Alice Craven delivered a videoconference paper, "Black Neo-Baroque: Samuel Fuller's White Dog and Hollywood Racism" at the conference Interculturality in the Construction and Deconstruction on the Color Black held in Sousse, Tunisia, in February.

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Lisa Damon, Research Assistant in the MA of Cultural Translation program, is writing a multi-voiced narrative of responses to the 1993 coup d’état in Burundi, based on years of interviews with those who lived through it, as she herself did. The project emerged from her attempts to make sense of her own experience of the events as an adolescent. She’s interested in the ways that a narrative account – and the complex human map of Bujumbura that emerges – can correct the dehumanizing effects of analyses of this history which come from the technical social sciences.  Damon is working on the translation of a recent book on Edouard Glissant by Alain Ménil: Les Voies de la Créolisation. She is also co-organizing an international conference around the work of Frantz Fanon, at AUP, to take place March 30-31, entitled “Is Fanon Finished?”, and is running a university-wide reading group for students in order to prepare for the conference. 

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Professors Larry Eaker and Fred Einbinder served as judges in the French national rounds held in Paris February 17 and 18 of the 53rd annual Jessup International Moot Court Competition. The competitors represented most of the top law schools in France. Masters in International Law and Policy students, Cornelia Van Tonder and Alex Phuong, participated as bailiffs.

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Matthew Fraser was a panelist debating corporate social responsibility at the event Communicating CSR: Being Good vs. Looking Good, held at AUP on January 25 by the International Association of Business Communicators. On February 8, he gave a talk at Sciences Po’s School of International Affairs to a group from the Crown Prince Court of Abu Dhabi attending a “Critical Global Affairs” seminar whose other speakers included former French Minister of Foreign Affairs Bernard Kouchner. At that event, Professor Fraser spoke on “Social Media and International Affairs”.  During Social Media Week in Paris, he moderated a panel held on February 15 at AUP titled, “Social Media in Corporations: Empowerment or Surveillance?”. 

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Hall Gardner was one of the EWI experts that helped produce the East West Institute discussion paper, "Bridging the Fault Lines: Collective Security in Southwest Asia" (20 January). On 6-7 February, he spoke on the topic “NATO-Russia-Ukraine: Toward a New Concerted Relationship?” at the CIOR conference of NATO Reservists, NATO’s Strategic Concept: Promoting International Security Through Cooperation at Schloss Eichholz, Wesseling, Germany.  On 8 February, he spoke at the seminar « Les Transformations Géostratégiques actuelles au Moyen-Orient » Salon Mars III at the Assemblée Nationale. 

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With his co-editor George Craig, Dan Gunn read from and discussed The Letters of Samuel Beckett Volume II at the Cambridge University Bookshop in Cambridge (1 February), and at the London Review of Books bookshop in London (2 February). This volume received further reviews: in Areté, Estatão (Brazil), The Los Angeles Review of Books, Bookforum, The-The Poetry blog, and The Sydney Morning Post.

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Yudhishthir Raj Isar (on leave this semester) was a keynote speaker at a conference organized in Kolkata on February 10-11 by the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Dresden State Art Collections) in cooperation with the Robert Bosch Stiftung on the topic “Urban Changes and Culture” and was also a panelist in a public discussion on the topic held at the Goethe Institute, Kolkata.  On February 21 he gave a talk entitled “Unpacking the heritage discourse” for the “Streams” lecture series in the architectural conservation MA of the Delhi School of Planning and Architecture. 

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Oleg Kobtzeff was invited by the brand new French version of the Huffington Post to become one of its featured bloggers. He will be writing about general geopolitical issues, the environment and the countries that he knows well. His first editorial is about the Russian presidential elections and opposition to Vladimir Putin. Professor Kobtzeff has also given three interviews on Russian politics to France24, and one on French presidential elections to Radio France International.

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Daniel Medin was recently named European Editor for the Quarterly Conversation, an online periodical of literary reviews and essays. This March he will deliver a lecture on Dickinson, Beckett and others at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. He will also participate on a panel at the Festival Robert Walser in Newcastle upon Tyne.

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Robert Payne's chapter "Grid failure: metaphors of subcultural time and space" has been published in the volume Queer and Subjugated Knowledges: Generating Subversive Imaginaries, edited by Kerry H. Robinson and Cristyn Davies, now available online from Bentham.

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Ralph Petty presented a selection of drawings from his new book, Démons Quotidiens, at the new Théâtre de Montreuil, on January 8. The drawings were projected in the theatre while co-author, Nancy Huston, read texts from the book.  Petty's paintings were exhibited in a group show called “le Chat qui Parle” at the Sakura City Museum near Tokyo.  On February 28 a solo exhibition of his work opened at l’Espace La Preuve par Neuf. His group, The Ralph Trio, will play at the closing of the show, on March 16, starting at 18:30 (30, rue Durantin, 75018 Paris). 

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Claudio Piani has co-authored an article together with researchers from the University of Oxford and 15 other international institutes entitled, “Recent observations allow a broad range of 2050 warming in a large climate model ensemble.”  The article will be published in the next issue of Nature Geoscience.

