Alliance Francaise of Missoula

Bienvenu

Programming for 2008 - 2009

Alliance Française de Missoula Programming for 2008-2009
(The list is not exhaustive—some programs will be added at a later date)


The Alliance Française de Missoula is a chapter of the Alliance Française USA whose mission in the United States is to encourage and develop knowledge of the French language and French and Francophone cultures, and to foster cultural, intellectual and artistic exchanges between the USA and France and the French-speaking countries. The following programs are sponsored by the Alliance Française de Missoula and the Office of Alliance Française USA.

  1. Guest Speaker Jacques Andréani

    The Alliance Française de Missoula, the Office of Alliance Française USA and the University of Montana are honored to present the following program.
    His excellency Jacques Andréani (ambassador of France to the US from 1989 to 1995) will visit Missoula and the University of Montana. He will address Missoula town andgown audience about two topics:
    1. Monday October 20—
      1. 15:00 Free Trade, Market Economy and Globalization
        Location: On UM campus to be announced.
      2. 19:00 The French Presidency of the European Union and the
        Unification of Europe
        Location: On UM campus—to be announced.
        Sponsors: World Affairs Council/ Office of the President of the University of Montana / International Programs of the University of Montana/ Alliance Française de Missoula
        Location: On UM campus—to be announced.
        Sponsors: World Affairs Council/ Office of the President of the University of Montana / International Programs of the University of Montana
    2. Synopsis:
      1. Free Trade, Market Economy and Globalization
        Do the French accept free trade and the market economy? Strangely, in France today, the word “liberal” carries a less positive meaning than in other countries. In fact, the French are more irked by the word than the idea, which, basically, they do accept, albeit without any great enthusiasm.
        Contemporary French people realize that free trade and the market economy represent the necessary path towards economic progress, but it is a rational and not an emotional choice.
        There is no doubt that we see a certain fear of change in France. But there is also the memory of the positive role played by the government in the past to build the nation, to secure its cultural and political unity, to create the infrastructures of its economy and protect citizens and business against the risks in the market when competition was becoming too stiff. There is also some uneasiness about the idea of globalization. However, the French are more able than before to reconcile acceptance of free trade and the market in a global world with the role of government in the economy. They are also more ready to acquiesce to the reforms which are essential if France is to adapt to a free market and globalization. It was no accident that in 2007 they chose as President a man whose entire program hinges on the idea of reform.
        Most French people accept free trade, the market economy and globalization, but also believe that the market must be regulated in order to avoid injustices and risks of destabilization. And they are far from being the only ones who hold this view. Many people, including in the U.S., would agree, especially when they see the various imbalances that can be attributed to excesses of the capitalist system.
      2. European Unification
        What does the building of a United Europe mean for France?
        A plus for the prosperity and the material and moral well-being of each member state, first of all for France herself. A guarantee for peace in Europe, through reconciliation between member states, especially France and Germany, and the dissemination throughout the European continent of a way of thinking based on the refusal of violence as a means of attaining national goals. A key element in world balance. An unequalled and valuable experiment in consensus building and the search for compromise. An additional chance offered to the West to settle on a common language with the peoples of the South, alleviating the risk of a “clash of civilizations.”
        A true union requires that nations should pool together traditional state powers that they often have difficulty in relinquishing. This process has been underway for a long time, and transfers of sovereignty from national governments to the Union have already produced immediate results in the everyday lives of Europeans. We can cite numerous examples of this observation. This process of erosion of national sovereignty is running up against resistance in all EU countries, even in those where the official discourse is very much in favour of a supranational European Union. This resistance is being expressed in a particular way in France, where national identity is highly valued. But national resistance to European unification is no stronger in France than elsewhere in Europe. Though some French leaders speak in terms of “economic patriotism”, in a tone that may at times sound protectionist, an objective observer would probably say that the European spirit is rather more entrenched in France than in a number of other EU nations.
        Location: to be announced
        Time: 19:00
        Followed by an Official UM reception
    3. Biography:
      Jacques Andréani was born in Paris where he completed his studies. A graduate of Paris’s Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences-Po), he was admitted to the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA).Upon graduation from ENA, he chose the Foreign Service and was assigned to the French Embassy in Washington, where he served for five years as Embassy Secretary. From there, after working one year in Paris to learn Russian and to study Eastern European problems, he was assigned to Moscow, where he stayed during some of the most difficult periods of the Cold War – the construction of the Berlin wall and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. After his time in Moscow, he spent six years in Paris, where he was first in charge of relations with the Soviet Union, and then later of relations with all Communist countries of Europe. In 1970, he joined the French NATO Delegation as Assistant Permanent Representative. From November 1972 to August 1975, he headed the French delegation, first to the preliminary consultations for the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in Helsinki, and then to the CSCE itself in Geneva.
      From 1975 to 1979, he was Director of European Affairs in the French Foreign Ministry. In 1979, President Giscard d’Estaing appointed him Ambassador to Egypt. In 1981, President Mitterrand asked him to take the post of Director of Political Affairs in the Foreign Ministry, an assignment he kept three years before being named Ambassador to Italy. After four years in Rome, he returned to Paris to become the Chief of Staff to Foreign Minister Roland Dumas. In 1989, President Mitterrand made him Ambassador to Washington, where he remained until October 1995. He retired in 1997.
      After he retired, M. Andréani was entrusted with a series of missions by the President of the Republic or the Foreign Minister, particularly in the Middle Eastern countries. In 2000, he was also in charge of negotiating with the U.S. government an agreement on the compensation of the despoliation of Jewish banking assets during the Nazi occupation of France.
      M. Andréani taught international relations at the University of Clermont-Ferrand (1996-1997), at SAIS-Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center (1997-1998), and at LUISS, Rome (2000 -2005).
      He is the President of the U.S. section of the Association France-Amériques, Honorary Chairman of the Dante-Alighieri Society, Paris chapter, Chairman of the Amis de l’Institut Dominicain d’Etudes Orientales du Caire, Honorary Chairman of the Alumni of Science-Po, member of the Board of the Foundation for the Memory of the Holocaust, Member of the Trilateral Commission, and he belongs to the “Monaco Club”, a private organization which brings together political, diplomatic and media personalities from countries on both sides of the Mediterranean. He’s Commander of the Légion d’Honneur and Commander of the Ordre national du Mérite and published L’Amérique et nous (Odile Jacob, 2000) and Le Piège: Helsinki et la chute du communisme (Odile Jacob, 2005).

