FIFTH EUROPEAN STUDIES CONFERENCE
DECEMBER 6-7, 2013
The University of Iowa
This year, The Fifth European Studies Conference on Europe and its links to the world is
entitled “Bridging European Divides.” This open title suggests that we welcome diverse
perspectives from many areas of scholarship in a range of disciplines on any topic, time period,
situation or concept that may have bearing on modern Europe. Therefore, you should feel free to
propose any topic that fits the broad synergies suggested by the title of the event.
The Fifth European Studies Conference will be held on December 6 and 7. “Bridging
European Divides” is co-sponsored by International Programs and the Division of World
Languages, Literatures and Cultures. We invite Faculty and Graduate students from different
Colleges and Departments to send proposals. Please send a working title and a short description
of your presentation by November 11 to be sure to be included. Twenty-minute presentations
will be the norm.
Deadline for proposals: Friday November 15
Contact, proposals: Michel Laronde: Organizer, European Studies Conference; co-director,
European Studies Group (ESG)
French and Francophone Studies
Department of French and Italian/DWLLC
michel-laronde@uiowa.edu
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Roberto Dainotto, Professor of Romance Studies, Duke University
http://www.duke.edu/~dainotto
Title: Europe: of Borders and Bridges
Abstract
Virtually all discussions on Europe’s many divides make a point of dwelling on a statement
attributed to Jean Monnet, the putative architect of the European Union: “If I had to do it again, I
would begin with culture.” In 1999, the Council of Europe seemed in fact to take quite literally
Monnet’s suggestion when it published Ecrire les frontières. Le Pont de l’Europe / Views from
the Bridge of Europe -- a collection of short stories, aphorisms, and more random thoughts of
Europe’s leading cultural figures on the theme of bridges. Taking my cue from Ecrire les
frontières, and looking at European theories of modern borders (Montesquieu and Schmitt) and of
bridges (Simmel and Andric), this lecture tries to offer an overview of historical attempts at
creating cultural (and more specifically, literary) bridges across Europe’s divides, conflicts, and
borders.
Jean-Louis Pautrot, Professor of French & International Studies, Saint Louis University
http://www.slu.edu/~pautrot
Title: Challenging the Divides at the Core of European Modernity: Agamben and Quignard
on Naked Life
Abstract
Giorgio Agamben (born in 1942) is an Italian philosopher. Pascal Quignard (born in 1948) is a
French author of fiction and meditative books. Both endeavor to rethink the foundations of
European Modernity, in the wake of epistemological advances and theories of the 20th-century
(Freud, Bataille, Benjamin, Foucault, Derrida, etc.).
Although producing strikingly different forms of discourse, they share a number of similarities in
the way they challenge the Cartesian and Hobbesian tradition, and much of the heritage of the
Enlightenment. Both of them articulate the foundations of their thinking around the historical and
genocidal disasters of the 20th century and totalitarianism, which makes them distrustful of any
form of power. Both of them examine and rethink the dichotomy between individual and society,
between particular and general, by seeking singularity without identity. Both of them seek
manners of being together that do not involve a constraining social structure. Both of them
challenge the defining divide between Human and Animal, the very “frontier” at the core of the
Western philosophical tradition and history. Ultimately, both aim for a new notion of human life
or presence that would not entail violent consequences for some or all of humanity. Their ideas
are indicative of a shift in European thought that carries much import for the idea of community.