Tag Archives: dom toms

To NYC for Memory, Translation, and the Transmission of Knowledge

March 2 09

Provided my son continues to get better *fingers crossed* I will be going to NYC for a workshop being held at NYU. I am excited.   It looks like it will be very interesting and it is open to the public.  They request that you attend the whole thing though.   I am not finding a website for the workshop/organized/etc so the details are below:

PDF for the workshop can be downloaded here: http://econ.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/10554/workshop_march_20093.pdf

Memory, Translation, and the Transmission of Knowledge Inaugural Workshop of the new NYU-CNRS research center, March 5-6

The Center seeks to explore the diversity of systems of thought and knowledge in the world and in different eras, the modes through which knowledge is constituted and/or institutionalized, the interaction or isolation, and the permeability or conflictuality of cultures.

The Center’s focus is the relations between universal and differential cultures, systems of knowledge and understanding; across disciplines, it will promote research on the translatability of systems, the transmission and transformation of cultures, concepts and theories. The plurality of histories and languages, as well as the complexities of memory, consciousness and its philosophical accounts, will also form part of our initial projects.

Thursday, March 5th

Venue: CIRHUS conference room, 4 Washington Square North

9:30 am : Welcome Address
Bruno Laurioux, Director of Institute of Humanities and Social sciences, CNRS
Richard Foley, Dean of Faculty of Arts and Science
9:45: Introduction: Emilienne Baneth-Nouailhetas (CNRS), Edward Berenson (NYU), Christophe J. Goddard (CNRS)
10: 00 am to 12: 00 pm: Memory and memorialisation; chair: Edward Berenson (NYU)

  • Cliff Chanin (Senior Advisor, September 11 National Memorial Museum)
  • Denis Peschanski (CNRS) and Ed Berenson (NYU): “History and Memory”
  • Joseph Ledoux (NYU): “Memory, emotion and the brain”
  • F. de Vignemont (CNRS), Ned Block (NYU) : “Memory Inside and Out”
  • Brigitte Sion (NYU): “Performing memory”

12:00 to 12:30 pm: Discussion
12:30 to 1:30 pm: LUNCH
1:30 p.m. to 3:00 pm: Transmissions and religions; chair: Randall White (NYU)

  • Randall White (NYU): “The dialogue with the caves”: religion and the underground in Paleolithic France
  • Christophe Goddard (CNRS): “Questioning syncretism and religious transitions: the Syrian Sanctuary in Rome and its recent archaeological discoveries (2005-2007)”
  • Stefania Capone (CNRS): “Rethinking Religious Change: Transnationalism, Divination Practices, Ritual Borrowings “

3:00 pm to 3:30 pm: Discussion
3:30 pm to 4:00 pm: Coffee break
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm: Postcolonial theory: chair Robert Young (NYU)

  • Robert Young (NYU); Cliff Siskin (NYU); Emilienne Baneth-Nouailhetas (CNRS): “Postcolonialism and Re:Enlightenment: An Experiment in Reconstituting knowledge.”
  • Laetitia Zecchini (CNRS): “Knowledge and the ‘subaltern’: the dalit question as a contrapuntal exploration of postcolonialism.”
  • Frederic Regard (CNRS-University Paris 4-Sorbonne): “Sir Richard Francis Burton, the ‘Amateur Barbarian’”.

5:30 pm to 6 pm: Discussion

Friday, March 6

Venue: CIRHUS conference room, 4 Washington Square North

9:30 am to 11:30 am
Translation and translatability chair: Barbara Cassin (CNRS)

  • Barbara Cassin (CNRS), Emily Apter (NYU), Jacques Lezra (NYU): “Translating the Untranslatable”
  • Muriel Debie (CNRS), Roger Bagnall (NYU): “Bilingualism in the Ancient Mediterranean area”
  • Anca Vasiliu (CNRS): “The slippery semantics of ‘image’ in late Antiquity”

