Events

FALL 2019

April 2018

What: “Researching Injustice: Telling the Story of Legal Lynching in Jim Crow Birmingham”

When: Monday, April 9th at 4:30 pm

Where: 102 Buttrick Hall

Dr. Melanie S. Morrison will recount what compelled her to research the story of Willie Peterson and will discuss the methodological difficulties inherent in unearthing lost stories.

Dr. Morrison’s new book is, MURDER ON SHADES MOUNTAIN: The Legal Lynching of Willie Peterson and the Struggle for Justice in Jim Crow Birmingham. This riveting account of Jim Crow-era injustice exposes how courtrooms could function like lynch mobs when the defendant was black. Through scrupulous investigation of primary sources, Dr. Morrison sheds new light on the struggle for justice in Depression-era Birmingham. Murder on Shades Mountain is a testament to the courageous predecessors of present-day movements that demand an end to racial profiling, police brutality, and the criminalization of black men.

Melanie S. Morrison is founder and executive director of Allies for Change. She has a Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School and a Ph.D. from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She is the author of The Grace of Coming Home: Spirituality, Sexuality, and the Struggle for Justice and her writing has appeared in numerous periodicals.

March 2018

What: “Addressing the language-literature divide through multiliteracies pedagogy”

When: Monday, March 19at 3:30

Where: 209 Furman Hall

Dr. Heather Willis Allen will present a talk on multiliteracies Framework for Collegiate Foreign Language Teaching, with a reception to follow.

In addition, Dr. Allen will facilitate an informal conversation about curriculum design and multiliteracy on Tuesday, March 20, at 12:15 in the Center for Second Language Studies. Lunch provided. Attendance limited to 25. To reserve a place, contact virginia.scott@vanderbilt.edu.

Heather Willis Allen (PhD, Emory University) is Associate Professor of French in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is also a core faculty member of her university’s interdisciplinary second language acquisition doctoral program. Her research on FL teacher development, multiliteracies pedagogy, and language-learning motivation has appeared in journals including the ADFL Bulletin, Foreign Language Annals, the French Review, L2 Journal, and the Modern Language Journal. Her collaborative projects have included co-authoring A Multiliteracies Framework for Collegiate Foreign Language Teaching (2016) and Alliages Cultures: La Société Française en Transformation (2013) and co-editing the 2011 AAUSC volume Educating the Future Foreign Language Professoriate for the 21^st Century.

November 2017

Le fils du tapissier

(épisode de la vie de Molière)

Directed by Jacob Abell, Vanderbilt doctoral student in French and Comparative Media Analysis and Practice

What: A two-evening run of a Haitian one-act play by Charles Moravia

When: November 15 and 22 (Wednesdays) at 7:30 p.m.

Where: The Darkhorse Theater, 4610 Charlotte Pike, Nashville, TN 37209

October 2017

Quebec Roots Band, Genticorum

Monday, Oct 30, 2017

8:00 PM

Sarratt Cinema

For more than a decade, Genticorum (www.genticorum.com) has been a fixture on the international world, traditional, folk & Celtic music circuit. Firmly rooted in the soil of their native Quebec, this dynamic trio incorporates today’s North American and European folk cultures into their music. They weave precise and intricate lines on fiddle and flute, call and response songs and achingly beautiful a capella songs in French, effervescent foot percussion and guitar and bass accompaniment into a big and jubilant musical feast. We are thrilled to welcome them to Vanderbilt for what will be an unforgettable night. Tickets at the door. Free with Vandy ID. For more info: susan.kevra@vanderbilt.edu.

March 2017

The Dada Effect: An Anti-Aesthetic and Its Influences

When: March 16 – May 27, 2017
Where: Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery, Cohen Memorial Hall
What: The Dada Effect: An Anti-Aesthetic and Its Influence is an interactive exhibition curated by Daniel C. Ridge, assistant director of the W. T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies, and organized by the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery.

