News & Events
News and Events
View upcoming events or read recent press releases and faculty news below.
Family Matters: Puerto Rican Women Authors on the island and the Mainland (University of Virginia Press, New World Studies, August 2012)
Adopting a comparative and multidisciplinary approach to Puerto Rican literature, Marisel Moreno juxtaposes narratives by insular and U.S. Puerto Rican women authors in order to examine their convergences and divergences. By showing how these writers use the trope of family to question the tenets of racial and social harmony, an idealized past, and patriarchal authority that sustain the foundational myth of la gran familia, she argues that this metaphor constitutes an overlooked literary contact zone between narratives from both sides. Moreno proposes the recognition of a "transinsular" corpus to reflect the increasingly transnational character of the Puerto Rican population and addresses the need to broaden the literary canon in order to include the diaspora. Drawing on the fields of historiography, cultural studies, and gender studies, the author defies the tendency to examine these literary bodies independently of one another and therefore aims to present a more nuanced and holistic vision of this literature.
Alison Rice. Polygraphies: Francophone Women Writing Algeria. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2012. ISBN 978-0-8139-3292-7. 256 p.
Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of Algeria’s independence, Polygraphies is significant and timely in its focus on autobiographical writings by seven of the most prominent francophone women writers from Algeria today, including Maïssa Bey, Hélène Cixous, Assia Djebar, Malika Mokeddem, and Leïla Sebbar. These authors witnessed both the “before” and “after” of the colonial experience in their land, and their fictional and theoretical texts testify to the lasting impact of this history. From a variety of personal perspectives and backgrounds, each writer addresses linguistic, religious, and racial issues of crucial contemporary importance in Algeria. Alison Rice engages their work from a range of disciplines, striving both to heighten our sensitivity to the plurality inherent in their texts and to move beyond a true/false dichotomy to a wealth of possible truths, all communicated in writing.
New! Published in September 2012: The Frankenstein of 1790 and other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary France
The French Revolution brings to mind violent mobs, the guillotine, and Madame Defarge, but it was also a publishing revolution: more than 1,200 novels were published between 1789 and 1804, when Napoleon declared the Revolution at an end. In this book, Julia V. Douthwaite explores how the works within this enormous corpus announced the new shapes of literature to come and reveals that vestiges of these stories can be found in novels by the likes of Mary Shelley, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, and L. Frank Baum.
Deploying political history, archival research, and textual analysis with eye-opening results, Douthwaite focuses on five major events between 1789 and 1794—first in newspapers, then in fiction—and shows how the symbolic stories generated by Louis XVI, Robespierre, the market women who stormed Versailles, and others were transformed into new tales with ongoing appeal. She uncovers a 1790 story of an automaton-builder named Frankénsteïn, links Baum to the suffrage campaign going back to 1789, and discovers a royalist anthem’s power to undo Balzac’s Père Goriot. Bringing to light the missing links between the ancien régime and modernity, The Frankenstein of 1790 and Other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary France is an ambitious account of a remarkable politico-literary moment and its aftermath.
Graduating Seniors Receive National Fellowships
May 18, 2012 • Arts and Letters
The Fulbright Exchange Program, National Science Foundation, and other national and international organizations have awarded postgraduate scholarships and fellowships to 13 members of the University of Notre Dame’s Class of 2012, 10 of whom are students in the College of Arts and Letters. Two Arts and Letters graduates of earlier classes also received prestigious fellowships and scholarships this year.
Olivier Morel’s Film Wins Accolades, Inspires Action
Olivier Morel’s film On the Bridge, about veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), has been selected for more than a dozen festivals, won multiple awards, and has been the subject of countless media interviews since its fall 2011 release.
