Events and Activities

Guest Lectures – International Affairs and the Public Sphere Fall 2007 Program 

Distinguished Guest Lecturer: Lt. Colonel Christian D. Chapman
"A Multidisciplinary Approach to International Relations"

Christian Chapman is a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army who has spent 10 of his 16 years of service working overseas.  He is currently serving as a Defense Policy Advisor in the United States Mission to NATO.

Lieutenant Colonel Chapman is a graduate of the French Joint Defense College and holds an M.A. in National Security Affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School and a B.S. from the United States Military Academy.    He was originally commissioned as an Armor Officer and was stationed in South Korea, Texas and Germany before becoming a Foreign Area Officer, specializing in Europe.  In this capacity Lieutenant Colonel Chapman has been stationed in the Defense Attaché Office in Belgium; in France as the Training and Doctrine Liaison Officer to the French Army; and in his current assignment as a Defense Policy Advisor in the US Mission to NATO. 

Distinguished Guest Lecturer: Professor Daniel Maximin
"On the Cultural Context of French Decolonization"

Daniel Maximin, born in Guadeloupe, is a poet, novelist, and essayist.  He is the author of three novels, L’ISOLÉ SOLEIL (1981), SOUFRIERES (1987), and L’ÎLE ET UNE NUIT (1996); a volume of poetry,  L’INVENTION DES DESIRADES (2000); an autobiographical work,  TU, C’EST L’ENFANCE,  (2004), for which he won Grand prix Maurice Genevoix de l’Académie Française ; and of the essay LES FRUITS DU CYCLONE, Une géopoétique de la Caraïbe. (2006). 

Daniel Maximin was Director of Cultural Affairs of Guadeloupe from 1989 to 1997.  He was named the Responsable Littérature et Éducation of the Francophone francoffonies Festival in 2006.  In 2007, he was named to l'Inspection Générale de l'Administration du Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication.

Distinguished Guest Lecturer: Ms. Adrian Leeds
"Seventeen Things I Wish I Had Known before I Moved to Paris"

Adrian Leeds, Editor of the Parler Paris newsletter, is a marketing, public relations and communications expert, published author and journalist, restaurant critic, event coordinator, language learning professional, and an expert in French property investing. 

Distinguished Guest Lecturer: Mr. Mort Rosenblum
"Escaping Plato’s Cave: How America`s Blindness to the Rest of the World Threatens Our Survival"

Mort Rosenblum, journalist, author and educator, enjoyed a distinguished career of over 40 years as a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press.  In 1967 the AP sent him to cover mercenary wars in Congo, and since then he has written from 200 countries. In 1989, he won the Overseas Press Club award and was short-listed for a Pulitzer for the fall of Romania. He won the AP's top reporting award in 1990, 2000 and 2001.  Mr. Rosenblum left the AP in 2004 and now writes independently.  He has written 12 books and contributed to Foreign Affairs, Vanity Fair, the New York Review of Books, Le Nouvel Observateur, Travel & Leisure, and Bon Appetit, among others. Mr. Rosenblum is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he was the 1980 Edward R. Morrow fellow.

Distinguished Guest Lecturer: Professor Daniel Maximin
“Thinking Culture: An Introduction to the Ministry of Culture and Communication"

Daniel Maximin, born in Guadeloupe, is a poet, novelist, and essayist.  He is the author of three novels, L’ISOLÉ SOLEIL (1981), SOUFRIERES (1987), and L’ÎLE ET UNE NUIT (1996); a volume of poetry,  L’INVENTION DES DESIRADES (2000); an autobiographical work,  TU, C’EST L’ENFANCE,  (2004), for which he won Grand prix Maurice Genevoix de l’Académie Française ; and of the essay LES FRUITS DU CYCLONE, Une géopoétique de la Caraïbe. (2006). 

Daniel Maximin was Director of Cultural Affairs of Guadeloupe from 1989 to 1997.  He was named the Responsable Littérature et Éducation of the Francophone francoffonies Festival in 2006.  In 2007, he was named to l'Inspection Générale de l'Administration du Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication.