February 2017

February 28: Biographical Truth? The Goncourt Brothers’ and Valéry’s Lives of the Artists

When: Tuesday, February 28 , 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Where: 305 Buttrick Hall
What: Dr.Julien Zanetta, Post-doctoral Fellow, University of Michigan presents a talk

ABSTRACT: The question of how to write the life of an artist has been a constant preoccupation throughout the nineteenth century. From Stendhal to Baudelaire and Zola, some of the major French authors of the time confronted themselves with this demanding exercise, interweaving art criticism and literature. Although the genre enjoyed great popularity, it was also deemed to foster legends, false facts, and tales made up to launch or undo reputations. Such ambivalence was especially notable as what regarded the lives of living artists. As the author could actually know the painter he was writing about, quote his “own words”, and benefit from a direct contact, the truthfulness of the account seemed to be warranted. But was it so? I shall examine two different approaches to this problem: Edmond and Jules de Goncourt’s intimate chronicle of the life and times of Paul Gavarni (Gavarni, l’homme et l’œuvre, 1870), and Paul Valéry’s Degas Dance Drawing (1936). While the first remains in keeping with the classic life-writing tradition inherited from Vasari, the latter puts radically into question such a model, arguing that the “astonishing degree of inaccuracy” of our perception cannot be trusted.

February 21: Both One and Many: Becoming Colette.

When: Tuesday, February 21 , 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Where: 206 Buttrick Hall
What: Dr. Martine Reid, Professeure des universités, Université de Lille, France presents a Reflection on the name of Colette and its use in literature

February 15: Baudelaire’s Bodies, or, Re-Dressing the Wrongs of Nude Photography

When: Wednesday, February 15 , 2:00pm – 3:30pm
Where:126 Wilson Hall
What: Dr. Raisa Rexer, Adjunct Assistant Professor of French, City College of New York / Yeshiva University examines the history of the photographic nude in 19th-century France and its influence on literary production of the period.

February 2: The “Empire of Letters”: Nineteenth-Century French Salons

as Literary Communities

When: Thursday, February 2 , 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Where:306 Buttrick Hall
What: Dr. Melanie Conroy, Assistant Professor, French Foreign Languages and Literatures, The University of Memphis presents a lecture

French salons, at least as depicted by many nineteenth-century novelists like Stendhal and Balzac, were dreary. Yet most of the greatest writers of the era were “men and women of the salons” who attended these amateur literary events religiously. How did salons encourage literary excellence in writers who had so little good to say about them? In this talk, I argue that it was the social mixité, or heterogeneity, of salons that made them such fruitful sites for cultural and literary production up until the First World War. Drawing on the largest database of nineteenth-century literary circles, as well as a range of fictional and non-fictional accounts, I show that salons fostered literary competition by bringing together people of contrasting aesthetic and political views, spurring literary debates.

Anatomy of Cinema: How Movies Move Us

An 8-part film seminar

When: Tuesdays Feb 7 – Mar 28, 6 – 8pm.
Where: Belcourt Theater, 2102 Belcourt Ave, Nashville 37212
What: Weekly seminars led by Vanderbilt Cinema and media arts professors.
Italian Professor Andrea Mirabile will lead sessions on Feb 28 and March 28.

For more details: http://www.belcourt.org/events/anatomy-of-cinema-how-movies-move-us.2394020

January 2017

Vanderbilt in France Study Abroad Fair

When: Wednesday, January 25^th,1:00 – 4:00 P.M.
Where: Commons Multi-Purpose Room 235
What: Maite Monchal, Director of the Vanderbilt in France Program will be present to discuss the program and answer questions about how to plan to spend a semester or year in France.

November 2016

Fight for Power: Guelphs and Ghibellines in the Age of Dante

When: Tuesday, November 15^th,1:10 P.M.
Where: 302 Buttrick Hall
What: Talk presented by Professor Federico Canaccini, Visiting Scholar at Princeton University

The Baudelairean Aesthetics of Vincent van Gogh’s Patch of Grass

When: Wednesday, November 9^th,1:10 P.M.
Where: W.T. Bandy Center, Central Library, 8^th floor
What: Talk presented by Professor Christa DiMarco from Liberal Arts Division,The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA.

September 2016

Art as Craft: Poe, Baudelaire, and Jakobson

When: Fri 2 September, 11:10am – 12:00p
Where: W.T. Bandy Center, Central Library, 8^th floor
What: Talk presented by Professor Edoardo Esposito from the Dipartimento di Studi letterari filologici e linguistici, Università degli Studi di Milano

August 2016

GEO Study Abroad Fair

When: Wed 31 August, 1 – 4 pm
Where: Sarratt Promenade
What: Learn about opportunities to spend a semester in Italy or France

Appointments with Maite Monchal, Director of Vanderbilt in France

When: Mon 29 August through Fri Sept 2
Where: Furman 215
What: Meet with Maite to discuss study abroad in France. Make an appointment by emailing Maite: maite.monchal@vanderbilt.edu

Summer 2016

Sensuality and Textuality:
Experiencing the 18thCentury Book

When: May 2016 through March 2017
Where: Lobby of Central Library, Vanderbilt University
What: Exhibition curated and researched by Abby R. Broughton, Kathryn Devine, Bonnie Griffin and Cara Wilson, graduate students in French 8040, taught by Professor Hanna Roman.