Professor Vitulli publishes new book on Juan de Espinosa Medrano
Professor Juan Vitulli has published the book Amar su propia muerte de Juan de Espinosa Medrano. This is the first annotated edition of Espinosa Medrano’s only Spanish play. Vitulli’s edition includes a 70-page introduction and over 400 bibliographical, linguistic and cultural notes. The book was published in 2011 by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas / The Spanish National Research Council (Madrid, Spain) for its collection “Clásicos olvidados” / “Forgotten Classics” The CSIC is the largest public institution dedicated to research in Spain and the third largest in Europe. Belonging to the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the Secretary of State for Research, its main objective is to develop and promote research that will help bring about scientific and technological progress, and it is prepared to collaborate with Spanish and foreign entities in order to achieve this aim. Through their collaborations, CSIC researchers build up a close network of international relations on a daily basis, while CSIC, as an entity, establishes institutional relations with research organisms and entities in a growing number of countries, and is participating actively in the construction of the European Research Area. The book was published thanks to the financial aid provided by ISLA.
Announcing the Year 2012 Annual Awards of the Albert Ravarino Italian Studies Travel Scholarship
Rousseau exhibit to focus on dignity of the human person
Julia Douthwaite, professor of French in the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, is organizing a series of events to honor Swiss philosopher and writer Jean–Jacques Rousseau’s 300th birthday and stimulate a cross–disciplinary discussion on social justice and human dignity.
The project, called “Rousseau 2012: On the Road to DIGNITY,” will be part of the curriculum for more than a dozen courses throughout the College of Arts and Letters and the Law School and will feature both guest lectures and an Amnesty International photography exhibit on poverty and human rights that includes portraits from Mexico, Egypt, Nigeria, India and Macedonia.
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2011 NEWS
Rousseau 2012/DIGNITY to arrive at Notre Dame this Spring
Spring semester 2012 will see the Notre Dame join a world-wide examination of the legacy of the Swiss philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Notre Dame events, titled “Rousseau 2012 / DIGNITY”will explain why we should keep reading Rousseau today through the lens of key concepts on political justice, power relations, and religious liberty. The visual centerpiece will be the large and gripping photographic DIGNITY exhibit in the Snite Museum of Art.
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Spanish Professor Receives Service-Learning Award from Indiana Governor
In recognition of her collaboration with a local community center, Marisel Moreno, assistant professor in Notre Dame’s Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, has been named the 2011 recipient of the Governor’s Award for Service Learning.
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Olivier Morel Shares Veteran Stories in Class and on Film
Olivier Morel was in his car one day when a story came on the radio about suicide among veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the report, eight to 10 veterans were taking their own lives each day.
The news was like a punch in the stomach for Morel, a Notre Dame faculty member whose research focuses on fiction and trauma.
“I was trembling,” he recalls. “I was angry, and I felt helpless … I was thinking, ‘This is unacceptable.’”
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Exhibit Highlights Notre Dame's Investment in Italian Studies
The phrase “All Roads Lead to Rome” connotes the cosmopolitan culture that has long been present in the Eternal City. It’s also the title of a Notre Dame exhibit running through the fall 2011 semester to highlight spectacular acquisitions by the University’s Department of Rare Books and Special Collections in conjunction with the new interdisciplinary Italian Studies at Notre Dame program.
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ROFR News: Record Number of ROFR students receive grants for research in Paris, France during fall break 2011!
Please join us in congratulating the following students on their successful grant applications (and wish them “Bon voyage!”)
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Julia Douthwaite presented the keynote speech, "From the Wild Girl of Champagne to the French Frankenstein: Missing Links in European Literature, Anthropology, and Political Thought, 1731-1862," at the Équinoxes Graduate Student Conference, Brown University, April 16, 2011.
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Encarnación Juárez-Almendros took her graduate students to the Cervantes Symposium at the Instituto Cervantes in Chicago on April 29, 2011.
Juan Vitulli will be the keynote speaker at JALLAE Lima 2011.
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Junior major in French and English wins annual award for best undergraduate essay in French
Claire Reising, a junior major in French and English, won the annual award for best undergraduate essay written in French by a non native speaker of French, from the national association of Women in French, an affiliate of the Modern Language Association, which counts approximately 500 members in the United States.
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