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David Pike offers an update on the progress of his feature-film Die Augen von Mauthausen. The film’s director Joseph Vilsmaier has now launched his latest film Der Meineidbauer, and is now giving his full time to Die Augen, which he described to the Madrid producers last month as “wirklich ausgezeichnet;” he does not speak much English, but his three actress-daughters do. At the recent Berlinale, a meeting was held at the Savoy between the director and the producers from Madrid and Monaco. Three AUP alumni (and prospective small-role actors) attended the meeting as observers and recorders: Marek Novakowski (Warsaw), Laurence Vagassky (Kiel), and Marlene Nichols (Los Angeles), all of them bi-lingual English-German. Several decisions were taken. It was agreed that the film will be produced first in English with an international cast, and then in German with a German-Austrian cast.  It was also decided that if the Austrian authorities will not allow the use of the Mauthausen fortress near Linz, then the fortress will be reconstructed (not in granite!) in the Czech Republic, on a 15 sq. km. site, 40 km from Prague, that was last used as a Soviet military base and is now in private ownership. There was similarly good news on the budget, which suffered heavily from the financial crisis but has been reset to a figure, now given in Euros, that is close to what it was at the start ($23M).  Pike's 2011 book, France Divided, is now sold out in hardback. A paperback edition is scheduled to appear this month (March 2012). 
 

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Rebekah Rast’s co-authored chapter, “Language teaching and acquisition: What can we learn from ab initio learners?”, has been published. Co-authored with Christine Dimroth (Universität Osnabrück) and Marzena Watorek (Université Paris 8), it appears in Discours, acquisition et didactique des langues, les termes d'un dialogue in the Sciences du Langage Collection of Orizons, Paris.

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Stephen Sawyer was invited to the Centre Chine FMSH/EHESS on January 26 to present a paper in the context of l'Urbanisation en Chine et l'histoire de l'urbanisation de Paris.  Professor Sawyer presented a paper, “Penser Paris, penser le pouvoir: L’État et la ville capitale au milieu du XIXe siècle.”  Other presenters included Annie Bergeret Curien (CNRS), Zhu Xiaoyang (Université Beida, Pékin), Yuan Zhigang (Université Fudan, Shanghai), and Annie Fourcaut (Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).  In January, Sawyer also began his appointment as editor of the new English version of Annales. Histoire et Sciences Sociales.  In December, he published an article in the Italian urban studies journal Territorio entitled “Is there a place for more Molière? Cultural policy and metropolitan politics after cultural Keynesianism.”

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AUP Librarian Michael Stoepel has had the honor of being selected as Literati Librarian of the Month for February. Literati Librarians of the Month are chosen for their outstanding contributions to their institutions while using Literati's suite of Information Literacy Tools and Services. Michael Stoepel was selected for his exemplary work in aligning Topic Pages to course content, as well as for his collaboration with fellow AUP librarian Sally Murray in their creation of several videos and tutorials that benefit AUP students. You can read more about Michael’s success as well as an interview with him about his work with Literati by visiting the Credo Reference homepage.

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Jula Wildberger has published a paper on the literary form of Plato's Symposium: “Die komplexe Anlage von Vorgespräch und Rahmenhandlung und andere literarisch-formale Aspekte des Symposion” in Platon, Symposion. Christoph Horn, ed. Berlin: Akademie Verlag (Reihe: Klassiker Auslegen), 2012. 17-34.

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In December 2011, Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier presented a paper with Mary Beth Winn (SUNY, Albany) at the Louise de Savoie colloquium organized by the CESR de Tours, the Institut Universitaire de France, the Université de Liège, and the Ville de Romorantin. Their co-written piece, entitled “Des livres pour Louise,” will be published in the Louise de Savoie colloquium proceedings (CESR, Tours).  In January 2012, she presented another paper (the third and final) in the framework of the “Text-Image Relations in Late Medieval French Culture (14 c.–16 c.)” study group, organized by the Leeds Humanities Research Institute and funded by the British Academy. Her paper, “One text (Octovien de Saint-Gelais) and three Heroides” will again be published in the symposium proceedings (most probably by Brepols).

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In February Douglas Yates published a chapter on "Oil, Rebel Movements and Armed Conflict in Africa," in Alain Beltrane, ed. Le pétrole et la guerre/Oil and War (Brussels: Peter Laing, 2012) based on a paper presented last year for the Institut d'Histoire du Temps Présent and the CNRS.  Yates was interviewed by Bloomberg television on the French presidential elections (Jan. 30 and Feb. 20).  He was also interviewed by France24 television on the visit to Paris by Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara (Jan. 25), the terrorist attacks of Boko Haram in Nigeria (Feb. 7), and Senegal's presidential elections (Feb. 20). He was also interviewed by Radio France International on Ouattara's visit to Paris (Jan. 27), the crisis in the Ivory Coast (Jan. 31), the trial of democracy activists in Gabon (Feb. 3), and President Sarkozy's nuclear energy in France (Feb. 9).  Finally, Professor Yates was invited by the United States Embassy in Paris to meet the new Assistant Undersecretary for African Affairs, William Fitzgerald (Jan. 19).

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