Sunday, April 4, 2010

Final Schedule and Poster for Fri April 9 FIGSO Conference

Hi, all. Here are the final posters for the FIGSO panels with moderator and lunch information. Also, Susan Floyd has made a great poster to publicize Dr. Hargreaves' talk. Both are included below. Click on the pictures to download the files in PDF format. Please try to come out and tell your friends! Thank you!





Tuesday, March 30, 2010

7th Annual FIGSO Conference, Friday April 9

Hello, all. Below is the schedule of events for the 2010 Spring FIGSO Conference. We are very excited to welcome Professor Alec Hargreaves as our keynote speaker. We hope that you will be able to attend the panels and the keynote speech. Thank you!

7th Annual FIGSO Conference

Mapping the Community, Mapping Language: Text, Image and Sound

The University of Texas at Austin

Department of French and Italian

April 9, 2010




Keynote Speaker:

Dr. Alec Hargreaves, Director of the Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies and Ada Belle Winthrop-King Professor of French at Florida State University. Dr. Hargreaves is the author, translator, and editor of many books and articles, including Multi-ethnic France: Immigration, Politics, Culture, and Society (2007), Memory, Empire, and Postcolonialism: Legacies of French Colonialism (2005), Post-colonial Cultures in France (1997).

Locations:

Registration, Breakfast and the Keynote Speech will all take place in Homer Rainey Hall (HRH) in the Department of French and Italian Lounge (HRH 2.118).

All panels will be held in the Sinclair Suite (UNB 3.128) of the Texas Student Union.

Friday, April 9, 2010

8:15 – 9:00 a.m. Registration and Breakfast

Department Lounge

9:00 -10:30 a.m. Sexuality and Gendered Communities

Sinclair Suite

1. Kathryn Droske, University of Minnesota – “Amour en mer : Community and Communication in Le Roman de Tristan”

2. Christine Deden, University of Texas - “Representing and/or Repudiating Communities: Saint-Simonianism, Feminism, and George Sand”

3. Julie Everett, University of California Los Angeles - “The Space Between : Bisexuality, Intersexuality and Albinism as Metaphors for the Postcolonial State in Williams Sassine's Mémoire d'une peau

10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Language Acquisition

Sinclair Suite

1. Libby Mallonee Gertken and Laura Ambrosetti, University of Texas - “Misinterpretations in Second Language Sentence Processing”

2. Rebekah Post, University of Texas - “The Acquisition of y and en : A Re-analysis of evidence collected by Wust (2009)”

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. French Linguistic Communities

Sinclair Suite

1. Michael Boerm, Baylor University – “E pluribus unum : The Creation of Québécois French”

2. Sandra Keller, University of South Carolina - “'C'est toi qu'est pas chez toi' : The political and interactional value of ne in French online newspaper communities”

12:30 – 2:00 p.m. Lunch

2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. Hip Hop, Education, and Speech in the Banlieue

Sinclair Suite

1. Jean-Baptiste Meunier, Louisiana State University - “Pushing edges: Myths in French Rap

2. Mame-Fatou Niang Meunier, Louisiana State University - “'Touche pas à mon céfan' : Paroles de banlieue”

3. Nasia Anam, University of California Los Angeles - “Dismantling the Apparatus : The Shifting Walls of France in Entre les Murs

3:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Forming and Informing the Community
Sinclair Suite

1. Robert Sapp, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill - “Imagining the Past, Remembering the Future : Quebec's Transcultural Community”

2. Camela Logan, University of Michigan - “When the Clothes Don't Fit : Unanticipated Un-belonging in Daniel Biyaoula's L'Impasse

3. Robert Shelton Bellew, University of Georgia - “Understanding the Historical Influences on Italian Journalism.”

5:15 p.m 6:15 p.m. Keynote Address

Department Lounge

Alec Hargreaves

The conference committee would like to thank the Department of French and Italian, The French and Italian Graduate Student Organization, and The Center for European Studies for their support. We would also like to thank the following people for their various and indispensable contributions to this event: Alec Hargreaves, Daniela Bini, Hélène Tissières, Cathérine Léger, Michael Gott, Karen Jones, Rolee Rios, Susan Floyd, Christine Bryce , Erika Zanetti, and all of the moderators.

