Professor Antoine Lilti’s Lecture Title: “Trouble dans la civilisation. Des Tahitiens en Europe (1769-1776) ”.
Chantal Thomas’s lecture title: Comment inventer sa chambre à soi: Virginia Woolf, Colette, Patti Smith.
The University has established the Naomi Schor Lecture Fund to honor and perpetuate the memory of Professor Schor by bringing to the Yale community distinguished speakers on the broad range of topics represented by her teaching and research. Naomi Schor was a scholar of nineteenth-century French literature and culture, whose writings focused on the novel, but whose interests spanned a much wider area, including feminist theory, women’s and gender studies, the visual arts, interdisciplinary approaches to literature and history, and the relation of universalism, human rights, and citizenship to the more particular national, ethnic, and immigrant identities of America and France.
Speakers have included Joan Scott , Francoise Gaspard, , Margaret Phelan, Linda Nochlin, Judith Butler, Alice Kaplan, Patrick Weil, Roya Hakakian, Griselda Pollock, Susan Suleiman, Maurice Samuels, Pierre Saint-Amand, Anne Garetta, and Roger Cohen.
Lecture Title: “Dancing Together in the Age of Choice.”
Sophia Rosenfeld is Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches European and American intellectual and cultural history with a special emphasis on the Enlightenment, the trans-Atlantic Age of Revolutions, and the legacy of the eighteenth century for modern democracy.
Dear Faculty, Staff, Students and Friends of the French Department,
We’re excited to present our third screening of the cycle entitled “La Discorde” (Discord) on Friday, October 25th at 6:30 PM at the 53 Wall Street Auditorium, featuring the critically acclaimed film Beau Travail by Claire Denis.
Beau Travail is a visual and emotional masterpiece that immerses viewers in the world of the French Foreign Legion in Djibouti. The film centers on the enigmatic Sentain, whose arrival sparks a dangerous jealousy in his fellow legionnaire, Galoup, brilliantly portrayed by Denis Lavant. Inspired by Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Denis artfully navigates themes of longing, rivalry, and the search for identity amidst the backdrop of a harsh desert landscape.
Critics have lauded Beau Travail for its stunning cinematography and poetic exploration of masculinity, desire, alienation, and colonial legacies. Beau Travail has been awarded several prestigious accolades, including the Best Director Award at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival and the FIPRESCI Prize. Join us to experience what many consider one of the greatest films of all time—it’s sure to be a cinematic delight!
The screening will begin with an introduction and will be followed by a discussion.
We look forward to seeing you for an evening of exceptional cinema and stimulating conversation!
Best regards,
The Yale French Department Ciné Club
Friday, November 8, 2024
at Humanities Quadrangle (HQ) L02, 320 York Street
Reception: 5 pm
Screening: 6 pm (in French with English Subtitles)
Introduction by Blanche Cerquiglini, editor of Dumas’s novel in the Folio Classics series at Gallimard
This brilliant 2024 adaptation of Dumas’s classic, starring the incomparable Pierre Niney, has catapulted the original 950-page novel to best seller status.
The target of a sinister plot, young Edmond Dantès is arrested on his wedding day for a crime he did not commit. After fourteen years in the island prison of Château d’If, he manages a daring escape. Now rich beyond his dreams, he assumes the identity of the Count of Monte Cristo and exacts his revenge on the three men who betrayed him.
See trailer
With grateful thanks to The Molière and Co. Fund in Memory of June Beckelman Guicharnaud, the Department of French, and the Whitney Humanities Center.
The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon has been dead since 1961, yet his name is invoked with increasing frequency, and has itself become a kind of Rorschach test in discussions of white supremacy, the Middle East, and settler-colonialism. In his talk at the Whitney Humanities Center, Adam Shatz, the author of a new biography of Fanon, The Rebel’s Clinic, will reflect on the Martinican psychiatrist’s life, work, and contemporary legacy.
Adam Shatz is the US editor of The London Review of Books and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and other publications. He is the author of Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination and the host of the podcast “Myself with Others.”
