Reading Louis-Ferdinand Céline Today. Two-Day Master Class and Workshop with Greg Hainge
PhD School at the Faculty of Humanities at University of Copenhagen
18-19 janvier 2017
The French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961) is one of the most read and highly regarded authors in 20th century French literature. But he is also one of the most controversial because of his ardent anti-Semitism. After the publication of four violent pamphlets in the interwar period, Céline was forced to flee from the advancing Allied armies in the summer of 1944. He spent six years in Denmark before he could return to France.
Though his oeuvre continues to be widely read and discussed in his home country, the work on Céline in a Danish academic context remains scarce, and even though excellent scholars continue to read and teach Céline, the area of interest is more often than not narrowed down to his first two novels from the 1930’s.
This workshop will take up this challenge and ask what ways a scientific approach to Céline could follow today. At the same time, we will try to broaden the scope and admit his later literary production as object of literary research. As it turns out, Céline remains highly relevant to some of the most fruitful research fields today such as posthumanism, affect theory, witness literature, studies in place, space, cartography, geography, and many more.
Through papers and discussions, we will investigate and map out the Célinian landscape in 2016, and in so doing, hopefully kick-start an academic reception of Céline in Denmark. Excellent papers might also be considered for an anthology on Céline that the organizers are currently preparing.
Associate Professor Dr Greg Hainge from the University of Queensland, Australia, will participate as lecturer and discussant. Greg Hainge has published extensively on Céline and serves as a member of the Société des etudes céliniennes in Paris (The Society for Célinian Studies).
Participants are in no way required to be experts on Céline though the papers should of course be related to the author. We invite all PhD students interested in or working on topics such as (but in no way limited to) French literature, literary genre, modernism, art and literature, linguistics, literary style, posthumanism, witness literature, theory of translation, affect theory, voice and tone, literature and politics, censorship, anti-Semitism, space, place, geography, cartography, war and literature, nostalgia, autobiography, autofiction, literature and history, topology and literature.
The course will be conducted in English.
ECTS: 1.5 for participation, 3 for participation with paper.
Time: 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM.
Max. number of participants: 20 in total.
Max. number of paper presentations: 12.
Preparation: Participants are expected to read the course material circulated beforehand. Please hand in your abstract of max. 250 words for your paper presentation no later than December 16th, 2016 to phdschool@hum.ku.dk.
Registration: Please register via the link in the box on the right on the website no later than December 1st, 2016.
Course organizer: If you have any questions about the course, please contact Troels Hughes Hansen, zxp794@hum.ku.dk.