French Graduate Seminars, Hilary 2025, Seminar 2

11th February 2025, 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm

Location: Hovenden Room, All Souls

Speakers: Nicolas Duriau (Wolfson) and Lou Khalfaoui (Leeds)

 

Nicolas Duriau (Wolfson) - ‘(Un)Voicing Male Prostitution during the First Empire and the Bourbon Restoration: “Riéniste[s]”, “parasite[s]" and “nulliste[s]” characters in Cuisin’s work’

Abstract
According to the conclusions of my doctoral dissertation, which dealt with long-19th-century French literature (1783-1922), there is a significant decline in the number of novels depicting male prostitution from 1800 to 1830. It seems that the then ‘prostitué’ appeared under the guise of less conspicuous figures, such as the ‘greluchon’, the ‘sigisbée’, or the ‘parvenu’ – who would implicitly engage in sexual activity with women, either for money, or for social prestige – to evade the First Empire’s and the Bourbon Restoration’s censorship. By considering little-known novels by J. P. R. Cuisin, a now forgotten writer of the early 19th century, I intend to better understand how the representations of male prostitution evolved from the libertine fiction of the late 18th century to the realist novel of the 1830s. As Andrew Counter (The Amorous Restoration. Love, Sex, and Politics in Early-Nineteenth-Century France, Oxford University Press, 2016) and Alain Viala (La Galanterie. Une mythologie française, Seuil, 2019) suggest, extramarital and commercial sex remained ubiquitous in the 1800-1830 literary production, but aligned with a poetics of ‘silence’, or ‘refoulement’. My aim is to demonstrate that the ‘Riéniste[s]’, ‘parasite[s] et ‘nulliste[s]’ who merge into Cuisin’s novels not only embodied the Empire/Restoration style ‘prostitué’, but also allegorised an ideological context in which ‘sexual deviances’ appear through text blanks, or figures of avoidance.

Biography
A former research fellow of the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS), Nicolas Duriau is now a Postdoctoral Researcher in Languages, Literatures and Translation Studies (specialised in French Literature and Romance Languages) at the University of Oxford/Université libre de Bruxelles. Following on from his PhD thesis, which focused on literary representations of male prostitutions from 1783 to 1922, he is particularly interested in long-19th-century literatures of French expression, studied in light of Gender, Queer and Sex Work History.

 

Lou Khalfaoui (Leeds) - ‘Franco-Algerian relations: hopes for “reconciliation” in the face of memories of colonialism in official discourses (1999-2005)’

Abstract
In this paper, I aim to explore a period of hope for reconciliation between France and Algerian, which have long been studies as an example of dissonant colonial memories plaguing modern state and cultural relations. In the aftermath of the Algerian civil War and Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s ascension to power in April 1999, French and Algerian officials made clear attempts to redefine bilateral relations through greater cooperation. However, as is well established, relations took a turn for the worse in 2005 when France passed the controversial Repatriates’ law, which included an article about French colonialism’s “positive legacy”. I argue that not only did the incident involving local, national and transnational actors precipitate a significant cool down in diplomatic relations, it fundamentally changed the discursive construction of colonial violence in both French and Algerian official narratives. From 2005, impassioned engagement with colonial violence featured growinly in official Algerian discourse, especially around the Massacres of Sétif, Guelma and Kherrata, whose anniversary became the National Memory Day in 2020. This both had concrete implications for whom and how episodes of colonial violence were remembered, given growing state control over commemorations, as well as their broader national and international audiencing. On the French side, colonial violence in Algeria was was most frankly alluded to in the direct aftermath of the law with Hubert Colin de Verdière, the French ambassador, describing the repression of May 8th, 1945 as an “inexcusable tragedy”, just as the event was becoming the embodiment of colonial violence in Algerian discourse. I hope to show how discourses about the past have an impact on the viability of memory policies, which profess to help appease and reconcile.

Biography
After graduating from the University of Cambridge, Lou went on to complete a master's program at the University College London (UCL). Before starting a PhD working across the School of History and the School of Languages at the University of Leeds in 2022, she was a research assistant at the Institute of Race Relations, the London-based antiracist think tank. Her current research focuses on the construction of colonial violence in official discourses of the French and Algerian state. Lou analyses speeches and public statements of state actors to highlight the maintenance and disruption of particular

framings, as they serve to contextualise contemporary memory policies seeking ‘reconciliation’. Lou also works with civil society actors, to illustrate the reception of official discourses and their contestation.

