Betrayal and its cognates are burdened with a negative connotation, decried as the destruction of established social, political, cultural or affective ties. Yet the potential for rupture opened up by acts of betrayal also provides opportunities for narratives of change and progress. Along with considering acts of betrayal as they are or have been experienced or portrayed, the conference will consider scholarly interdisciplinarity as its own sort of methodological betrayal—and innovation. What are our responsibilities toward our research subjects and our institutional traditions? What are the risks and rewards of subverting conventional boundaries? Two-day conference organized by the IFS doctoral cohort. With historian Todd Shepard and literary scholar Kaoutar Harchi as keynote speakers.
Friday, November 9
2:00-2:45 p.m. Registration / Inscription
2:45-3:00 p.m. Opening Remarks
Tony Haouam, New York University
3:00-4:30 p.m. Can Betrayal Heal? Treason As Catharsis
Moderator: Samantha Presnal, New York University
Pauline Harris, Birkbeck, University of London: “Raw Writing: Truth and Treachery in the Novels of Sorj Chalandon (1952-)”
Agatha Slupek, University of Chicago: “Historical Betrayal, Mourning, and Militancy in Hélène Cixous’ La Ville Parjure”
Nicolas Portugal, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: “Trahison de classe par la sexualité ? Parcours d’une double-oppression dans Retour à Reims de Didier Eribon et En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule d'Edouard Louis”
5:00-6:30 p.m. Performing Betrayal, Breaking Trust
Moderator: Sharif Mosaad, New York University
Juan Esteban Plaza, Stanford University: “Breaking the white mirror: enmity, alliance, and treason in Jean Genet’s The Blacks: A Clown Show”
Anaïs Bouzou, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès: “Pierre Michon, rêveur d’Histoire”
Malika Touddimte, Université Montpellier Paul-Valéry III: “Mon père, ce héros ? Les ressorts comiques de l’imitation des parents par les comédiens stand-up, en France et en Allemagne de 2005 à nos jours”
7:00-8:00 p.m. Keynote Address
Todd Shepard, Johns Hopkins University
with response from Hilary Handin, New York University
“Rebel Bodies, Male Bodies: The ‘Arab’ Man in 1970s French Film”
Saturday, November 10
9:00-10:30 a.m. Liminal Figures, Changing Loyalties
Moderator: Kelly Wood, New York University
Nathan Grau, Harvard University: “Making the OAS: Ideology and the Figure of the ‘Indigenous Loyalist’ in French Military Insurrectionism in Algeria, 1955-1961”
Jérôme Gendrot, The Ohio State University: “Des héros aux traîtres, des traîtres aux héros, enjeu du multiculturalisme des footballeurs français dans l’écriture du mythe national”
Dawn Ng, Université Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint-Denis: “La trahison au prisme de l’exil(ittérature) chez Linda Lê”
11:00-12:30 p.m. Generational Ties, Troubled Lineage
Moderator: Hannah Leffingwell, New York University
Yen Vu, Cornell University: “L’enfant prodigue, or betrayals of the modern Vietnamese intellectual”
Rachel Mihuta Grimm, Northwestern University: “‘Après la trahison’: Transgenerational Memory, Metalepsis, and Figures of Spatiotemporal Transgression in Alice Zeniter’s L’art de perdre (2017)”
Habib Hassoun, University of Toronto: “La trahison féministe de Monique Wittig (1935-2003)”
2:00-3:30 p.m. Linguistic Allegiances, Treacherous Words
Moderator: Drew Fedorka, New York University
Allison Korinek, New York University: “Traduction Infidèle: Translators and the Rule of Law in French Algeria”
Andrew Jones, The Pennsylvania State University: “Cinematic Testimony of Betrayal: Mihăileanu’s Trahir (1993)”
Sean Beebe, Brandeis University: “Guarding the Munitions? Franco-Mauritanian Cooperation, January-February 1966”
3:50-5:40 p.m. Methodological Subversions, Rewriting Disciplines
Moderator: Melanie Bavaria, New York University
Kevin Lambert, Université de Montréal: “Trahir Hubert Aquin : Queering Obombre”
Corinne Kannenberg, Princeton University: “Expanding Conceptions of Medieval Reliquaries and Saint Veneration in the Context of the Beguins, c. 1300”
Paige Pendarvis, University of Pennsylvania: “The Emergence of the Annales School in Interwar France: ‘A New Kind of History’”
Agatha Kim, University of Chicago: “‘Traitors’ in science: receptions of foreign naturalists in early nineteenth-century France”
6:00-7:00 p.m. Concluding Roundtable
Kaoutar Harchi, CERLIS / visiting professor, NYU
in conversation with Tony Haouam and Allison Korinek, New York University
“La trahison comme injonction ? Entre expérience située et enquête ethnographique”
Presentations in English or in French