Distinguished Guest Lecturer:  Ambassador William Ramsay
"Energy Policy Challenges: The International Energy Agency Perspective" 

William Ramsay is deputy executive director of the International Energy Agency in Paris and director of its relations with non-member countries. He was formerly deputy assistant secretary for international energy issues, economic and foreign policy sanctions, and strategic commodities for the United States Department of State in Washington, DC. Ambassador Ramsay previously served as US Ambassador to the Republic of Congo, principal US negotiator for the North American Free Trade Agreement for energy and petrochemical issues, and economic/commercial officer in Kinshasa and in Abidjan. He served in the Office of Fuels and Energy in Washington, DC, and subsequently in the US delegation to the European Community in Brussels with responsibilities for policies on commodities, energy and nuclear policy. He was deputy chief of the US Liaison Mission in Riyadh, and economic counselor in the Embassy there before serving again in Washington as director of the office that formulated and oversaw implementation of US international energy policy. Ambassador Ramsay is a graduate of Michigan State University, where he received B.A. and M.A. degrees, and Stanford University, where he received a graduate degree in international economics.

Guest Lecture at the European Commission with Agnes Hubert
“Fifty Years of Gender Equality in the European Union”

Back from a 2 years secondment to the European Parliament, this ex-member of the Forward Studies Unit and of the Governance team, joined BEPA in December 2004. 

After having graduated in Economics and in Political Science from the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), she became an economic journalist.  She joined the European Commission in 1981 where she has held responsibilities in 3 fields: Development & cooperation (international commodity agreements); information & communication (information Europe – 1/3 world) and social & employment policy (head of the Unit Equal Opportunities for Women). 

She is the author of two books (“L’Europe et les femmes, identities en movement”, ed. Apogée, and co-author of “Democracy and Information Society in Europe”, in Forward Studies series – Kogan page), and numerous articles and academic contributions. 

In 1998-99, she was a “European Union Fellow” in Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy (Tufts University, Mass. USA).  She developed a seminar on the “EU and Gender”.

NATO Lectures

Mr. James Snyder and Mr. Briian Greaney,
"Current NATO Political Issues"

Ms. Rebecca Ross,
"The Perspective of the US Mission to NATO"

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an alliance of 26 countries from North America and Europe committed to fulfilling the goals of the North Atlantic Treaty signed on 4 April 1949. In accordance with the Treaty, the fundamental role of NATO is to safeguard the freedom and security of its member countries by political and military means. NATO safeguards the Allies’ common values of democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law and the peaceful resolution of disputes, and promotes these values throughout the Euro-Atlantic area.

The Alliance embodies the transatlantic link by which the security of North America and Europe are permanently tied together. It is the practical expression of effective collective effort among its members in support of their common interests. NATO provides a forum in which the United States, Canada and European countries can consult together on security issues of common concern and take joint action in addressing them.

Mr. Jean-Pierre Giovenco, Secretary General, Supplemental Edition, Le Monde “An Introduction to Le Monde”

Jean-Pierre Giovenco is the secretary-general of the Supplementary edition of Le Monde a French daily evening newspaper with a circulation in 2004 of 371,803. It is considered the French newspaper of record, and is generally well respected, often the only French newspaper easily obtainable in non-Francophone countries.

It was founded by Hubert Beuve-Méry at the request of General Charles de Gaulle after the German army was driven from Paris during World War II, and took over the format of Le Temps, whose reputation had suffered during the Occupation. Beuve-Méry reportedly demanded total editorial independence as the condition for his taking on the project. Its first edition appeared on December 19, 1944. Le Monde has been available on the Internet since December 19, 1995. It is the principal publication of Groupe Le Monde.

Mr. Paolo Moscovici, Director, JP Morgan Private Bank 
“An Introduction to JP Morgan Private Bank”

Mr. Paolo Moscovici, is Managing Director France of JP Morgan France Private Bank (JP Morgan Chase & Co).

Paolo Moscovici has worked at JP Morgan since 1977. After working various functions in the investment banks of New York, Rome, and Milan, he created the SPECIALISTE EN VALEURS DU TRESOR activity for JP Morgan Paris and then rejoined the Private Bank. For many years, he assured the direction of JP Morgan Private Bank for Great Britain and Italy.

Lecture with Mrs. Marion Tucker-Venter at UNESCO
“An Introduction to UNESCO”

Mrs. Marion Tucker-Venter is the chief contact at the UNESCO Visitor Service. She arranges guided visits (in English or Spanish), film showings about UNESCO, and various presentations on the role of the organization as well as information about the concerts, expositions, and conferences held there. 

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations established on 16 November 1945. Its stated purpose is to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through education, science, and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, the rule of law, and the human rights and fundamental freedoms proclaimed in the UN Charter. It is the heir of the League of Nations' International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation.

