Please consider attending Women in French’s postgraduate and early career researcher international symposium. Organised by several ASFS members, this virtual symposium focuses on immersion in women’s literature and hybrid media (including photo-texts, bande dessinée, cinema, journals, and other media), with a particular emphasis on immersivity as both a pleasurable and productive feature. It will include presentations from postgraduate students and early career researchers working on questions of gender or feminism in French studies.
Dates: Thursday 13th to Saturday 15th January 2022
Keynote Speakers:
- Professor Diana Holmes (Leeds)
- Professor Michèle Bacholle (Eastern Connecticut)
- Dr Alexandra Kurmann (Macquarie)
See the webpage and download the programme here.
Please register for the event here!
The Immersive Potential of Literature and Hybrid Media in the 20th and 21st Centuries
Day One: Thursday 13th January
Start Times: 4:00 p.m. (UK); 11:00 a.m. (US Eastern Daylight).
Introduction and Opening Remarks
Arline Cravens (Saint Louis), Women in French President
E. Nicole Meyer (Augusta), Women in French Vice-President
Panel 1: Immersive Multimedia
4:15 p.m. (UK); 10:15 a.m. (Madison, U.S.).
Chair: Eric Wistrom
Emma Rossby (Pennsylvania State), “Still Heroes, Moving Parts: Interactivity Redefined in Exaheva’s 2021 Digital Comic Installation”
Andrea Jonsson (Georgia Institute of Technology), “Les friandises et la parole libre: the unexpected joy of listening to strangers speak about anything and nothing in the podcast À bientôt de te revoir”
Q+A
Panel 2: Immersive Texts by Women and for Women
5:30 p.m. (UK).
Chair: Michèle Bacholle
Viviana Pezzullo (Florida Atlantic), “Feminist Journals in the 1970s as Textual Collective Performativity”
Sandra Daroczi (Bath), “Reading (between) the lines in Monique Wittig’s fiction”
Marie Velikanov (Lorraine), “Texte avec ‘x-reader’: un genre immersif de la fanfiction”
Q+A
Keynote 1: Michèle Bacholle
7:00 p.m. (UK); 2:00 p.m. (US Eastern Daylight); 5:00 a.m. (Brisbane, Aust.).
Chair: Beth Kearney
Michèle Bacholle (Eastern Connecticut), “Losing (and Finding) Oneself in the Lives of Others and in Photo-texts: Isabelle Monnin and Clara Beaudoux”
Q+A
Day Two: Friday 14th January
Start Times: 8:00 a.m. (UK); 7:00 p.m. (Australia – Syd./Melb./Can.).
Keynote 2: Alexandra Kurmann
Chair: Françoise Campbell
Alexandra Kurmann (Macquarie), “Immersion in Literature as Other: The Sartrean Gaze and the Production of Empathetic Reader-Consciousness”
Q+A
Panel 3: Disruptive Waters: Maternity and Political Protest
9:15 a.m. (UK); 8:15 p.m. (Australia – Syd./Melb./Can.).
Chair: Egle Kackute
Josephine Goldman (Sydney), “Intertextual mothering in Guy Gabon’s “La montée des eaux” and Maryse Condé’s En attendant la montée des eaux”
Dakshayani Shankar (Emory), “Womb as Forestry: Feminine Tyranny battling African Despotism in Sony Labou Tansi’s La Vie et demie”
Q+A
Panel 4: Land, Water and Gender
10:30 a.m. (UK).
Chair: Caroline Verdier
Dalila Villella (London), “Maestri’s land-textes: an instrument to rethink social relations and female identity”
Elly Walters (Oxford), “Water and mental unhealth in Amélie Nothomb’s Soif (2019) and Marie Darrieussecq’s La Mer à l’envers (2019)”
Q+A
Day Three: Saturday 15th January
Start Times: 10:00 a.m. (UK); 9:00 p.m. (Australia – Syd./Melb./Can.); 5:00 a.m. (US Eastern Daylight).
Keynote 3: Diana Holmes
Chair: Polly Galis
Diana Holmes (Leeds), “The everyday miracle of reading fiction (and Leila Slimani’s turn to the family saga)”
Q+A
Panel 5: Immersive Cinema
11:15 a.m. (UK); 10:15 p.m. (Australia – Syd./Melb./Can.); 6:15 a.m. (US Eastern Daylight).
Chair: TBC
Sophie Coombs (Queensland), “Portrait de la Cinéaste en tant que Jeune Femme : a Re-reading of Chantal Akerman’s News from Home (1976) as a Journey to Artistic Subjectivity”
Maddalena Eccher (Goldsmiths), “‘Another Word Another Image’: Poetic and Visual Experimentation in the Transformative Narratives of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha”
Alice Hagopian (St Andrews), “Who is Madame Bovary’s Bad Reader? Reflecting on Immersion and the Ethics of Reading with Anne Fontaine’s 2014 Film”
Q+A