News and Events
Winter 2007 - Spring 2007
“TORTURE AND THE FUTURE: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE HUMANITIES”
This series of events addresses the critical issues surrounding the use of torture by the most powerful democracy in the world. Our project will focus on four areas: 1) “democratic torture” and its devastating effects on the concept and practice of democracy; 2) the consequences of state-sanctioned torture on the principles and practices of scholarship and education; 3) the role of mass media in the increasing acceptability of the use of torture, and 4) the relationship between torture used in US run prisons abroad, and human rights violations on American soil. The perspectives of social science alone cannot adequately comprehend what is at stake. The humanities might offer more productive methods towards an ethics and politics of response and resistance. We are inviting scholars whose work on torture and human rights effectively crosses the disciplinary gap between the humanities and social sciences, as well as writers and artists whose work is committed to an ethics and politics of response and resistance.
For more information and a list of events, visit: www.complit.ucsb.edu/projects/tortureandthefuture
LECTURE
“A WESTERN VISION OF ORIENTAL WOMEN: Antoine Galland’s Translation of the Thousand and One Nights”
A talk by Professor Jean-Paul Sermain (Paris-III Sorbonne Nouvelle)
Tuesday, April 17th 4:00 pm
UCen Harbor Room
Free and open to the public
The manuscript of the Thousand and One Nights, as discovered by their first translator Antoine Galland (1646-1715), depicts female characters who are subjected to the constraints of Arab society and Islam, and who overcome these constraints thanks to their intelligence, energy and moral conscience. For Galland, such a representation was incompatible both with the literary canon and the social norms of his time. 18th century French women had achieved a high degree of cultural refinement and social prominence and were allowed a great degree of freedom. Galland’s adaptation reflects this, in effect acclimating the Oriental women of the Nights to the French code of civility. Galland’s Western vision of Oriental women gives us access to three key issues of the Thousand and One Nights: the status of women in Islamic cultures, Classicism’s translation aesthetics which advocates the appropriation of the original, and more generally the debate over Orientalism.
JEAN-PAUL SERMAIN (PhD, 1982, Doctorat d’Etat, 1992) is Professor of French Literature at the Université de Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle. An ENS alumnus, Sermain is a specialist of 18th century French literature, the aesthetics of Classicism and fairy tales. His books include Rhétorique et roman au 18e siècle (1985), Marivaux, Cervantes et le roman post critique (1999), Métafictions (1670-1730), la réflexivité dans la littérature d’imagination (2002) and Le Conte de fées du classicisme aux Lumières (2005). His recent work on the Thousand and One Nights includes the critical edition of Antoine Galland’s pioneering translation (2004).
Presented by the Series in Contemporary Literature, the Department of French and Italian, the Comparative Literature Program and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
Department Newsletters
Past Events
“EYE OR EAR: WALTER BENJAMIN ON OPTICAL AND ACOUSTICAL MEDIA”
Conference at the University of California, Santa Barbara
Free and open to the public!
Friday, December 1, 2006
10:30 am to 6:00 pm
Humanities and Social Sciences Building, 6th floor, McCune Conference Room
Presented by the Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies, the Comparative Literature Program, and the Consortium for Literature, Theory and Culture.
For more information, visit: www.gss.ucsb.edu/Benjamin.html