Distinguished Alumni Lecture: Oral Narratives and Black Lives in Francophone Studies

 

poster for French Department Alumni Lecture
Poster by Alan Yeh

Oral Narratives and Black Lives in Francophone Studies

Senegalese in the Diaspora: What Sociolinguistic Interviews Can Tell Us about Language, Race, Mobility, and Belonging
Maya Smith, University of Washington

Drawing on extensive interviews with people of Senegalese heritage in Paris, Rome, and New York City, this talk explores the fascinating role of language in national, transnational, postcolonial, racial, and migrant identities. Senegalese in the diaspora are notable in their capacity for movement and in their multifaceted approach to discourse, shaping their identity as they purposefully switch between languages. Through a mix of poignant, funny, reflexive, introspective, and witty stories, interviewees blur the lines between the utility and pleasure of language, allowing a more nuanced understanding of why and how Senegalese move.

“Un désordre indescriptible”: Folklore as Mask in the Congolese Nervous State
Jonathon Repinecz, George Mason University

This paper is part of a larger project about how colonial explorers, missionaries, and magistrates in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo used strategies of “folklorization”—that is, the framing of oral traditional materials as quaint, rural, and authentic—as propaganda in the service of popularizing the colony and obscuring the everyday violence of the colonial state. It will focus on the archives of Léon Guébels, a prosecutor and judge who published many folklore collections under a pseudonym, contain manuscripts written by Congolese schoolchildren in both French and African languages, sent to him by their teachers, which he overwrites in large red letters with appreciations such as “IDIOTIC,” “NOT WITTY ENOUGH,” or “CLEARLY THE INVENTION OF A SILLY CHRISTIAN GIRL.” I will examine some of the reasons he finds these tales inconvenient, framing my findings in the context of colonial racial anxieties over subversive ideologies, urbanization, “detribalization,” and open rebellion.

Thursday, September 23 • 4-6pm
French Department Library (4229 Dwinelle)
https://french.berkeley.edu


Giulia Calvi @ Berkeley

Le donne Medici nel sistema europeo delle Corti (Polistampa, 2008) edited by Giulia Calvi and Riccardo Spinelli
Le donne Medici nel sistema europeo delle corti XVI-XVIII secolo: atti del Convegno internazionale, Firenze, San Domenico di Fiesole, 6-8 ottobre 2005 / a cura di Giulia Calvi e Riccardo Spinelli. Firenze: Polistampa, c2008.

Giulia Calvi, professor at The European University Institute, has been invited to become the 58th holder of the Chair of Italian Culture at the University of California, Berkeley for the fall semester of 2012 for her work on early modern Italian cultural and social history from the perspective of gender.

Chair of Italian Culture in the Department of Italian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley was established in 1928. It annually calls one of the ablest and most eminent citizens of Italy in order to lecture and teach in illustration and interpretation of Italian culture, as well as for the periodic presentation of international symposia. Past holders of this prestigious Chair have included literary critic Gianfranco Contini, historian Gaetano Salvemini, literary critic Ezio Raimondi, art historian Leo Steinberg, novelist Giorgio Bassani, philosopher Giorgio Agamben, historian Luisa Passerini, political philosopher Adriana Cavarero, paleographers Armando Petrucci and Franca Nardelli and, in fall 2008 historian Paul Ginsborg and essayist and novelist Tim Parks.

Calvi will give a public lecture titled “Across Three Empires (Venetian; Ottoman; Hapsburg): Clothing the Balkans in XVI Century Europe” on Tuesday, November 27 at 6pm in 370 Dwinelle Hall. The invitational flyer can be downloaded from the Department of Italian Studies events calendar.

↑↔↓ This post is reposted in part from The European University Institute’s web site. (7/12/12)


new Code of Best Practices in Fair Use

Assocation of Research Libraries logo

Today, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) announced the release of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries, a clear and easy-to-use statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use developed by and for librarians who support academic inquiry and higher education. The Code was developed in partnership with the Center for Social Media and the Washington College of Law at American University. Winston Tabb, Johns Hopkins University Dean of University Libraries and Museums and President of ARL, said, “This document is a testament to the collective wisdom of academic and research librarians, who have asserted careful and considered approaches to some very difficult situations that we all face every day.”

