Djamshid Assadi has published an article entitled "Marketing Olfactif" in L'Hôtellerie-restauration (February issue). He also appeared on the TV channel France 24 on February 14 and spoke about the political situation in Iran. In addition, he gave a lecture on rent seeking in an Islamic country: Iran.

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Dawn Michelle Baude has just returned from a reading/lecture tour in the Bay Area. Excerpts from her Lebanon travel memoir are out in First Intensity. Slope has just published a selection of poetry exploring the notion of "relic"- religious, linguistic, social, political, personal - at www.slope.org.

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Petermichael von Bawey has been invited to join the Oxford Round Table, a group of scholars, governmental and business leaders to engage in discussions of "History and International Politics: A Guide to the 21st Century," to be held at St. Anne's College in the University of Oxford, England, 12-17 August 2007.
 

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Waddick Doyle published a chapter in an edited book published in French, Analyser la Communication 2.  His chapter is entitled "Théorie des medias et l’analyse de la publicité".  The editor of the volume is Andrea Semprini and the publisher is Harmattan.
 

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In January, Oliver Feltham gave a paper on politics and enjoyment in the November 2005 riots in France in the Democracy and Culture Seminar series at NYU France. In February, Harmattan published Ecrits autour de la pensée d'Alain Badiou, the anthology he coedited with Bruno Besana on the basis of three international workshops on Badiou's thought held at Université Paris VIII.

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On February 7, Hall Gardner testified on the subject of "American Policy Toward the 'Greater Middle East' After the November 2006 US Mid-Term Congressional Elections" at the Assemblée Nationale for the Commission des affaires étrangères. Bruno Tertrais of the Fondation pour la recherché strategique and Olivier Roy, director of EHESS, also spoke. The session was presided by Édouard Balladur, president of the Commission des affaires étrangères and former French Prime Minister.  See:  http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/cr-cafe/06-07/c0607026.asp

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On December 1, Martin Grandes' paper “How important is sovereign risk in determining corporate credit spreads? The case of local currency bonds in South Africa”, joint with Marcel Peter (Swiss National Bank) was presented at the Bank for International Settlements CGFS workshop on Balance Sheet Effects and Emerging Market Bond Spreads. The workshop was hosted by the Bank of England, London. On January 18, the GSG was present at the “Salon de Le Monde-Hobson Guide” providing information on the MPA in Strategic Public Policy. On February 22-25, Professor Grandes was in Mexico City visiting top universities to discuss academic cooperation with sister graduate programs on public policy, student exchange and dual degrees. On February 26-27 he was invited to give a paper on the monetary integration experience in Southern Africa at the 2007 Regional Integration Network Meeting of LACEA, hosted by Universidad de las Americas in Puebla (UDLAP), Mexico. His presentation can be seen at: www.udlap.mx/video.  Also at UDLAP he gave a talk to students and professors from the Economics and Public Policy departments about the new MPA in Strategic Public Policy. On February 9-10, the GSG was at the  “Salon de l’Etudiant, 3ème cycle et masters” to provide information on the MPA in Strategic Public Policy.  Professor Grandes' paper “The Cost of Equity beyond CAPM: Evidence from Latin American Stocks (1986-2004)” was accepted for presentation at the meeting Opening and Innovation in Financial Emerging Markets to be held in Beijing on March 27-28.

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Peter Hägel presented a paper on “States and Transnational Actors – Reasserting Sovereignty?”, which had been selected on the basis of a Call for Papers, at the “Non-State Actors as Standard Setters: The Erosion of the Public-Private Divide” conference organized by the Basel Institute on Governance on 8/9 February 2007 in Basel, Switzerland (http://www.baselgovernance.org/conference).

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Yudhishthir Raj Isar organized and chaired a workshop on ‘City Heritage Conservation and Economic Development’ during the first EuroIndia Forum convened in Goa on February 8-10 by the EuroIndia Centre and the Confederation of Indian Industry; the theme of this conference was ‘Urban India 2020.’ 
 

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Athina Karatzogianni will chair the program committee for the CyberConflict Workshop in London this May, where she will also be presenting her work in the field. In addition she will contribute the paper 'How small are small states? Media representations of small states, cross-border interests and local violence in an era of fast virtual communications' at The BISA Small States in International Relations Workshop in Birmingham.

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Oleg Kobtzeff's interview on student demonstrations in Paris, seen last year on the evening news in Russia, is now available in full text version and video format (including the debate with a member of the Russian Parliament) at the website of "Vesti" newscast: http://www.vesti.ru/interviews_print.html?pid=10091

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Lissa Lincoln and Charles Talcott, in collaboration with Françoise Duroux of Université de Paris VIII, held a one-day conference on February 3 at AUP entitled "Virginia Woolf : Politique, identité, écriture".  The "journée d'étude" included papers given by invited speakers Jacques Aubert, Chantal Delourme, Nadia Setti and Solal Rabinovitch, among others, and featured a showing of the documentary "Un film sur Virginia Woolf" in the presence of the film's director, Dominique-Lucie Brard.

