A series of Post-Charlie panels and events
A series of Post-Charlie panels and events
Organized or co-organized
by the department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Harvard University
April 2015
Tuesday, April 7, 6:00pm
Claire Mauss-Copeaux – “Si loin de l’épopée: des récits de vétérans de la guerre d’Algérie (1954-1962)”
Location: Harvard University, Barker Center, Room 133, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge.
– Sponsors: France and the World Seminar, Mahindra Humanities Center, the Bacon Fund and the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Historian Claire Mauss-Copeaux is the author of several books on the Franco-Algerian war and the traces it has left in the individual and collective memories of French, Algerians, and French from Algerian origin. Her most recent book, La source: Mémoires d’un massacre: Oudjehane, 11 mai 1956 (Payot: 2013) examines the various versions given of one massacre, in which half the civilian population of a village (mostly women, children and old men) were killed by the French army. Going back to the Franco-Algerian war is timely in the aftermath of the Charlie-Hebdo events. The two perpetrators of the massacre at the Charlie-Hebdo offices (Saïd and Chérif Kouachi) were French citizens, born in France, from Algerian origin.
Thursday, April 9, 6:00pm
Etienne Copeaux – “Comment enseigner l’Islam en France?”
Location: Harvard University, Barker Center, Room 359, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge.
Sponsors: France and the World Seminar, Mahindra Humanities Center, the Bacon Fund and the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Etienne Copeaux is a historian, specialist of modern and contemporary Turkey. He has published several books on nationalist historiography, cartography and geography, and on Cyprus and the perception of the divide (in collaboration with Claire Mauss-Copeaux). He is currently posting his work on contemporary Turkey politics on his blog http://www.susam-sokak.fr.
He will present his thoughts on the difficulties of teaching Islam in French schools today, based both on his expertise as a scholar of a nation that is in majority muslim, and his experience as a high school teacher of history and geography.
Friday, April 10, 6:30 to 8:30
Etienne Copeaux, Virginie Greene, Muriel Rouyer – “Etre ou ne pas être Charlie?” A Post-Charlie Panel on Humor, Satire, and Religion.
Moderated by Meera Viswanathan (Brown University, Comparative Literature and East Asian Studies)
Location: French Cultural Center 53 Marlborough Street, Boston. T. 617.912.0417.
Sponsors: French Cultural Center and Harvard department of Romance Languages and Literatures
The three panelists will present briefly different angles on anti-clerical and anti-religious satire. Etienne Copeaux (historian of modern Turkey) will present current expressions of Turkish anti-Islamist satire; Virginie Greene (professor of medieval French literature, Harvard University) will talk about the anti-clerical satire in fabliaux (comic stories produced mostly in the 13th c.); Muriel Rouyer (adjunct professor of public policy, Harvard JFK School of Government) will discuss French laïcité in relation to current French politics and democracy.
http://www.frenchculturalcenter.org/index.cfm/events/scheduled-events/etre-ou-ne-pas-etre-charlie/
Wednesday, April 15, 6:00pm
Patrick Autréaux, Virginie Greene, Jeffrey Mehlman—Panel “Violence, Littérature et Politique”
Introduced and moderated by Odile Cazenave (professor of Francophone literature, BU)
Location: Boston University, College of Arts and Sciences Room 326, 715 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston.
Co-organized and sponsored jointly by the Department of Romance languages and Literatures, Harvard University, and the Department of Romance Studies, Boston University and The Center for the Study of Europe, Boston University
Writer and psychiatrist, Patrick Autréaux has published poetry, short stories, and contemporary art criticism. His most recent book (his first novel), Les Irréguliers (Gallimard, 2014) appeared in January 2015.
Virginie Greene (professor of French, Harvard) has recently published a book on fiction, Logical Fictions in Medieval Literature and Philosophy, (Cambridge UP, 2014).
Jeffrey Mehlman (professor of French, BU) has recently published a book titled Adventures in the French Trade: Fragments Toward a Life (Stanford UP, 2010).
Patrick Autréaux will talk on the role of literature with regard to violence and politics, from his perspective as a writer of literary texts related to the current politics of immigration and the notion of foreignness. Virginie Greene will talk from her theoretical work on fiction (What is a fiction? Why fiction?) and her recent experience with the Charlie blog on the impulse to write and draw that the January events have triggered. Jeffrey Mehlman will focus his intervention on Michel Houellebecq’s book Soumission, which appeared just before the Charlie-Hebdo events.