French Graduate Seminars, Hilary 2025, Seminar 1

28th January 2025, 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm

Location: Hovenden Room, All Souls College

Speakers: Jodie Miller (UCLA) and Adam Husain (Christ Church)

 

Jodie Miller (UCLA) - ‘A Fox and a Jackal at Court: The Trickster’s Trial in the Roman de Renart and Kalila and Dimna’

Abstract

The Old French literary cycle, the Roman de Renart, and the Kalila and Dimna fables of the Arabic and Persian literary traditions both tell the tale of a small canine-like trickster who is put on trial for the crime of trickery at the lion king’s court. The Roman de Renart is composed between the late-twelfth century and the mid-thirteenth, whereas Kalila and Dimna stems back to antiquity with the Panchatantra (c. 200 BCE). Although no direct contact is attested between these traditions until at least a century after the composition of the first Renardian branches, both feature a trickster’s trial scene with striking similarities. This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of the fox and jackal’s trials to better understand the convergences between the Roman de Renart and the Kalila and Dimna fables. In what ways do these trial scenes stem from a global circulation of similar ideals dealing with justice and ethics? 

The analysis of this paper focuses on the following aspects of the trial scene: the depiction of the crime of trickery, the juridical structure of the trials, and the trials’ verdicts. Both texts portray trickery through the subversion of ethical ideals leading to social chaos. Renart is gluttonous and lustful, unable to stop himself from tricking to find a meal or from satisfying himself sexually. Dimna, on the other hand, is greedy and prideful in search for political prestige. Both Renart and Dimna advocate for themselves at trial and manipulate a weak king, albeit within different juridical structures. Kalila and Dimna features a disputational defense-and-response structure, whereas Renart’s trial is based on customary law and the medieval “ordeal.” Various forms of evidence are brought forth during the investigation of their crimes (i.e., physiognomic proof and testimony), however only Dimna is found guilty and punished. Renart escapes at the end of his trial. 

Biography

Jodie Miller is a Ph.D. Candidate in French at the University of California-Los Angeles. Her research focuses on medieval French literature, and her dissertation project looks at its broader relationship to other regions of the globe during the medieval period. Her dissertation explores the philosophical, moral, and juridical underpinnings of the portrayal of trickery in the Roman de Renart and its connections to the Kalila and Dimna fables of the Arabic and Persian literary traditions. Her presentation today considers trickery in its juridical context through a comparison of the trial scenes of Renart, the fox, and Dimna, the jackal. 

Adam Husain (Christ Church) -  Le Temps retrouvé : An Apology for Lost Time?

Abstract

À la recherche du temps perdu finishes with a very long rant. The narrator, buoyed up by a fresh injection of epiphany, rattles off a whole new philosophy, which is centred around the odd claim that, as Empson once put it: “sometimes when you are living in one place you are reminded of living in another place, and [thus] you are outside time”. Is there any way of making such an idea believable or interesting? Should we instead treat the narrator as “mad”?  In this talk, I outline a new way of reading the closing pages of the Recherche as the culmination of a contradiction developed throughout the novel, and a true apology for lost time.   

Biography

Adam Husain is a stipendiary lecturer and doctoral student at Oxford. He researches Proust and contemporary French thought. His article “Unpruned: Re-reading Proust’s translations of Ruskin” is forthcoming in MLN 

Getting faster growth in the UK by Sir John Redwood

24th January 2025, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm

Speaker: Sir John Redwood

Location: The Old Library

The lecture will welcome the government policy aim for the UK to be the fastest growing economy of the G7 and work from the target to grow living standards. It will look at the current mixture of business taxes, subsidies and proposed public capital investment and suggest changes. It will examine a number of sectors to show how changes to regulation, licences, specific charges and taxes and to government procurement could make a difference. It will consider why the USA has had faster growth than the EU this century so far, and will compare President Trump's proposals with EU and UK approaches to growth. 

 

See below for the details of the Zoom meeting:

Topic: Getting faster growth in the UK by Sir John Redwood
Time: Jan 24, 2025 11:00 
https://zoom.us/j/92191517246
Meeting ID: 921 9151 7246

The Neill Law Lecture 2025: Let’s not talk about Access to Justice: Unravelling the concept to create meaning in the non-legal world

21st February 2025, 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm

Speaker: Professor Dame Hazel Genn
Location: All Souls College Library

"Let’s not talk about Access to Justice: Unravelling the concept to create meaning in the non-legal world"

There will be a wine reception after the lecture.

