News and events

Call for Abstracts
The School of European Languages and Literatures welcomes proposals for conference presentations from postgraduate research students (from BA(Hons) to PhD) from all New Zealand universities and tertiary institutions for this inaugural symposium. Presentations are to be in English and last 20 minutes, followed by question time.

Conference aims
The National Symposium for Postgraduate Researchers aims to

• provide postgraduate students with an opportunity to present their research, exchange their views and benefit from feedback from established scholars in the discipline.
• enhance cooperation and provide opportunities for collaborative research among students of New Zealand tertiary institutions.
• foster a supportive environment in which young scholars can exchange ideas.

Registration is free for all. Participants are expected to organise and cover their travel and accommodation expenses. Some accommodation may be available through student billeting.

On 24 October, lunch will be provided and participants will be invited to attend a Symposium dinner.
There will be two prizes awarded for the best presentations: one by panel vote and one by participants’ vote!
Following the symposium, there will be an opportunity for presentations to be published in the European Connection. Essays in European Language Studies at New Zealand Universities journal (expected publication March 2013).

Key dates

• 20 July 2012: Symposium Abstract submission deadline
• 10 August 2012: Notification of acceptance of presentations
• 16 November 2012: Submission of articles to European Connection

Abstract proposals of 200 words max. in English should be attached as a Word document using (SurnameForenames.doc) and sent to c.arkinstall@auckland.ac.nz
Please include the presenter’s institutional affiliation, a short biography and email/contact details.

Organising Committee
Christine Arkinstall, Head of SELL
Trudy Agar, French
Ruth Diver, Comparative Literature
Walescka Pino-Ojeda, Spanish and Latin American Studies
Vanessa Enriquez-Raido, Translation Studies

The European Studies programme has been further enhanced by the teaching and scholarship of a newly appointed Professor in European Studies, Prof. Jean-Jacques Courtine.

Prof. Courtine's previous posts were as Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Sorbonne (University of Paris III, 2003-), as Professor of French Linguistics and Cultural Studies at the University of Southern California (1989-1993) and Professor of French Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1993-2003).

Holding a doctorate in linguistics from the University of Paris X, Prof. Courtine also has degrees in sociology, English, and applied mathematics. His research interests have led him into the fields of anthropology as well as of early modern, modern and contemporary French cultural history. His constant concern has been to bridge culture and literature, humanities and the social sciences in multidisciplinary courses on anthropology, history, and literature.

Prof. Courtine’s impressive published scholarship includes fifteen published and edited books, and more than a hundred articles, book chapters, and other scholarly publications. His main areas of research are, firstly, language, memory and the history of public speech and, secondly, the body, gender and visual culture. This second line of research, on the history of the body from the 16th to the 20th century, has resulted in many, best-selling scholarly publications: among them, his co-authored The History of the Face. Expressing & Repressing Emotions from the 16th to the Beginning of the 19th Century, awarded the 1988 Prix Psyche in Paris for its major contribution to the history of medical sciences and republished in paperback in 1994 and 2007. He is also one of the three general editors of the three-volume History of the Body (16th-20th Century), which vaunts contributions from scholars of such stature as historians Alain Corbin and Roy Porter, anthropologist Paul Rabinow, art historians Daniel Arasse and Henry Zerner. Eleven foreign translations have already been released or are under way. Another major project, the three-volume History of Manliness, from Antiquity to the 21st Century, has just appeared in October 2011, together with his book on aspects of Michel Foucault’s heritage (Decyphering the Body. Thinking with Foucault). A third significant thread in Prof. Courtine’s scholarship are his translations, with recent ones including the 2008 translation of Lindsay Waters’ Enemies of Promise. Publishing, Perishing & the Eclipse of Scholarship.

To date, Prof. Courtine has supervised two dozens PhDs on both sides of the Atlantic. His works have been translated into sixteen languages.

EUROPEAN 208/304: Images of Men. European Masculinities(18th-20th Century)
Lecturer: Professor Jean-Jacques Courtine

This course will focus on a topic relevant to the construction of European identity: the images of men in Europe, from the end of the 18th century down to the present day. It will do so by examining the changing representations of masculinity in European visual culture, mainly through sports and war, brought into dialogue with consumption, medicine and sexuality.

EUROPEAN 701: The Culture of Emotions and Making European Identity
Co-ordinator: Professor Jean-Jacques Courtine

Focus on the formation of European identity through the study of the culture of emotions (16th-18th century). Informed by major contributions by Max Weber, Norbert Elias, Michel Foucault, and Richard Sennett, it looks at the emergence and the changing visual culture of expression on human faces in European literature, philosophy, painting, rhetoric, and treatises on civility, conversation, medicine and physiognomy.