Organized by the FIGSO Conference Committee

Organizers: Jonathan Evans, Margaret Becker, Charles Mignot, and Libby Mallonee Gertken

Thursday, February 4, 2010

2010 FIGSO Conference

The UT Austin French and Italian Graduate Students Organization is pleased to announce our 2010 conference, Mapping the Community, Mapping Language: Text, Image and Sound. The conference will take place on Friday, April 9 and Saturday, April 10. We are pleased to welcome our two keynote speakers Dr. Alec Hargreaves, Professor of French at Florida State University, and Dr. Gisele Chevalier, Professor of French Linguistics at the Université de Moncton. Our conference is aimed at students and professors of both literature and linguistics.

Deadline for submitting an abstract is February 25.

Here is the complete call for papers and instructions for submission:
2010 FIGSO Call for Papers

Thank you very much!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Little Senegal Monday February 8

On behalf of FIGSO, I'm pleased to announce the sixth screening in the Cinéma Français Today Film Festival, Rachid Bouchareb's 2001 film Little Senegal. We are pleased to welcome distinguished guest speakers Professor Hélène Tissières from the Department of French and Italian, Professor Helena Woodard from the Department of English, and Professor Tola Mosadomi from the Department of Middle Eastern Studies.

The film will begin promptly at 7 pm with a discussion to follow. This film will also be the subject of our Cannes Film Festival Essay Contest, details of which are found in the previous post.

The film will be subtitled and free to the public as always. We anticipate heavy attendance, so we suggest that you come early to reserve a seat. We hope to see you next Monday!

Here is a synopsis of the film from
http://www.informante.web.na/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5629&Itemid=104

"The movie, set in Little Senegal, traces the journey a Senegalese man, Alloune (Sotigui Kouyate), a former guide at Goree Island’s History of Slavery museum, takes from the mainland Africa to America to persuade his cousins staying in Little Senegal to return home ... Directed by Rachid Bouchareb, the 2001 movie plays around the confusion and reluctance by Alloune’s assumed cousins Ida Robinson (Sharon Hope) and Hassan (Karim Koussein Traore) to decide whether to return to Africa or stay in America. Ida and Hassan’s indecision symbolises the identity confusion gripping descendants of slaves scattered around the world. For Ida and Hassan, it’s not enough and satisfying to be Americans and at the same time, they do not identify themselves with Africa.Just like many others, Africa for and to Ida and Hassan is a paradise in the distance but one which they are not comfortable to be in."

Monday, January 25, 2010

Cannes Film Festival Essay Contest

The French and Italian Grad Students Organization is pleased to announce the Cannes Film Festival Essay Contest. The essay will concern Little Senegal, to be screened February 8. Please view the poster below for details. Click for larger version.

Un Homme, un vrai Tonight!



FIGSO is pleased to announce the first screening of the spring portion of our Cinéma Français Today film series. We will be showing the 2003 film, Un Homme, un vrai at 7 pm tonight at Dobie Theater. As always, the screening is free and open to the public. I will be leading an audience discussion after the film.

Here is a synopsis from Wikipedia:

"Boris, an apprentice film director, meets Marilyne, a young senior executive, during an evening in Paris and they declare their love for one another, despite their barely knowing each other. Five years later, during a business trip to the Balearic Islands, with Boris and their children, Marilyne runs away at the very moment when Boris is going to leave her. Five years down the road, Marilyne reappears at the other end of the Pyrenees mountains, with a group of Americans.
The man who will be their guide is none other than Boris, who is unrecognisable."

Monday, November 9, 2009

Je crois que je l'aime Tonight

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Tonight at 7 pm at the Dobie we are pleased to bring you the third installment in the Cinéma Français Today film festival. We will be showing Je crois que je l'aime, a film by Pierre Jolivet.

I will be leading the discussion about this romantic comedy following the movie. We hope to see you tonight at 7. This screening, like all others in the series will be subtitled and free of charge.

Thank you!

Jonathan