, Professor of History at the Queen Mary University of London, will serve as respondent.

Friday, April 29, 3.30pm
“Installation theory in Anglo-Norman funerary monument: the case of Lewes Priory”, by Kirsten Lopez, PhD Candidate in French and Francophone Studies, The University of Chicago.

Friday, May 13, 12.00pm
“Donner la parole: à quel prix? Restitution et dette littéraire dans les recueils de voix contemporains”, by Mathilde Zbaeren, PhD Candidate in French and Francophone Literature, University of Lausanne.

Friday January 14, 12:00 pm
« La poésie française de 1960 à aujourd’hui au prisme de la réception de Pierre Reverdy », by Julia Pont, PhD Candidate in French Literature at Paris-Nanterre Université, France.

Friday January 21, 12:00 pm
“Dissertation Proposal: Satirical Interventions under Louis XIV”, by Peadar Kavanagh, PhD Candidate in French and Francophone Literatures, The University of Chicago.

Friday February 4, 10:00 am
“Vichy France and the Jews: The Impact of Memory on Historiography” a talk and discussion with Renée Poznanski, Professor Emerita in History at Ben-Gurion University, Israel.

Friday February 18, 12:00 pm
“Dans la chair des textes : l’aveu et le non-dit”, by Loriane Lafont, PhD Candidate in French and Francophone Literatures, The University of Chicago.

Friday October 22, 3:30 pm
“Charron, Gassendi, and the Transmission of Montaigne’s Epistemology into 17th-Century French Thought”, by Benjamin Ransom, PhD Candidate in French and Francophone Literatures, The University of Chicago.

Friday November 5, 3:30 pm
“Contesting the Classroom: Reimagining Education in Moroccan and Algerian Literatures”, by Erin Twohig, Associate Professor in French and Francophone Literatures, Georgetown University.

Friday November 19, 3:30 pm
“Caricature, Skeleton, and the Baudelairean Self: the Emergence of Comicality in ‘Danse Macabre'”, by Xin Yan, MAPH Student, The University of Chicago.

Friday 4 December, 12:00 pm (Zoom)
“Montesquieu and The Federalist. A Contested Legacy”, by Hugo Toudic, PhD Candidate in History, The University of Chicago/CNRS.

Spring Quarter 2020

January 10: David Ansari, Teaching Fellow in the Social Sciences, “The Politics of Diversity in Psychotherapy in France”

(4pm, John Hope Franklin Room, SSRB 224)

January 24: Bastien Craipain, PhD Candidate in Romance Languages and Literatures, “There Is No Odd in Ordinary: Louis Joseph Janvier, Haiti, and the Tropics of Racial Science.”

(4pm, John Hope Franklin Room, SSRB 224)

February 7: Emily Rap, PhD Candidate in History, “Litigating the Social Contract in the Eighteenth-Century French Countryside”

(4pm, John Hope Franklin Room, SSRB 224)

February 21: Oliver Cussen, PhD Candidate in History, “The Rise and Fall of the Coffee Island: Sovereignty and Interest in the French Indian Ocean”

(4pm, John Hope Franklin Room, SSRB 224)

March 6: Robin Bates, Lecturer in History at Northwestern University, “‘We Must Buy Up Each Colony in Its Entirety’: Abolition, Indemnity and the Definition of Property in the French Empire, 1830-1848″

(4pm, Wieboldt 207)

Autumn Quarter 2019

October 4: Classical Antiquity and Modern Institutions in France Conference

(10am – 5pm, Logan Center for the Arts 801)

See program here.

October 18: Hollis Clayson, Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University (Art History), “Cherchez la lampe: Charles Marville, Gustave Caillebotte and the Gas Lamppost”

(4pm, Classics 021)

November 1: Bevin Blaber, PhD Candidate in the Divinity School, “Revolution and Literature: Maurice Blanchot’s Early Literary Reviews”

(4pm, John Hope Franklin Room, SSRB 224)

November 15: Charlotte Robertson, PhD Candidate in History, “Police Surveillance of the Bourse and Financial Public Opinion in Second Empire Paris”

(4pm, Wieboldt 207)

December 6: Lily Huang, PhD Candidate in History, “The Durée of the Body: Henri Bergson’s Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience”

(4pm, Wieboldt 206)