The French Enlightenment is often labeled in literary studies as the period where the novel developed and flourished as a distinct genre. This exhibition was part of a graduate seminar that sought to problematize this interpretation, by broadening and rethinking the definition of terms such as “novel,” “fiction,” and “literature.” The wide and heterogeneous array of texts and images housed in the W.T. Bandy Center’s Morris Wachs Collection, Vanderbilt University’s
Special Collections, and the Vanderbilt University Art Gallery, invites an exploration of the question of the myriad ways in which these eighteenth-century works might be understood as literature, and the unexpected forms of literacy or being literary that come from the experience of reading them.

April 2016

Human Rights and Literature Remix: A Systemic and Institutional Perspective on the Global Culture Market

When: Tue 13 April @2:00 pm
Where: Furman 109
What: Talk by Marie Pierre Bouchard,

Universities, Inc.

When: Tue 12 April @4:00 pm
Where: Furman 209
What: Talk by Martin McQuillan, Professor of Literary Theory and Cultural Analysis and Pro-Vice Chancellor of Research at Kingston University, London

The idea of the university is undergoing a perhaps unstoppable transformation as its monopoly on higher learning is broken by the disaggregation of its functions through for-profit, private providers and new technologies of communication. At the same time, we are experiencing a transition of authority from an institutional genealogy legitimated by historic privilege to new emerging global powers. What then are the prospects for universities under such circumstances? What does it mean for the students and academics of tomorrow? And how might higher education organise itself either to understand or to act as a point of resistance in these global convulsions?

Books, Bread, and Bubbles: or How to Read Dante Backwards and Forwards in Time on the Way to China

When:Wed 6 April @ 4:00 pm
Where :Furman Hall, Room 209
What: William Franke will place his recent books in the context of an integrated philosophy of the humanities. Following will be a Critical Response to The Revelation of Imagination by Lenn Goodman, a brief reply and open discussion. Books will be on display.

William Franke is Professor of Comparative Literature, Vanderbilt University, Professor Catedrático of Philosophy, University of Macao. Lenn Goodman is the Andrew W. Mellon Prof. of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University.

March 2016

The Genealogy of the Star Chef

Please note time and location change

When: Thurs 31 March @ ~~4:00~~ 12:15pm
Where: ~~Buttrick Hall 102~~ Wilson Hall 103
What: Talk on “The Genealogy of the Star Chef”

Michael Garval Professor of French and Director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program at North Carolina State University. He is the author of Cléo de Mérode and the Rise of Modern Celebrity Culture and A Feast for the Eyes: Gastronomy and Vision in Modern France (in progress).

Literature Across Margins and Borders: Baudelaire’s Recasting of Poe and Coleridge’s Marginalia

When: Tuesday, March 29, 12:10pm
Where: W.T. Bandy Center, 8^th floor, Central Library
What: Talk on “Literature Across Margins and Borders: Baudelaire’s Recasting of Poe and Coleridge’s Marginalia”

Sonya Isaak is a Visiting W.T. Bandy Fellow at Vanderbilt. She is a Doctoral Student and Instructor at University of Heidelberg.

Charlie Hebdo and Radicalization of Freedom of Expression in Europe Today

When: Mon 28 March @ 4:10 pm
Where: 123 Buttrick
What: Talk on “Charlie Hebdo and Radicalization of Freedom of Expression in Europe Today”

Gerrit Dielissen is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science at University of Utrecht, and a former Visiting Professor at the Max Kade Center.

The Criminal Humanities: Conceptualizing Crime & its Investigation Through Literature & the Arts

When: Fri March 4 @ 4:00 pm
Where: Warren Center
What: Talk on “The Criminal Humanities: Conceptualizing Crime & its Investigation Through Literature & the Arts”

Michael Arntfield is Fulbright Fellow in the Department of French and Italianat Vanderbilt. He is Professor at Western University (CA) where he specializes in digital and emerging media, investigative journalism, true crime writing, and forensic linguistics, lexicology, and stylometry.