11:30 am to 12:00: Discussion
12 am to 1:30 pm: LUNCH
1:30 pm to 2:15 pm: Photography and film, visualization and transmission: chair Jean-Loup Bourget (ENS-CNRS)

  • Jean-Loup Bourget (ENS-CNRS): “Fritz Lang from Berlin to Hollywood”
  • Didier Aubert (CNRS – University Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle) : “Pictures against the picturesque – photography and Americanization in the early 20th-century”

2:15 pm to 2:45 pm: Discussion
2:45 pm to 3 pm: Coffee break
3:00 pm to 3:45 pm: Slavery, slaveries

  • Frederique de Vignemont (CNRS) : “Habeas Corpus ; the sense of ownership of one’s body”
  • Myriam Cottias (CNRS) : “Connected slaveries: the stakes for modern history”

3:45 pm to 4:15 pm: Discussion

4:30 pm: Conclusion of workshop: John Sexton, President of New York University Bruno Laurioux, Director of Institute of Humanities and Social sciences, CNRS
5:15 PM: Ground floor auditorium, 19 University Place

Screening of the film Tropiques Amers, the first cinematic treatment of slavery in French colonies ever shown on French television. Myriam Cottias, author of the film’s screenplay, will be with us for this special event.

7:00 PM: Reception. 19 University Place, Great Room.

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Madagascar

January 29 09

Madagascar has been one of the most interesting places to me on the planet since I learned that the native language is Malayo-Polynesian when I was in undergrad in Hawaii. As languages have always been of interest to me, learning the actual reach of the polynesian family of languages, and what that means for this history of all the people across the globe that speak those languages makes me squee a little. Anyway, I am getting off the point of me making this post.

I am not sure why, but we never hear anything about Madagascar… even after that movie was made. Even in my studies, while we discussed a lot about North Africa and a little bit about sub-Saharan Africa and even less about Indochina (mainly Vietnam… who cares about Laos and Cambodia?), Madagascar, and all of the other little places (even the ones that are still part of France as DOM/TOMs… I am more interesting in the TOMs as those are newer acquisitions), were kind of, sort of, totally left out. So, with everything that is happening now in Madagascar, CNN’s ticker is happily reporting how many people died daily without really going in to details about what is going on there.

Madagascar is a former French colony. I found an interesting article on Le Monde that gave some hard French facts about it. There are 20,000 people with French Passports still there and there is a heavily vested French interest in Tourism to the island nation. Apparently this past summer, they kicked out the French ambassador yet, and have refused to reinstate him. As a result, France closed the French schools there and put the country on the list of places to avoid visiting. As a side note, the article says the president doesn’t want to bring the ambassador back because he is “superstitious”… hahahahaa really?

So, what is leading to the random death count ticker on CNN? Marc Ravalomanana’s government (the current president), is accused of misspending funds and threatening democracy. So people are protesting the government. Would that have been so hard to put across the news ticker? Going just a little further, Andry Rajoelina, the mayor of the capital city, is apparently a leader in these protests. He had a TV station that he started to help his campaign (he ran as an independent), and the government shut it down last month after he ran an interview of the former president (who had ruled Madagascar for 25 years). Apparently, another plan in the works that has upset people is a plan to lease farmland to Daewoo (the South Korean company). Anyway, here is a Reuters article with some key facts about the two main players in all that is going on.

Regardless, I am upset that, rather than actually talk about what is going on in Madagascar, the new outlets seem to be focusing on the deaths and looting. I suppose it is normal though.

As an aside, here are some other places that are actually still associated with France that I never heard enough/anything about in school: French Polynesia (Austral Islands, Bass Islands, Gambier Islands, Marquesas Islands, Society Islands including Tahiti and the Tuamotu Archipelago), New Caledonia, Réunion, Territorial Collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Clipperton Island, Mayotte, Wallis and Futuna, French Antarctica (Saint-Paul Island, Amsterdam Island, Crozet archipelago, Kerguelen archipelago and Adélie Land).
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