UT French & Italian Grad Students Organization Blog

Final Schedule and Poster for Fri April 9 FIGSO Conference

2010-04-04T13:06:00.001-07:00

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!

7th Annual FIGSO Conference, Friday April 9

2010-03-30T16:53:00.000-07:00

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!

7^th 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

2010 FIGSO Conference

2010-02-04T14:32:00.000-08:00

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!

Little Senegal Monday February 8

2010-02-03T11:53:00.001-08:00

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."

Cannes Film Festival Essay Contest

2010-01-25T09:56:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-01-25T09:54:00.000-08:00

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."

Je crois que je l'aime Tonight

2009-11-09T10:02:00.000-08:00

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

Next Monday, October 26, "Le Couperet"!

2009-10-22T12:11:00.000-07:00

We are very pleased to announce the second film in our Cinéma Français Today film series, the 2005 Costa-Gavras film, Le Couperet.

This black comedy/thriller features a very timely subject as an out-of-work job applicant takes an unorthodox approach to finding his next job.

From Wikipedia:

Bruno Davert is a middle-aged, middle-class, and middle-management positioned executive in paper industry who suddenly becomes unemployed. Surprisingly, his methods of competing in the work-force market are anything but ordinary.

Leading our discussion after the film will be Prof. Paola Bonifazio of the Department of French and Italian and Laura Dixon of the Department of Radio, Television, and Film.

We are thrilled to offer this film free of charge and open to the public at Dobie Theatre auditorium #3 at 7 pm next Monday. As with all the films of our series, this film is presented in a 35mm print with subtitles (of course).

We thank our sponsors for their generous support.

We hope to see you next Monday!

(Click for larger image)

(ozap.com)

New Additions to the "Home" Panel

2009-10-01T11:59:00.000-07:00

We have two more additions we wish to welcome to the panel for Home:

Dr. Cédric H. David, PhD. Dr. David received his PhD from UT Austin in 2009 and now studies geographic information systems, hydrological modeling, river routing, parallel computing. His present research concerns global climate change in Saudi Arabia and river flow in the United States.

Dr. Paul C. Adams, PhD. Dr. Adams is Associate Professor and Director of Urban Studies in the Department of Geography and the Environment.

The panel now consists of Dr. Sahotra Sarkar, Dr. Alberto Pimpinelli, Dr. Paul C. Adams, Dr. Cédric David, and Martino Lovato.

Announcing the Cinéma Français Today Film Festival

2009-09-29T11:53:00.001-07:00

On behalf of the French & Italian Graduate Student Organization (FIGSO), I am pleased to announce the first screening in the 2009-2010 Cinéma Français Today Film Festival.

We will be screening the 2009 Yann Arthus-Bertrand film, Home:

This visually dramatic special illustrates the planet's fragile state entirely from a birds-eye view in stunning high definition. With spectacular aerial views from more than 50 countries, viewers will see the extent of human impact on our landscapes. And not a moment too soon: In the past 50 years --a single lifetime -- the Earth has been more radically changed than by all previous generations of humanity. (nationalgeographic.com)

The screening will be held at Dobie Theatres in the Dobie Mall in Auditorium #3. The film starts at 7 p.m. and will be followed by a half-hour panel discussion. We are pleased to welcome Sahotra Sarkar, PhD, Professor of Philosophy and Integrative Biology at UT Austin, Alberto Pimpinelli, PhD, Professor, Attaché for Science and Technology at the Consulate General of France in Houston, and Martino Lovato, Graduate Student, Department of Comparative Literature at UT Austin.

All screenings in the series are FREE, courtesy of funding provided by The Center for European Studies, the Consulate General of France in Houston, and The William P. Hobby Centennial Professorship.

Here is the poster for the film series (click to enlarge):

For more information, you may contact Jonathan Evans via e-mail at or the France-UT Institute at 512-232-3470. For publicity, you may contact Margaret Becker at .

The Dobie Theatres are located at:

2025 Guadalupe Street
Austin, TX 78705
Free Parking

For directions or other theater related information, you may call Dobie Theatres at 512-472-3456.

We look forward to seeing you October 12!

-Jonathan

UT COLA Center for European Studies Upcoming Events Website

2009-09-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

The principle financial sponsor of the Cinéma Français Today film series has an excellent website with a list of upcoming events, including the films in this series.

You may visit the website at:

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/european_studies/events/upcoming.php

Welcome to the UT French and Italian Grad. Student Org Blog

2009-09-23T11:38:00.000-07:00

Please stay tuned for updates on our Spring FIGSO Conference and the Cinéma Français Today film series sponsored by FIGSO.

You may also visit the Department of French and Italian at UT Austin at http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/frenchitalian/

Thank you!