    2. ArtdeVivre

  2. Alexandre Martin

    Double Program: a conference in the Art de vivre series offering a way of discovering three pillars of French culture, taken in the most general and immediate sense. Led by specialists in their respective fields, these lectures, including tasting and will bring new understanding to the creation of high quality products in the tradition of French savoir-faire.
    1. Monday November 24
      1. Alexandre Martin
        Learning about French Winemaking Regions through the Lives of a Few Great Men: Wine Tating
        A lecture followed by a wine tasting.
        Location: to be announced
        Day and Time: NOV 24—7 pm
        Sponsors: to be announced.
      2. Synopsis:
        The “Lives of a few great men” provides an introduction to various French wine-producing regions and appellations. This geographic exploration is also a special opportunity to engage in some major gastronomic debates, such as meat and alcohol pairings, which have seen several changes over the course of time, and to understand the origins of the age-old, passionate feud and occasional truces between lovers of Bordeaux and of Burgundy.
        Among the connoisseurs of French wines are President Thomas Jefferson, Rabelais, Henri IV, Dom Pérignon, Madame de Pompadour, Brillat-Savarin, Pasteur, Colette, Sir Winston Churchill, and others who have left us brilliant testimony of French wine culture.
      3. Training: presentation, localization and aromatic characterization of a selection of crus praised by these ambassadors of the French “art de vivre”.
      4. “Only imbeciles aren’t gourmands. One is a gourmand like he is an artist, like he is a poet. Taste is a delicate organ, perfectible and respectable like the eye or the ear.” Guy de Maupassant
    2. Biography