UNESCO has 193 Member States and 6 Associate Members. The organization is based in Paris, with over 50 field offices and many specialized institutes and centers throughout the world. Most of the field offices are "cluster" offices covering three or more countries; there are also national and regional offices. UNESCO pursues its action through five major programs: education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture, and communication and information. Projects sponsored by UNESCO include literacy, technical, and teacher-training programs; international science programs; the promotion of independent media and freedom of the press; regional and cultural history projects, the promotion of cultural diversity; international cooperation agreements to secure the world cultural and natural heritage and to preserve human rights; and attempts to bridge the world-wide digital divide. 

Lecture at OECD with Meggan Dissly, Civil Society Coordinator, & Linda Aidan, Visits Coordinator, Public Affairs Division, Public Affairs and Communications Directorate, OECD

The OECD brings together the governments of countries committed to democracy and the market economy from around the world to:

• Support sustainable economic growth
• Boost employment
• Raise living standards
• Maintain financial stability
• Assist other countries' economic development
• Contribute to growth in world trade

The OECD also shares expertise and exchanges views with more than 100 other countries and economies, from Brazil, China, and Russia to the least developed countries in Africa.

Distinguished Guest Lecturers: Nicole Pruneaux and Norbert Skurnik
“The Free Masons in France"  

Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins (theorised to be anywhere from the time of the building of King Solomon's Temple to the mid-1600s). Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, and has millions of members. The various forms all share moral and metaphysical ideals, which include, in most cases, a constitutional declaration of belief in a Supreme Being.

The fraternity is administratively organised into Grand Lodges (or sometimes Orients), each of which governs its own jurisdiction, which consists of subordinate (or constituent) Lodges. Grand Lodges recognise each other through a process of landmarks and regularity. There are also appendant bodies, which are organisations related to the main branch of Freemasonry, but with their own independent administration.

Freemasonry uses the metaphors of operative stonemasons' tools and implements, against the allegorical backdrop of the building of King Solomon's Temple, to convey what has been described as "a system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols."

Guest Lectures – Honors in Paris 2007 Program - The Twentieth Century: Modern French Literature and the Quest for the Sacred

Distinguished guest lecturer: Sébastien Fath, CNRS
Protestants and Politics in France from 1905 to the Present

Thursday, February 22, 2007

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A specialist in the study of Evangelical Protestantism, Sebastien Fath is currently a full-time researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). He lectures at Sorbonne University (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes), and is in charge of a scientific research program on contemporary mutations of religion in Western societies. He is the author of ten books and has recently published Dieu bénisse l'Amérique. La religion de la Maison Blanche (Paris: Seuil, 2004), Militants de la Bible aux Etats-Unis. Evangéliques et fondamentalistes du Sud (Paris: Autrement, 2004. This book was awarded the Chateaubriand History Prize), and Du ghetto au réseau. Le protestantisme évangélique en France 1800-2005 , ( Geneva : Labor et Fides, 2005).

Distinguished guest lecturer: Ziad Elmarsafy, University of York
"The Varieties of French Muslim Experience"

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

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Ziad Elmarsafy was born in Egypt, raised in Kuwait and schooled in the USA. He received a degree in Physics at Cornell before completing degrees in French literature at Johns Hopkins (MA) and Emory University (PhD). He has taught at the University of California, Wellesley College, New York University and is now teaching at University of York in the Department of English and Related Literatures.

Distinguished guest lecturer: Rabbi Daniel Farhi, MJLF
"Judaism in France"

Wednesday, April 23, 2007

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Rabbi Daniel FARHI was born in Paris in 1941 of Turkish-Jewish parents. Hidden by a Protestant family during World War II, he pursued his rabbincal studies from 1959 to 1966. He received his ordination in February of 1966. Following his French military service, he was appointed rabbi at the Union Libérale Israélite de France synagogue at Rue Copernic. He became the Senior rabbi there in 1970. On June 2, 1977, he created the MJLF with about fifty families and has been senior Rabbi ever since. Daniel Farhi has centered his rabbinic career around four principal orientations: the spiritual and pastoral leadership of his community; the spreading of the theory and practice of Reform Judaism;dialogue with Christians and Muslims; defending the memory of the Shoah along side Serge and Beate Klarsfeld. Rabbi Farhi was imprisoned in Germany for having demonstrated in favor of the condemnation of Nazi criminal. He has organized eight “pilgrimages” to Auschwitz. In 1990, he introduced on Yom haShoah (the first time ever in France) a 24-hour public reading of the names of Jews deported from this country. Each year this event attracts hundreds of participants.

He was named Chevalier of the Ordre National du Mérite in 1988. In 1993, he was again honored as Chevalier in the Ordre National de La Légion d'Honneur with Minister of State Simone Veil presiding.