February 2016

A principled response to the European Migration Crisis

When: Monday 29 February @ 2:00pm
Where: Furman 109
What: Talk on “A principled response to the European Migration Crisis”

Professor François Crépeau, McGill University, and United Nations special rapporteur, is coming to Vanderbilt to discuss current issues relating to migration. He is coming under the auspices of theLiterature and Law group at the Robert Penn Warren Center, the Department of French and Italian, the Program in European Studies, and as a guest of the Vanderbilt Law School.

December 2015

Hack the Comédie Française

The HyperStudio at MIT is sponsoring a Hack the Comédie Française event on December 16 in Paris to celebrate the completion of the The Comédie Française Registers Project. Vanderbilt University Library is sponsoring a satellite event (in collaboration with the Department of French and Italian) during the morning of Wednesday, December 16th. Participants will learn how to access the data from the Comédie Française Registers (including plays, actors, locations of performances, etc.) and to develop different kinds of digital humanities applications with that data, including historic maps, network graphs, and Wikipedia articles.

The event will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in 418a of the Central Library. All are welcome. No registration is necessary. Just bring your interest in French culture and history. Coffee and French pastries will be provided.

Questions? Please contact Clifford Anderson (clifford.anderson@vanderbilt.edu) or Yvonne Boyer (yvonne.boyer@vanderbilt.edu) for additional details.

November 2015

When:Thursday November 5, 9am-4pm,Friday November 6 10am-12pm

Where: Bandy Center, 8^th Floor, Central Library

What: Cultural Modernism IV: Baudelaire in Japan; a bilingual conference held in French and English

Who: Nine distinguished Japanese scholars with Professor Robert Barsky, Daniel Ridge, and special guest respondent Marc Angenot (McGill University, Montreal)

October 2015

When: Tuesday, October 27th, 4 pm

Where: W.T. Bandy Center, Central Library, 8th Floor

What: “The Flowers of Nastiness: Henry James reads Baudelaire”

Who: Paolo Tortonese, Visiting Fellow at the Bandy Center; Professor, Université Paris – Sorbonne Nouvelle; Director, Centre de Recherche sur les Poétiques du XIXe siècle.

When: Wednesday, October 8th

Where: Renaissance Room of the Vanderbilt Law School

What: “Undocumented Immigrants in an Era of Arbitrary Law: The Flight and Plight of People Deemed ‘Illegal’”

Who: Professors Ed Rubin (Law), Daniel Gervais (Law) and Robert Barsky (French & Italian; English)

April 2015

When: Thursday, April 23rd, 3pm

Where: Robert Penn Warren Center

What:“The Case Against Freedom: Michel Houellebecq and the Charlie Hebdo Attacks”

Who: Louis Betty, Assistant Professor of French, University of Wisconsin at Whitewater

Click here for more information

When: Monday, April 13th, 4 pm

Where: Buttrick 102

What: “Discoveries of the Americas: Playing the Past with the Unity3D Game Engine”

Who: Dr. Lynn Ramey, Department of French and Italian, Vanderbilt University

March 2015

When: March 12th, 5 -7pm

Where: Cohen Memorial Hall

What: opening reception for “Memento Mori: Looking at Death in Art and Illustration”

Who: organized by Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery and co-curated by: Joseph Mella, director, Holly Tucker, professor of French Studies and professor of Biomedical Ethics & Society, Christopher Ryland, assistant director at the Eskind Biomedical Library, and James J. Thweatt, coordinator for historical collections at the Eskind Biomedical Library.

“Memento Mori: Looking at Death In Art and Illustration” will run from March 12th – May 23rd at the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery. For additional information select the following link: Press Release MM H.Tucker

When: March 18th, at 12:10pm

Where: Buttrick Hall, Rm 302

What: “Masculinity, Mafia, and (Male) Melodrama”

Who: Dana Renga, Associate Professor of Italian, Ohio State University

Click here for more details

When: March 31st, at 4:10 PM

Where: Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities

What: “Lexical Innovation in the Banlieues: Social Group, Ethnicity, Language, and Identity”

Who: Daniel McAuley, visiting Grad Fellow, School of Modern Languages (French), Queen’s University, Belfast

February 2015

When: February 16th, at 4 PM

Where: Furman Hall 209

What: “Before Science Fiction: The Scientist as Propagonist in the Ancien Régime”

Who: Dr. Ellen Welch, Department of Romance Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

When: February 25th, at 11:10 AM

Where: W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies on the 8th Floor of Central Library

What: “Remy de Gourmont et les petites revues littéraires et artistiques”

Who: Vincent Gogibu, Center d’Histoire Culturelle des Sociétés Contemporaines (CHCSC), Versailles University.