      Alexandre Martin was born in Pessac, near Bordeaux, in 1972. After graduating with a degree in Russian from “Langues’O”—the National Institute of Eastern Languages and Civilizations in Paris—he completed a specialized training program in viticulture at the University of Montpellier.
      In 2001 he started his career at the Paris Wine Museum, where he guided tours and held wine conferences, workshops, and tastings for a wide range of audiences. It was here that he improved his knowledge of traditional wine-making and cultivated his relationships with winemakers by visiting traditional French vineyards.
      Bringing together his passion for oenology and history with his interest in linguistics, he continues to travel—especially to Central Europe and the Caucasus, where he has been studying the transformations of local vineyards in the context of privatization.
      Based on his expertise, he has been invited to Russia several times. He was first hired in Moscow, where he was appointed Head sommelier at Fauchon assigned with launching and running the cellar of their first gourmet store in Russia. He was later hired by Potel & Chabot to organize fine catering functions at prestigious venues in Saint-Petersburg for the promotion of the company’s wines and gastronomy.
      In 2005 world-renowned author and wine specialist Jean Lenoir asked Martin to translate his famous publication Le Nez du Vin into Russian. The reference book explains the characteristic aromas of different wines which helps readers’ appreciation of scents during tastings.
      This task confirmed to Martin that sensory education and an understanding of the language of aromas are essential to developing skills for tasting and discussing wines.
      When Martin got back to France, Jean Lenoir invited him to join his team and spread the Ecole du Nez, a special training program to allow an ever widening audience to become familiar with the world of wine and wine-making — the land, the know-how, the art of tasting — and its altogether fascinating culture.

    3. Mathieu da Vinha

  3. L’Hygiène au Palais de Versailles
    In French (Translation into English provided)
    Location: UM campus--to be announced
    Day and Time: to be announced
    Sponsors: to be announced
    1. Synopsis:
      Visitors entering the Palace of Versailles today are quickly overwhelmed by the majesty of the setting. The immense gardens, the scale of the architecture, and the dazzling decor transport us to the very heart of the splendors of France's Ancien Régime. But behind the gold paintwork, paneling and decor of the sumptuous apartments, lies an altogether darker image of the royal palace, whose filth was often a subject of comment, and where – in the apparent absence of sanitation – courtiers were rumored to foul the corridors as a matter of routine.
      In fact, Versailles suffered from the preconceptions of the French hygienists of the 'romantic' nineteenth century, for whom anything pertaining to the Ancien Régime was to be vigorously shunned and denounced. The palace was, in reality, always at the forefront of modernity. Louis XIV invariably demanded the very best for his residence. Paralleling the development of modern-day Paris and above all the 'birth of intimacy' (in the words of Annik Pardailhé-Galabrun, in her book La naissance de l’intime. 3 000 foyers parisiens, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles, Paris, 1988), the royal residence – as a thoroughly modern building – was quickly fitted with every essential convenience. But like so many 'banal' artifacts of everyday life, very little remains today to testify to what was a very real concern for sanitation and hygiene. The notion of cleanliness in the seventeenth century was certainly not what it is today, but as we shall see, careful attention was paid to the comforts and well-being of the courtiers living at the royal palace.
  4. Biography
    Born in 1976, Mathieu da Vinha obtained a doctorate in modern history from the University of Paris IV – Sorbonne in 2003. His thesis was subsequently published as Les valets de chambre de Louis XIV (Perrin, 2004). He is a research associate at the University of Versailles – Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, where he teaches two courses each year.
    He is currently overseeing research and training at the Centre de Recherche du Château de Versailles, a multidisciplinary center for comparative research into European court society in the 17th and 18th centuries, with particular responsibility for the coordination of research programs and links with universities, the establishment of national and international partnerships, and the planning and organization of specialist conferences and symposia. His current research focuses on the mechanics and structures of court life under Louis XIV; his master's thesis explored the love-life of Louis XIV in the light of public opinion, and the organization and working conditions of the construction site at the Palace of Versailles, as part of the background research for Frédéric Tiberghien's book Versailles: le chantier de Louis XIV 1662-1715 (Perrin, 2002).
    The author of a number of studies and articles, he is currently working on the customs and manners of the French court (the King's household, royal and aristocratic domestic life), and the daily functioning of the Palace of Versailles under the Ancien Régime – the subject of a new book to be published in 2008. He is also preparing for a public appointment to the postition of research director, specializing in the services and staffs of the Grand Chamberlain and Grand Master of the Wardrobe in the 17th century. He was a founder of the Court Studies Forum in London, in July 2007, and is a member of the international editorial board of the journal The Court Historian. He is also a board member of the Société d’étude du XVIIe siècle (and as editor of the society's bulletin) and the Société Saint-Simon (for whom he compiles an annual commented bibliography of historical publications covering the 17th and 18th centuries), and a member of the research center états, Société, Religion en Europe Moyen Âge – Temps Moderne (UFR d’Histoire de l’Université de Versailles – Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines).