Editorial advisor of MJLF's magazine Le Mouvement/Tenoua, Daniel Farhi is also the author of two prayer-books ( Siddour Taher Libenou and Mahzor Anenou ) and of several other works including: Parler aux enfants d'Israël ; Un Judaïsme dans le siècle ; Au dernier survivant.

Guest Lectures and Jury Participants – Landscape Architecture Fall 2007 Program at the PRC

• Adèle Robert, Director of Pedagogy, Musée des Arts Décoratifs.
• Ariela Katz, Director, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, Paris
• Jean-Pierre Le Dantec, Professor of Landscape History, Ecole d’Architecture de Paris La Villette.
• Stanley Hallett, Professor of Architecture/ Urbanism, Catholic University, Paris Program
• Mikael Mugnier, Landscape Architect, Agence Jacqueline Osty
• Maxine Schnadelbach, Architect, Critic-at-Large, Paris, New York, Gainesville
• R. Terry Schnadelbach, Professor of Landscape Architecture, Paris Research Center, University of Florida

Guest Lectures – Summer 2007 Programs 

Distinguished Guest Lecturer: Holly Fisher, Filmmaker

Holly Fisher (producer, director, camera, editor) has been active since the mid-sixties as independent filmmaker, teacher, and editor of feature documentaries including 1989 Academy Award nominee "Who Killed Vincent Chin?". She received her BA Degree in Chinese Art History from Columbia University in 1964, and an MA in Cinema Studies from New York University in 1980. From 1966-71 she collaborated on cinema verité documentaries with a focus on political and environmental issues. Her first documentary, Progress, Pork-barrel, and Pheasant Feathers, 1966, won a blue ribbon for conservation at the Educational Film Library Film Festival (EFLA).

She has received numerous awards, including grants from The Jerome Foundation, The American Film Institute, and The New York State Council on the Arts. Fisher's film works are in the collections of the Donnell Film Library, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Parabola Arts Foundation. Her films "Ghost Dance" and "Soft Shoe" were included in The Whitney Museum Series "The Color of Ritual", fall 2000. Fisher premiered her feature documentary about present-day Burma "KALAMA SUTTA: Seeing is Believing" in The Forum of the Berlin International Fim Festival, Feb. 2001.  Most recently, her feature-length fiction/essay "everywhere at once",  made in collaboration with Photographer Peter Lindberg and narrated by Jeanne Moreau, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, May 2007.

Reconsidering Relationality

April 18-19, 2007

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The relationship between art works, institutions and their audiences has recently been a topic of considerable discussion. “Reconsidering Relationality” will revisit this debate, positing relationality as a space for art that temporarily suspends institutional autonomy and explores new forms of interaction with the lifeworld. From this perspective, the sphere of art functions as a vehicle for such experimentation; as a laboratory where the relations between different subjects, forms, and spaces can be tested. This is not a falsely open idea of the sphere of art, one that “aestheticizes” relations, as well as the social and creative processes implicit to them, and thus interrupts their effectiveness by fetishizing and freezing them in turn. Rather, the notion of relationality that we seek to reconsider is derived from a broad experimental tradition in modern and contemporary art that has explored meaningful methods of restoring artistic processes with forms of subjective appropriation. This is a tradition that has sought to go beyond institutional overdetermination in an attempt to revive art’s transformative potential within the broadest possible frame.

• Workshop organizers: Alexander Alberro, University of Florida & Nora Alter, University of Florida
• Keynote Speaker : Jacques Rancière (Professor Emeritus, Université de Paris VIII)
  “Image, Action, Relations: Questions about the Politics of Art”

Participants include: Christa Blümlinger (Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle); Wouter Davidts (Ghent University); Diedrich Diederichsen (Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna & Merz-Akademie, Stuttgart); Lutz Koepnick (Washington University-St. Louis); Birgit Pelzer (Ecole de Recherches Graphique, St. Luc, Brussels); Sébastien Pluot (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Bourges) ; Chantal Pontbriand (Parachute magazine); Juliane Rebentisch (Universität Potsdam); Constanze Ruhm (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna) ; Carsten Strathausen (University of Missouri-Columbia); Felicitas Thun (Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna); Stephen Wright (Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art, Paris).

New Voices in Art History

Mini lecture series at the University of Florida Paris Research Center

March 26, 2007 - 12:30 PM
Dean Inkster

Dean Inkster has published numerous essays on contemporary art by artists such as Hans Haacke, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Philippe Parenno, Liam Gillick, Alejandra Riera, and others.  He has published a book on the photographs of Valerie Jouve (Paris: Hazan 2002), and edited an anthology titled Tadio Temporaire (Grenoble: Magasin, 2000).  He currently teaches art history and thoery at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Valence in France.