For more information about the new code and how it might apply to your current research, teaching, and publishing projects, please see: http://centerforsocialmedia.org/libraries or http://www.arl.org/pp/ppcopyright/codefairuse/code/index.shtml

In addition, the UC Berkeley Library and the Law Library are co-sponsoring a special event on February 6, 2012 that will feature some of the facilitators of the new code:

New ARL Best Practices in Fair Use

Event Type: (none)
Location: The Warren Room (295 Simon)
  Monday, February 06, 2012 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Calendar: Berkeley Law Events
Contact: autstein@law.berkeley.edu

What is fair use, and how can libraries use their fair use rights to better accomplish their missions, from preservation to support for scholarship and teaching to digitizing collections for public access? A ground-breaking new document, the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries, provides powerful new insights into the ways librarians can apply fair use principles to resolve central and recurring copyright challenges.

Brandon Butler of the Association of Research Libraries, and Peter Jaszi of American University Law School, co-facilitators of the code, will introduce this new document at this event.  They will provide an overview of its contents and discuss policies and scenarios to help librarians and library staff determine how its principles can help them solve local challenges and improve local policies dealing with copyright and fair use.

Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and based on two years of research into the core challenges that libraries face and the considered opinions of librarians from across the country on how best to solve them using fair use, this new code gives librarians tools to help reason through challenging copyright issues. The code, along with supporting materials, can be downloaded free of charge at http://www.arl.org/fairuse beginning January 26th, and hard copies will be available for free at the event as well.

The session is open to all librarians, library staff, and champions of fair use. Admission is free; registration is not required.


Words in Action: A Multilingual Student Peformance

Come and celebrate an afternoon of linguistic diversity as UC Berkeley students perform scenes, songs, and poems in Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Swahili, Tagalog, Telugu, and Wolof.

Organized and directed by Annamaria Bellezza, Italian Studies

With the participation of the following instructors: Marica Petrey (Arabic), Santoukht Mikaelian (Armenian), Lihua Zhang (Chinese), Karen Moller (Danish), Sirpa Tuomainen (Finnish), Seda Chavdarian (French), Rachel Shuh (French), Nikolaus Euba (German), Sylvia Tiwon (Indonesian), Marina Romani and Marco Purpura (Italian), Chika Shibahara (Japanese), Jaleh Pirnazar (Persian), Tony Lin (Polish), Luciana Lage (Portuguese), Suzan Negip-Schatt (Romanian), Lisa Little (Russian), Edwin O. Okong’o (Swahili), Joi Barrios and Chat Aban (Tagalog), Hepsi Sunkari (Telugu), and Paap Alsaan Sow (Wolof).

Wednesday, April 25 from 3:00-6:00 pm
Chevron Auditorium, International House
(2299 Piedmont Avenue, at Bancroft Way)

Free for UC Berkeley Students, Faculty, and Staff
(A donation from the general public would be appreciated)

For more information about the event, email ambellezza@berkeley.edu

Sponsored by The Berkeley Language Center

Originally posted on the Berkeley Language Center’s events blog


New Faculty Lecture with Mairi McLaughlin

Mairi McLaughlin New Faculty Lecture on 11/2/11

The University Library’s New Faculty Lecture series fosters scholarship on campus by providing new faculty members with the opportunity to share their research interests with their colleagues, their students, and greater library community. New faculty represent areas of scholarship the University wishes to develop or further strengthen. They are also among the best minds in their respective fields of specialization.

Please join us for an evening with:

Mairi McLaughlin, Assistant Professor in the Department of French "Tradurre/Tradire: Translation as a Cause of Linguistic Change from Manuscripts to the Digital Age"

Wednesday, November 2, 2011
5:00 – 7:00 pm
Morrison Library, 1st floor Doe Library
University of California, Berkeley

 

Reception to follow lecture.
This event is co-sponsored by UC Berkeley’s
French Department and the University Library.

 

For more information about the University Library’s French Collection:
http://is.gd/french
For more information about UC Berkeley’s Department of French:
http://french.berkeley.edu

eScholarship
Past New Faculty Lectures are available open access through eScholarship:
www.escholarship.org/uc/berkeleylibrary

 

Free and open to the public.