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“Moving into Morocco: Cosmopolitans Turn to Old Fès” by Justin McGuinness features in a recent book entitled Places We Share: migration, subjectivity and global mobility (Lexington Press). Edited by Susan Ossman (senior lecturer in communications at Goldsmiths College, University of London), the book focuses on the intertwined relationships between mobility, subjectivity, identity and place. Taking Morocco as a starting point, the contributers to Places We Share explore the lives of people on the move, drawing on research among nomads, immigrants and serial migrants.

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On March 7 the second novel by Marie-Christine Navarro, Une femme déplacée (éditions Fayard), will be available in French bookstores.  On March 14, Professor Navarro will give a "lecture-performance" at the SACD, 9 rue Ballu, 9ème arrondissement, métro Pigalle, at 19:00, followed by a book signing. If you wish to attend, please send an email to navarro@aup.edu. (Another reading will take place at AUP on April 12; details to be announced.)

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Farhad Nomani’s recent co-authored book on Class and Labor in Iran has been reviewed in the Middle East Journal, Vol. 61, Winter 2007.

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Anne-Marie Picard-Drillien and Jérôme Game organized three sessions of the Transdisciplinary Research Seminar in the Humanities ARTS / PHILOSOPHY / PSYCHOANALYSIS around Henri Atlan, Mounira Chatti, and Bernard Stiegler.  Henri Atlan (biologist and philosopher, author of Les Etincelles de Hasard) demonstrated the gap existing today between the objects of biological sciences and the traditional representations of life and consciousness which still underlie most ethical considerations, arguing for a new conception of the human Self as having to emerge from determinism, and for a new ethics of responsibility in keeping with the indivisiveness of natural beings' materiality and "soul". In January, Professor Mounira Chatti's seminar, entitled 'La Liberté contre le terrorisme' explored the dangerous stakes at play for literary creators and theorists in the Maghreb and Egypt. Tewfik Allal, president of Le Manifeste des libertés, led a discussion on the battle being fought by fundamentalists on the political and artistic arenas against creativity and freedom of expression and on the essential role played by democrats and intellectuals in North Africa and Egypt (with the necessary although insufficient support of the West) to work against the galloping return of obscurantism.  For its fifth session, the AUP Research Seminar Program received Bernard Stiegler, philosopher, Director of the Department of Cultural Development of the Centre Georges Pompidou/Beaubourg, February 8. Professor Stiegler’s stimulating paper was entitled ‘Questions de pharmacologie générale’ and offered a philosophical and political anthropology of technology in its relation to subjectivation around notably the works of Gilbert Simodon, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-François Lyotard.

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David Pike’s book L’Enfer en Autriche has been further reviewed in the Paris quarterly Guerres mondiales et Conflits contemporains, no. 223.

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In February, Rebekah Rast was invited to participate in the Language Acquisition Seminar series organized by the University of London Institute in Paris. Her talk, “What do adult learners do with the target language input they get?”, examined factors that help learners’ perceptual activity when acquiring a non-native language.

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Christy Shields recently published with Paul Rozin, Claude Fischler, and Estelle Masson, “Attitudes towards large numbers of choices in the food domain:  A cross-cultural study of five countries in Europe and the United States”, in Appetite Vol. 1, No. 5, pgs. 304-308.

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Georgi Stojanov co-authored a paper entitled "Interactivism in artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent robotics" which was published in New Ideas in Psychology:  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2006.07.005

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Bob Swaim's documentary film, "Lumières Noires" produced by France 2, was selected for the official competition at FIPA (the International Festival of Audio-Visual Productions) in Biarritz. The film will be broadcast on France 2 in May for the anniversary of the abolition of slavery.  Professor Swaim has just completed for ARTE, the Franco-German cultural network, "La France–Made in USA", a documentary on the Americanization of France after World War II. The film will be broadcast in September on ARTE.

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Charles Talcott, Lissa Lincoln and Oliver Feltham gave a public talk on 'American Theory' at the contemporary art space 'Fondation d'entreprise Ricard' on February 19. They were invited to speak within the series "Le Lundi, C'est Théorie" by the "Fresh Théorie" editorial duo, Mark Alizart (Directeur de l'Action Culturelle at the Palais de Tokyo) and Christophe Kihm (professor, exhibition curator and journalist for Artpress).

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George Wanklyn was interviewed and filmed in December for a TV production in an American series produced by The History Channel entitled "Cities of the Underworld."  He will appear in the episode dedicated to Paris, one of a number of European and non-European cities selected for the series.  The episode is scheduled to be aired in the spring.  Professor Wanklyn's interview dealt particularly with the momentous transformations of Paris in the Second Empire. In speaking about the important "collector sewer" of Bosquet, he put in a plug for AUP, above ground.

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Professor James Ward was a featured panelist for the conference High Yield in France - The Next Wave, which took place on December 6, 2006 in Paris.  For information please see: http://www.ehya.com/ehyaAnnualConference.html