About The Rebel’s Clinic
In the era of Black Lives Matter and the war in Gaza, Frantz Fanon’s shadow looms larger than ever. He was the intellectual activist of the postcolonial era, and his writings about race, revolution, and the psychology of power continue to shape radical movements across the world. This searching biography tells the story of Fanon’s stunning journey, which has all the twists of a Cold War-era thriller. Fanon left his modest home in Martinique to fight in the French Army during World War II; when the war was over, he fell under the influence of existentialism while studying medicine in Lyon and trying to make sense of his experiences as a Black man in a white city. Fanon went on to practice a novel psychiatry of “dis-alienation” in rural France and Algeria, and then join the Algerian independence struggle, where he became a spokesman, diplomat, and clandestine strategist. He died in 1961, while under the care of the CIA in a Maryland hospital.
Today, Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth have become canonical texts of the Black and global radical imagination, comparable to James Baldwin’s essays in their influence. And yet they are little understood. In The Rebel’s Clinic, Shatz offers a dramatic reconstruction of Fanon’s extraordinary life—and a guide to the books that underlie today’s most vital efforts to challenge white supremacy and racial capitalism.
Sponsored by the Whitney Humanities Center; Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration; and Department of French
We continue our fall-semester screening cycle, entitled “La Discorde” (Discord), this Friday (Oct. 11th @ 6:30 pm @ LC 102) with Sarah Suco’s thought-provoking film Les Éblouis (The Dazzled).
Based on the real story of its director’s childhood, Les Éblouis (2019) depicts a French family who enter a religious community, which is initially centered around charity and mutual aid, but gradually becomes sectarian. We follow 12-year-old Camille, the eldest of the four siblings, as she rebels against her parents and fights for her brothers’ and sisters’ freedom. Exploring fraternal and sororal solidarity in the face of religious trauma, Les Éblouis aims to bring to light the abuse children undergo in these dogmatic communities. If you loved Camille Cottin in Killing Eve or House of Gucci, you’ll also enjoy her performance in this movie!
Friday, October 11, 2024 at 6:30
LC (Linsly-Chittenden) 102
Linsly-Chittenden Hall - 63 High St, New Haven, CT 06511
*PLEASE NOTE: April 25th Screening has been RESCHEDULED for next Wednesday, April 30th at 6:30pm in HQ #132.
We’re looking forward to seeing you at the final screening of the Ciné-club for the academic year 2024–2025, taking place on Wednesday, April 30th, at 6:30 PM in HQ 132.
We will be concluding our spring screening cycle, “La Transition”, which focuses on coming-of-age stories, with L’Île au trésor (Treasure Island) by French director Guillaume Brac.
Dear Faculty, Staff, Students and Friends of the French Department,
Please join Us for the First Screening of the French Cine Club – Chez Nous (This is our land) by Lucas Belvaux - Friday, Oct. 4th @ 6:30 pm @ 53 Wall St Aud.
The Yale French Department Ciné Club, organized by Apolline Cuchet and Saly Touré, invites you to explore timeless classics and award-winning contemporary films that shape French cinema.
From animated films, and political dramas, to comedies and heartfelt coming-of-age stories, there will be something for everyone! Screenings are open to everyone in the Yale community. Films will be screened in French with English subtitles.
We’re excited to kick off our fall-semester screening cycle, entitled “La Discorde” (Discord), this Friday (Oct. 4th @ 6:30 pm @ 53 Wall St Aud) with a showing of Lucas Belvaux’s gripping film Chez Nous (This Is Our Land).
Chez Nous follows Pauline, a dedicated nurse in a small village in northern France, as she becomes entangled in a far-right political campaign. Pauline’s unexpected activism stirs turmoil in the community, testing loyalties and igniting tensions.
The film weaves together personal and political dynamics, revealing how far-right ideologies seep into communities. With the U.S. election approaching, the film is particularly relevant to the current political climate.
The film is screened for educational purposes within the French Department; it will be preceded by an introduction and followed by a discussion.
We hope to see you there for an engaging evening of cinema and conversation! Bring your friends and roommates! All are welcome.
With best wishes, and excitement ahead of Friday,
Apolline Cuchet & Saly Touré, ENS French lectors
September 30, 2024
Today we remember Fredric Jameson: teacher, colleague, and friend. Jameson received his PhD from the French Department at Yale in 1959. Yale French Studies was founded by a pair of enterprising graduate students just a decade earlier, in 1948, under the guidance of department chair Henri Peyre. Jameson soon joined their ranks as an editorial assistant for the journal in its early, enterprising years.