The event is open to the public, but reservations are required. Please register using this form.

More than a decade after the 2012 changes to Legal Aid in England & Wales we are in yet another ‘access to justice crisis’. Post-pandemic, with an economic downturn, increased levels of poverty and developing public health crises, access to justice in political and public consciousness appears an irrelevant, if not invisible issue. Why should this be? The legal field is comfortable using ‘access to justice’ as a shorthand term covering a wide mix of concepts, debated in confusingly conflicting ways and without precise definition. In other spheres – public services, business, media, professions and political circles - the term lacks clear meaning, substance, or salience (outside of crime). The non-legal world doesn’t think much about how the justice system supports the collective social good nor its value in addressing current social and economic challenges. And yet there is real potential for legal services to work in partnership with other services, such as health, to make more impact on pressing social issues. A strategic approach to improving access to justice requires engaging more allies and advocates. This means we need to explain what access to justice is for, what its broader societal value is, and why it matters. Unbundling the concept and developing a comprehensible ‘access to justice’ lexicon that is relevant and focused on outcomes rather than process, is a necessary first step.

 

https://forms.office.com/e/S12zqFFc4G

 

Slade Lectures Hilary Term 2025

'Gaps' - Slade Lecture Series 2025, presented by Professor Beate Fricke

We are delighted to welcome Professor Beate Fricke as our 24/25 Slade Professor of Fine Art.

The lectures will be held in-person at St John's College, University of Oxford. The lectures are free of charge, but advance booking is required.

Book a place

Events in this series

Slade Lecture Series 2025 - Lecture 6: Gaps in Artefacts

26th February 2025, 5:00 pm

Speaker: Professor Beate Fricke (2024/25 Slade Professor in Fine Art)

Location: The Auditorium, St John's College, St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3JP

Booking Required 2024/25 Slade Lectures Booking Form (Names are checked upon entry)

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The final lecture is dedicated to missing parts in works of art (Sano di Pietro/Osservanza Master, 1435), a reliquary from Augsburg (mid-15th c), and altarpieces (Bern/Allerseelenaltar, 1505). These gaps in artefacts are not only signs of use but also demonstrate how such gaps can become the subject of artistic creation itself. How do we write the histories related to these gaps created by missing elements? The layers of the past inscribed through the traces of use into the object itself may contribute to writing a history of the object which differs from that of the cultural context for which it was produced.

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Beate Fricke is Professor and Chair of European Medieval Art at the Institute of Art History at the University of Bern. Previously, she was professor for Medieval Art at the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the history of sculpture, image theory and the objects as archives of a history of applied arts, materiality, knowledge transfer and trade in the global "Middle Ages". Among her publications are Holy Smoke. Censers across Cultures, 2023, Fallen Idols, Risen Saints: Sainte Foy of Conquest and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in Medieval Art, 2015, and together with Finbarr Barry Flood Tales things Tell. Material Histories of Early Globalisms, 2024. She is leading the research project The Inheritance of Looting. Medieval Trophies to Modern Museums (SNF – https://looting.ch). She is founder and Editor-in-chief of the journal 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual. Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und Visuellen Kultur (link: https://21-inquiries.eu/en).

Slade Lecture Series 2025 - Lecture 5: Gaps in Origins

19th February 2025, 5:00 pm

Booking Required 2024/25 Slade Lectures Booking Form

(Names are checked upon entry)

Location:  The Auditorium, St John's College, St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3JP

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How has life begun, how was the world created, and what lied at the origin of the creation? Human procreation, especially the origin of life, was frequently the subject of speculation and analysis in medieval thought. Drawings of the uterus accompanied and supported these reflections about the development of life in female bodies. These were made by anonymous draughtsmen and illustrators of medieval manuscripts as well as known scholars and artists like Hildegard von Bingen, Opicinus di Canistris, Jerome Bosch, and Leonardo da Vinci. Analysing the thoughts embedded into these images illuminates the creativity of such connections between divine creation, human procreation and artistic creativity ignited through an exploration of the unknown and the unseen.