    5. Elizabeth Roudinesco

  5. Xmas Party
    Emeritus Professor Red Watson
    Descartes and the Cogito
    UM Cmapus—Day/ Time and Place to be announced.
    1. Internationally renown Professor Elizabeth Roudinesco
      2 conferences:
      The origins of perversion
      Differences between the sexes: history and theories.
      Location: to be announced
      Day and Time: to be announced
      Sponsors: to be announced.
    2. Synopsis:
      The origins of perversion
      Where does perversion begin and who are the perverts? Since its first appearance in the Middle Ages, the term has referred to someone who takes pleasure in evil and the destruction of himself and others. But if the experience of perversion is universal, every era has different ways of perceiving and responding to it. In this genealogy of perversion, Elisabeth Roudinesco will address the different ways in which people in the West have determined who is a “pervert,” stressing particularly the 19th century designation of homosexuals, children who masturbate and hysterical women. For the modern era, these issues will be underscored through the question of Nazism and Luchino Visconti’s conception in Les damnés.
      Through these analyses, Elisabeth Roudinesco will show how various aspects of perversion allow us to put into perspective a comparison of good and evil, the sublime and the dishonorable.
      “Whether the perverse are sublime when they turn to art, creation or mysticism, or dishonorable when they give into their murderous instincts, they are a part of us, a part of our humanity, because they show what we never stop hiding: our own negativity, the dark part of ourselves.”
      Differences between the sexes: history and theories
      Since the first works of Freud, the question of the difference between the sexes has never stopped being debated between men and women within the psychoanalytical movement. The Viennese school – disciples of Freud – that supported the existence of a single libido shared by the two sexes and represented by women has been at odds with the English school of Ernest Jones and Melanie Klein who preferred to speak of a dualism: each sex had its own characteristics.
      In France, between the World Wars, Marie Bonaparte engaged the debate, and then in 1949 it was Simone de Beauvoir, followed a few years later by Jacques Lacan who created a synthesis of the two camps. Such debates show to what extent psychoanalysis has been a battlefield for controversial questions such as sexuality and the difference between men and women. It is the same today, particularly in debates over homosexuality and issues of gender.

    1. Biography
      An historian holdinga doctorate in Arts and Humanities, Elisabeth Roudinesco is president of the Société Internationale d’Histoire de la Psychiatrie et de la Psychanalyse (SIHPP), a contributor to the newspaper Le Monde since 1996, and an assistant professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). Hers is a familiar face on TV screens, and she has succeeded in making contemporary psychoanalytical thought accessible.
      Born in 1944, Elisabeth Roudinesco attended college at the Sorbonne, where she received her undergraduate degree in humanities, with a focus on linguistics. She completed her Masters with Tvzetan Todorov at the Université de Paris VIII-Vincennes, and she went on to do her doctoral dissertation with Jean Levaillant in 1975. A student of Gilles Deleuze and Michel de Certeau, she was a member of the Ecole freudienne de Paris (1969-1981), founded by Jacques Lacan, where she received her psychoanalytical training, and she served as part of the editorial staff for the journal Action poétique (1969-1979).
      She was a contributor to Libération magazine for ten years, until 1996, and to the journal L'homme from 1997 to 2002. Beginning in 1997, she publicly took a stance in support of right of homosexual couples to adopt children, and has participated in numerous debates on the separation of church and state, cloning, genetics, nature versus nurture. She has criticized the collective judgment of INSERM, the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, on psychotherapy. Openly opposed to the wearing of Muslim headscarves in public schools, she also rejects any form of affirmative action.
      Her works have been translated into nearly 30 languages. Her most recent publications are La Famille en désordre (2002, Paris, Fayard); Philosophes dans la tourmente (2005, Paris, Fayard) et La part obscure de nous-mêmes - Une histoire des pervers (Albin Michel, Paris, 2007).

