British Academy-funded workshop coming up at Stirling

French at Stirling’s Bill Marshall is organizing a day-long British Academy-funded workshop on the ‘Uses of Prehistory’ at Stirling on Saturday 3 June. This bilingual workshop will examine the ways in which prehistory, notably the Upper Palaeolithic period including its cave art, has entered debates in modern and contemporary France concerning aesthetics, fiction, politics and philosophy. The event is free, including a sandwich lunch, but registration is essential by Tuesday 30 May. Please contact Bill Marshall: w.j.marshall@stir.ac.uk if you wish to attend. The programme for the day is as follows:

10.30 TEA & COFFEE

10.45 Welcome remarks; Bill Marshall (University of Stirling): ‘Prehistory and Transnational French Studies’

11.30 Marc Azéma (Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail) : ‘La Préhistoire du cinéma’

12.15 Jo Malt (King’s College London): ‘La Main négative, limit-case and primal scene of art’

13.00 LUNCH

14.00 Douglas Smith (University College Dublin): ‘The Great Prehistoric Art Scandal: André Breton and Raymond Queneau on Cave Painting’

14.45 Mary Orr (University of St Andrews): ‘Questions of Adaptation: Rethinking Intermedial Uses of Prehistory in Nineteenth-Century France’

15.30 TEA & COFFEE

16.00 Michèle Richman (University of Pennsylvania): ‘Georges Bataille’s Prehistoric Modernism: A Universal History for the 21st century’

16.45 Conversation with Margaret Elphinstone, whose novel The Gathering Night (2009) is set in mesolithic Scotland.

17.30 Workshop ends

Looking forward to an account of the workshop in due course!

Touma, the first biped; Musée national de la Préhistoire, Les Eyzies de Tayac

Bill Marshall Awarded Inaugural SFS Prize Research Fellowship

Street Sign in Tautavel

 

Congratulations to French at Stirling’s Bill Marshall who has been awarded the inaugural Society for French Studies Prize Research Fellowship. This award will enable Bill to develop his work on ‘The Uses of Prehistory in Modern and Contemporary France.’ Through its engagement with other fields, the project will demonstrate the pivotal role that French culture – including the unique place of prehistory in that culture and its geography – plays in launching, re-launching and elaborating far-reaching and fundamental debates concerning ‘what is ‘human’?’

This award follows on from Bill’s success in winning the SFS‘s inaugural Visiting International Fellowship last year which enabled him to bring leading American academic Professor Tom Conley to the UK for a series of talks on topics relating to cartography and translation.

Caverne du Pont d’Arc