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Beate Fricke is Professor and Chair of European Medieval Art at the Institute of Art History at the University of Bern. Previously, she was professor for Medieval Art at the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the history of sculpture, image theory and the objects as archives of a history of applied arts, materiality, knowledge transfer and trade in the global "Middle Ages". Among her publications are Holy Smoke. Censers across Cultures, 2023, Fallen Idols, Risen Saints: Sainte Foy of Conquest and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in Medieval Art, 2015, and together with Finbarr Barry Flood Tales things Tell. Material Histories of Early Globalisms, 2024. She is leading the research project The Inheritance of Looting. Medieval Trophies to Modern Museums (SNF – https://looting.ch). She is founder and Editor-in-chief of the journal 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual. Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und Visuellen Kultur (link: https://21-inquiries.eu/en).

Slade Lecture Series 2025 - Lecture 4: Gaps in Space

12th February 2025, 5:00 pm

Speaker: Professor Beate Fricke (2024/25 Slade Professor in Fine Art)

Location: The Auditorium, St John's College, St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3JP

Booking Required 2024/25 Slade Lectures Booking Form (Names are checked upon entry)

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Distant places, visited by travellers, pilgrims and merchants, were included in paintings and drawings from the late medieval and early modern eras. These pictures, such as the Panorama from Scherzligen (1469) or the painting from the crypt in Bethlehem commissioned by four pilgrims to the Holy Land in 1520, provide images of regions of the world which could, for the most part, only have been imagined by their beholders. Late medieval paintings and accounts thereby bridge gaps in space and also reveal the creative potential of imaginations about distant, foreign, or imagined worlds.

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Beate Fricke is Professor and Chair of European Medieval Art at the Institute of Art History at the University of Bern. Previously, she was professor for Medieval Art at the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the history of sculpture, image theory and the objects as archives of a history of applied arts, materiality, knowledge transfer and trade in the global "Middle Ages". Among her publications are Holy Smoke. Censers across Cultures, 2023, Fallen Idols, Risen Saints: Sainte Foy of Conquest and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in Medieval Art, 2015, and together with Finbarr Barry Flood Tales things Tell. Material Histories of Early Globalisms, 2024. She is leading the research project The Inheritance of Looting. Medieval Trophies to Modern Museums (SNF – https://looting.ch). She is founder and Editor-in-chief of the journal 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual. Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und Visuellen Kultur (link: https://21-inquiries.eu/en).

Slade Lecture Series 2025 - Lecture 3: Gaps in Archives

5th February 2025, 5:00 pm

Speaker: Professor Beate Fricke (2024/25 Slade Professor in Fine Art)

Location: The Auditorium, St John's College, St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3JP

Booking Required 2024/25 Slade Lectures Booking Form (Names are checked upon entry)

_____

Archival documents do not always record and represent significant parts of past societies. The buildings of the Loge du Mer at Perpignan, the Lonja in Palma and the Lonja de la Seda in Valencia reveal how the construction of market halls and municipal organisations supporting trade can provide insights into the underrepresented histories of Muslims, enslaved people, or labourers. These presences are largely absent from archival records – but do emerge as significant elements in a painted panel for the Loge du Mer (1479). As a way to make sense of this apparent dissonance, this lecture unspools the material quality of the silk traded in these halls. A new reading of the architectural structures of the Lonjas through the lens of the material world of the cloth they contained leads to a reading of the markets’ spiral columns as spines supporting a different history. Shifting the narrative from the mastery of an architect towards the collectives involved in winding the threads of silk histories furnishes a new view of these innovative municipal buildings.

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Beate Fricke is Professor and Chair of European Medieval Art at the Institute of Art History at the University of Bern. Previously, she was professor for Medieval Art at the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the history of sculpture, image theory and the objects as archives of a history of applied arts, materiality, knowledge transfer and trade in the global "Middle Ages". Among her publications are Holy Smoke. Censers across Cultures, 2023, Fallen Idols, Risen Saints: Sainte Foy of Conquest and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in Medieval Art, 2015, and together with Finbarr Barry Flood Tales things Tell. Material Histories of Early Globalisms, 2024. She is leading the research project The Inheritance of Looting. Medieval Trophies to Modern Museums (SNF – https://looting.ch). She is founder and Editor-in-chief of the journal 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual. Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und Visuellen Kultur (link: https://21-inquiries.eu/en).

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