    6. Ananda Devi

    1. Writing or Psychoanalysis?
      Location: to be announced
      Day and Time: to be announced
      Sponsors: To be announced
      1. Synopsis:
        Writing or psychoanalysis?
        I am not a psychoanalyst. I have been, for a short period, a linguist. I believe I am above all a poet. But it became clear very early on that, to be a poet, one needed to be both the material being sculpted and the sculptor, one had to delve into one’s subconscious to extricate rich and multiple incarnations from it, and to dig into the closed space of the intimate with the trowel of words.
        I am quite purposely indulging in a series of metaphors. Writing has always been, for me, a way of drawing from the exacerbated splendor of language and the hidden dualities beneath its surface. I create myself through my words. I turn myself into anything I desire, something better, at any rate, something stronger, more ardent, that I give to the page, briefly appeased. Outside the act of writing, I am nothing.
        This is why I am convinced that writers suffer from incipient schizophrenia. Their only good fortune is that it is expressed in words rather than acts.
        I will draw from the concrete example of one of my novels to explain this, to become, in a way, my subject, to explain what I feel to be a dual, psychoanalytic and poetic act, which must nevertheless pass through the mediation of language to take place.
      2. Through contact with «colonial» realities, that is to say with overseas civilizations, French humanism has been enriched, deepened, and expanded to integrate the values of these civilizations(…). At the moment that, by addition and socialization, the Civilization of the Universal was created, it was a question of how to use this wonderful tool, found in the rubble of the colonial regime(…) Negritude, Arabism, it is you too, the French from France!
        Léopold Sédar Senghor (1962)
    2. Biography
      Ananda Devi was born March 23, 1957, in Trois-Boutiques (Île Maurice), a village lost among fields of sugar cane. In its splendor and diversity, Île Maurice is at the heart of the work by Ananda Nirsimloo-Anenden. Ananda Devi was a prodigy, at the age of 15 winning a literary prize for a short story in a contest organized by French radio and television and the ACCT. It was the beginning of a long career, more then 30 years, during which she progressively has become a more prominent figure in French-language literature from the Indian Ocean.
      An ethnologist by training as well as a doctor of social anthropology and a translator, Ananda Devi is sensitive to the overlap of identities and languages. She keenly perceives the human characters and universes that can brush up against one another, clash with one another, and destroy one another in an insular space that is no less analyzed than recreated. Her works published since 2001 by Gallimard, she has received several literary prizes, in particular for her 2006 novel Eve de ses Décombres, which won the Award of the Five Continents of La Francophonie and the RFO Prize.
      Her incisive, lyrical, and penetrating style gives the French language new cultural and linguistic dimensions tied to her native island. Her writing is characterized by bleak themes and her unflinching regard for Mauritian society. Her characters are trapped by forces contrary to society, religion, human cruelty, and fractures in the region's violent history. Their only recourse during their solitary journey is their mental clarity and their profound humanness. On the outside they may look like monsters, but the real monsters are the others—ordinary people who refuse to understand. The only way for them to escape is to know who they are. Books by Ananda Devi have been translated into several languages. Perfectly trilingual in French, English, and Creole, she did her own English translation for her novel Pagli. Her most recent novel, Indian Tango, takes place in New Delhi.
  7. Bastille Day Party—July 14