March 30, 2007 - 3:00 PM
Armelle Pradalier

Armelle Pradalier has an art history degree from the University Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris.  From 1999-2006 she worked at the Dia Art Foundation in New York, where she played an important part in the development of the exhibition spaces of Dia's new museum in Beacon dedicated to the foundation’s collection. She also worked on numerous temporary exhibitions at the Dia site in Chelsea (including shows by Rosemarie Trockel, Bridget Riley, Pierre Huyghe, and many others).  She is now affiliated with the University Rennes 2 and the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art.

April 2, 2007 - 12:30 PM
Sébastien Pluot

Sébastien Pluot has directed a number of documentary films since 1995, and is coeditor of the well-known DVD collection "Works&Process," which focuses on contemporary artists.  He has published broadly, writing on the work of artists as diverse as Bruce Nauman, Louise Bourgeois, Robert Filliou, Maurizio Cattelan, James Turrell, Fabrice Hybert, and others.  He currently teaches art history and theory at the Ecole Nationale Superieur des Beaux-Art in Bourges.

Guest Lectures – Spring Break Programs
Week of March 11-17, 2007

Tuesday, March 13

2:30-5:30
Guest lecturer: Daniel Maximin (award winning poet, essayist and novelist)
Paris Research Center, Reid Hall, Salle des Conferences

Daniel Maximin, a poet, essayist and novelist, originating from Guadeloupe, has devoted his time to writing, education, and culture. He has acted as the director of cultural affairs in Guadeloupe, helped organized the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, and most recently published the novel Les Fruit du Cyclone: Une geopoetique de la Caribe in 2006. Other publications include : Tu, c’est l’enfance [Seuil 2004, winner of the Prix de l’Académie Française Maurice Genevoix in December 2004], L’Île et une nuit [Seuil, 2002], Soufrières [Seuil 1995]

7:00-8:30
A Symposium on “Jules Verne’s Paris”
Paris Research Center, Reid Hall, Salle des Conferences

• Download the PDF
• Presenter: Daniel Compère is a professor at Paris III and at the Université de la Sorbonne nouvelle. Heis the author of numerous articles and books on Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, fantastic fiction and the popular novel. In 1972 he founded the Centre de Documentation Junes (Amiens).
• Presenter: Jean-Michel Margot is the President of the North American Jules Verne Society.An independent scholar, he has published numerous articles on Verne, and has edited two collections of documents related to Verne’s reception in the popular press if the late 19th Century. The foremost bibliographer of Verne’s studies, his personal collection of Verne criticism is the most extensive in the world.

Thursday, March 15  

10:00-12:00
Guest lecturers Professor Cliff Jones and Professor Lynda Kaid
Paris Research Center, Reid Hall, Salle des Conferences

• A Presentation on international law and the war on terror
  by Professor Cliff Jones
  Professor Cliff Jones is a visiting faculty member from the Levin College of Law, at the University of Florida. His research is centered around US, EC, and international and comparative competition law, EC law, media law, intellectual property law, constitutional law, and election and campaign finance law and has most recently published Private Enforcement of Antitrust Law in the EC, UK, and USA in 1999.
• A Presentation terrorism and international media
  by Professor Lynda Kaid
  Professor Lynda Kaid is a professor at the University of Florida and the Senior Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research. Her research specialties include political advertising and news coverage of political events. A Fulbright Scholar, she has also done work on political television in several Western European countries

2:30-4:30
Guest lecturer Jake Lamar, Novelist
Paris Research Center, Reid Hall, Salle des Conferences

Jake Lamar, an author born and raised in New York, graduated from Harvard University and spent the beginning of his career writing for Time magazine. In 1993 moved to Paris and has most recently published the novel Ghosts of Saint Michel in 2006 [St. Martin’s Minotaur 2006]. Other publications include Rendez-vous 18ème [St. Martin’s Minotaur 2003], The Last Integrationist [Crown 1996], and Bourgeois Blues [Plume 1992].

Friday, March 16

4:00-6:00
Guest lecturer Bob Swaim, Filmmaker
Paris Research Center, Reid Hall, Classe 6

Bob Swaim, an American filmmaker educated in Paris has been active as a producer, screenwriter, and actor in film, television, and theater. He has worked all around the world and has won numerous awards at festivals worldwide, including the Berlin Film Festival and the Festival de Saint Malo. Upcoming projects include directing a play at the Theatre du Chatelet. His films include : Nos Amis Les Flics [2004], L’Atlantide [1992], La Balance [1982], La Nuit de Saint-Germain-des-Près [1977].

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