Event Descriptions

Friday, October 5 at 10:00am-8:30pm
The French Interdisciplinary Group for Seventeenth-Century Studies presents: 
Rage, Folie, Désespoir: Excess and the Passions in Early Modern France (1550-1715)


The theoretical construction known as French Classicism has traditionally been characterized by what René Bray termed "le culte de la raison," which Jean Rohou describes as a "large et profonde aspiration, sur tous les plans, à une discipline à la fois constructive et répressive: absolutisme, rationalisme, moralisme, classicisme." On the surface, seventeenth-century representations of the passions do exhibit a codified propriety. But, as La Rochefoucauld observes, "Les passions sont dangereuses lors même qu'elles paroissent le plus raisonnables," and in order to depict the passions in a "rational" and universally understood manner, they were frequently portrayed in dramatically exaggerated fashions. This conference will explore the early modern fascination with "Baroque" notions of excess, violence, uncontrollable impulse, and extravagant passion.

Professor Roxanne Roy (Université du Québec) will be the keynote speaker, and the period instruments ensemble La Musique de la Reine will perform vocal and instrumental works of 17th- and 18th-century France.

Sponsored by

The French Interdisciplinary Group for Seventeenth-Century Studies

The Ph.D. Program in French

The Henri Peyre French Institute

The C.U.N.Y. Doctoral Students' Counci

Visit the conference website

Tuesday, October 23, 2007, from 11 AM to 5 PM
Rich Stews: Food, Culture, and Literature: Symposium in honor of the late the late Alex Szogyi

On Tuesday, October 23, 2007, from 11 AM to 5 PM, the Ph.D. Program in French and the Henri Peyre French Institute at The Graduate Center of CUNY will convene a Symposium entitled Rich Stews: Food, Culture, and Literature.

The Memorial begins at 6 PM.

This colloquium is part of a Memorial in honor of the late Alex Szogyi, professor of many years at CUNY, who was a widely known 17th-century scholar, specializing in the theater of Racine and the work of La Fontaine, as well as a translator, food critic and historian and a talented concert pianist. Among his many accomplishments, Professor Szogyi edited a volume on the history and representation of chocolate –Chocolate: Food of the Gods (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997). This colloquium, held at The Graduate Center from 12 to 5, on October 23rd, commemorates his work in the field of food history.

Colloquium conveners: Professor Jeanine Parisier Plottel and Professor Francesca Canadé Sautman.

Martin Segal Theatre

The Graduate Center of the City University of New York is located at 365 5th avenue (intersection of 34th street and 5th avenue) in Manhattan.

For further information about the Commemoration on October 23rd, contact the conveners or call 212-817-8365.

Conference Program

Louisette Ighilahriz, Woman Against General: Torture, Rape and Time

Louisette Ighilahriz, author, former combatant during the Algerian War, Feminist 

Louisette Ighilahriz was captured by French paratroopers in 1957, subjected to torture and rape for 11 weeks before being sent to jail.

She broke silence on her rape in 2001 in a book, Algérienne, that raised a political storm in France and led to a lawsuit against a former torturer, General Schmitt.

Louisette Ighilahriz will share her long years of quiet suffering and desperation, her decision to go public, and her continued struggle for women’s right to speak their conscience.

Room 9206-9207

Co-sponsored by The Women’s Studies Certificate Program, Ph.D. Program in French, Ralph Bunche Institute, and Ph.D. Program in Sociology, at The Graduate Center, and the Human Rights Program, Women and Gender Studies Program, and Sociology Department, at Hunter College of CUNY.

Friday, November 2, 2007 at 4:30-6:00 pm.
Agent of Fraternity: How Feminism misreads (Hegel's) Antigone 

A talk by Mary C. Rawlinson, Professor of Comparative Literature and Philosophy, SUNY Stony Brook 

Professor Rawlinson is a specialist of recent French philosophy, the philosophy of literature, aesthetics, French feminism, nineteenth-century philosophy, the philosophy of medicine, and Proust.

She is the author of Medicine: Science of the Individual (Kluwer, 2004), the editor ofBreasts and Medicine (Kluwer, 2004) and the co-editor of Derrida and Feminism: Recasting the Question of Woman (Routledge, 1997) and The Voice of Breast Cancer in Medicine and Bioethics (Springer, 2006). She has also edited five issues of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, including Foucault and the Philosophy of Medicine, The Future of Psychiatry, and Feminist Bioethics.

Martin Segal Theatre

Sponsored by The Ph.D. Program in French and the Certificate Program in Women’s Studies

Thursday, November 13, 2007, 6:30-8:30 pm
Fissured Identities: Fathers, Daughters and Sons in the Francophone North African Novel
a talk by

Hamid Bahri, Assistant Professor of French at York College. 

Room 9204
Reception to Follow.

Sponsored by the Middle East & Middle Eastern American Center of the Graduate Center, CUNY 

Co-sponsored with the Ph.D. Program in French

Event Descriptions

Monday, January 22nd at 5:30pm-7:30pm
The Dreyfus Affair
A seminar with

Antoinette Blum, Professor of French at Lehman College and the Graduate Center; Deputy Executive Officer of the French Ph.D. Program at the Graduate Center; International Secretary of the Société Internationale d'Histoire de l'Affaire Dreyfus (SIHAD)

Lorraine Beitler, Professor Emeritus, CUNY; Curator of the Dreyfus Collection at the University of Pennsylvania

James Melo, ERC's musicologist and Senior Editor at RILM

When the Jewish captain Alfred Dreyfus was accused of treason in 1894 by a French military tribunal and imprisoned, French society erupted into a fireball of anti-Semitism and political partisanship that called into question the very nature of French identity. This tragic private drama played out in a very public arena; not only the press but also artists, writers, and musicians became entangled in a controversy that lasted almost two decades and continues to resonate to this day. The seminar will address the cultural, political, and musical repercussions of the Dreyfus Affair and its relevance for today's political climate. Images from the extensive Dreyfus Collection of the University of Pennsylvania will be shown and discussed.

Elebash Recital Hall

Free for CUNY students, faculty, and staff

General Admission: $10

Monday, March 5, 6:30-8:00pm
After '68:French Film, History, and Politics in the 1970s
A discussion to launch a film series on the Seventies French Cinema with
Jean-Michel Frodon, Editor-in-Chief of Cahiers du Cinéma and
Lynn Higgins, Parents Distinguished Research Professor in French and Italian at Dartmouth College and author of New Novel, New Wave, New Politics: Fiction and The Representation of History in Postwar France
Moderated by Sam DiIorio, French, Hunter College and Ivone Margulies, Film and Media Studies, Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY.

Co-sponsored by the Alliance Francaise, the Film Studies Certificate Program,

the PhD Program in French, and the Henri Peyre French Institute

For more information on the film series, see http://www.fiaf.org/.

The Skylight Room (9100)

The Graduate Center, CUNY

365 Fifth Ave (btwn 34th & 35th)

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

No registration. Please arrive early for a seat. 212-817-2005 / ch@gc.cuny

Thursday, April 19th at 5pm
From Native American 'Savages' Into Civilized French Catholics:
The Foundation of France's Assimilation Policy in the 17th Century

Sara Melzer, University of California at Los Angeles

Room 4202