Calling allpostgraduate students! We are now opening registration for this year's …
London French PostgraduateConference 2010!
This exciting conference is organisedby postgraduates for postgraduates and is an excellent opportunity to meetother students in the field of French studies and hear about their research. Thereare no registration fees to encourage as many of you as possible to attend!!
Please register for theconference by emailing your name, the name of your institution and whether ornot you wish to attend the conference dinner (at your own expense) to: LondonPGConference2010@hotmail.co.ukno later than Friday 29th October 2010.
Details about the conference areas follows:
London FrenchPostgraduate Conference 2010
(With the kind support of the Society for French Studies,the IGRS, the King's College LondonSchool of Arts and Humanities andthe following University of London Frenchdepartments: King's College London, Queen Mary and UCL)
When? Wednesday 10th November2010 (9.30-19.00)
Where? Room 274/275, Stewart House, IGRS, Russell Square, London, WC1E 7HU
Cost? FREE!
What? This year the conference theme is ‘TheOther's Others: Othering and Marginalisation in French Feminism and Beyond'
'[La femme] se détermine et se différencie par rapportà l'homme et non celui-ci par rapport à elle; elle est l'inessentiel en face del'essentiel. Il est le Sujet, il est l'Absolu: elle est l'Autre.'
Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième sexe, 1949
In her seminal work of 1949, LeDeuxième sexe, Simone de Beauvoir defined the status of women in society asbeing that of 'l'Autre'. However, just as society has evolved and changed, sohave our methods of understanding and analysing it; with the emergence ofsubsequent waves of feminism and new forms of criticism, such as queer studiesand postcolonial studies, new approaches to and conceptions of 'l'Autre' havedeveloped. The question is how far we have really come: sixty years on, to whatextent – or how – are women defined by their 'otherness'? The hope of the world'swomen standing in unity has been shattered by the alleged ethnocentrism andheterosexism of Western feminist movements, which creates its own Others: theOther's Others. Consequently, how have notions of, and reactions to, 'l'Autre'changed? What groupings are formed by the reconfiguration of the Other, andwhat are the intersections and tensions between these different forms of'otherness'? Finally, how is ‘l'Autre' represented in different culturalmediums such as French and Francophone literature and film, television,journalism and the internet?
Keynoteaddresses from Mildred Mortimer (University of Colorado):‘First person singular: Assia Djebar's "narrative unveiling": fromL'amour, la fantasia to Nulle part dans la maison de mon père' and Helen Vassallo (University of Exeter)‘Impossible Alterity? Sexual and Social Otherness in Francophone Women'sWriting'.
Please visit http://igrs.sas.ac.uk/index.php?id=421to download the full programme and abstracts.
NB We would like to encourageparticipants to attend the whole day, but if you can only attend a part of theday, please indicate this when you register.
Conference Organisers: JennyKosniowski (King's College London) and Sara Leek (Queen Mary, London)