Summer reading, other news

Now that you’ve finished your marking (haven’t you?), here are some suggestions. . . Many of us are looking forward to Diverse Lineages of Existentialism 2,  and to the UK Sartre Society meetings in Oxford (July 2-3), which this year are devoted to Beauvoir’s work and legacy. Word also comes of a conference in Brazil, June 12-14. Meanwhile, the literary studies strand is going strong: we’re anticipating a lively session at the 2020 MLA (Seattle, January 9–12), as follows:

Simone de Beauvoir: Questions of Style
“Beauvoir en dépit de son style: un lieu du discours critique”
Jean-Louis Jeannelle, Université de Rouen
“Artistic Success as a Philosophical Achievement: Beauvoir on Realist Parable”
Patrick Fessenbecker, Bilkent University
“Beauvoir’s Sense of Humor”
Claudia Bouliane, Brandon University

Click HERE to see full abstracts and presenter bios, and HERE to read the “call for papers”: the deadline has passed, but we hope it will seed further work, toward a special issue proposal for Simone de Beauvoir Studies. And click HERE to read a full report on the thought-provoking 2019 session in Chicago, “Simone de Beauvoir’s Fiction: Questions of Privilege.”

For those who like to travel sitting down, we’re also looking forward to the June 16 release of the latest in the U. of Illinois Press Beauvoir Series, Diary of a Philosophy Student Volume 2: 1928-29. Edited by Barbara Klaw, Sylvie le Bon de Beauvoir, and Margaret Simons, this translation will cast new light on aspects of Beauvoir’s life we thought we knew. So will Kate Kirkpatrick’s biography, Becoming Beauvoir: A Life,  which Bloomsbury Books will publish August 22 (both US and UK). And Deirdre Bair has let us know that her book will be out in November. It’s a memoir, called Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me, and promises new details and insights. More modestly, the Spring edition of the APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy (read it here) includes Céline LeBoeuf’s review of the Blackwell’s Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, and mine of Fiona Vera-Gray’s Men’s Intrusion, Women’s Embodiment, a Beauvoirian approach to the harassment of women in public space. (Spoiler: I like it, a lot.)

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading with enormous interest Chahla Chafiq’s Le rendez-vous  Iranien de Simone de Beauvoir, a reception study which is also a moving meditation on the vicissitudes of feminism in Iran. I also caught up with Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: Proceedings of the 18th Conference of the Simone de Beauvoir Society, edited by Andrea Duranti and Matteo Tuveri: over 350 pages of fascinating work people should know. It came out in 2017, but I only just found it thanks to Academia.edu (hat tip Eric Levéel). Elaine Stavro has a new book, Emancipatory Thinking: Simone de Beauvoir and Contemporary Political Thought, and so does Éric Touya de Marenne. There’s a new biography of Nelson Algren, too, and it’s been well-received.

Readers of this blog will enjoy a trip to Marine Rouch’s “carnet de recherches” Hypotheses “Chère Simone de Beauvoir” where you can read Tiphaine Martin’s compte rendu of the colloque “Simone de Beauvoir. Le devenir d’une féministe aux aguets” (Auxerre, 9 mars 2019), and other recent articles by “jeunes chercheuses”:

• “Relire les Mémoires 48 ans après : l’expérience d’une lectrice”, par Marine Rouch
• “Simone de Beauvoir in Britain: Activism and Academia (1940-1980)”, par Bethany Parkes
• “Quelques notes sur la réception du Deuxième Sexe au Brésil”, par Heci Regina Candiani

And just for fun, here’s a link to a rather strange 1960 interview with SdB, which the Guardian recently republished for some reason: “My Clothes and I by Simone de Beauvoir.”   As Marine says, Bonne lecture !

Closer to home with the SdB Society, I have some happy news, some announcements, and something sad to share. Congratulations are due to SdB Studies editor Jen McWeeny on her Fulbright Award, to research Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty at the ENS next year, and to President Tove Pettersen on her new position as Professor of Philosophy and Gender Studies at the Center for Gender Research, University of Oslo. I should remind people to check out the Simone de Beauvoir Studies page on the Brill website (that’s our new publisher), for opportunities to contribute, to apply to edit a special issue, to suggest an article for featured translation (there’s a May 15 deadline for the last two). I should also invite those who are not yet members of the Society to join us,  which can easily be done at the main Society website. Membership includes subscription to the relaunched Simone de Beauvoir Studies, and other nice things. (And if you’ve been meaning to renew, this is a good time.)

But I must conclude by sharing the sad news that Liliane Lazar, who preceded me as secretary-treasurer of the International Simone de Beauvoir Society, passed away in mid-March. Liliane was an indispensable stalwart of the Society since its founding at the 1981 MLA, and co-organized the important conference, “From Beauvoir to Sartre and from Sartre to Beauvoir,” held in Paris in June 2003 in collaboration with the Groupe des Études Sartriennes. Many of us will sorely miss her gracious and convivial presence and her deep understanding of Beauvoir’s life and work. Our thoughts are with her husband Ron Lazar, and with her children and grandchildren.

Born and raised in Paris, Liliane studied at Hofstra University and Columbia University in New York. She taught French for many years in the Long Island school system and then at Hofstra. Her many publications include A chacun sa France: Une certaine idée de l’homme, co-authored with Nadine Dormoy-Savage (Peter Lang, 1990) and L’empreinte Beauvoir: des écrivains racontent(Paris: L’Harmattan 2009), a collection of interviews with prominent French intellectuals, which situate Beauvoir in historical context and explore her impact on later generations. In 1992 she was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques. I’ve recently read through the archive of Simone de Beauvoir Studies, so can attest that every issue shows the mark of Liliane’s strong contribution, both through the dedicated behind-the-scenes work of maintaining the Society and through her own delightful and incisive writing on a wide range of topics.

I will always be grateful for the generosity and grace she showed me, at a time when she was already ill, expressing her hopes and confidence for the future of the Society as she passed along membership records. May her memory be for a blessing.

*    *    *   *
That’s all for now. Please send news and views to Meryl Altman, maltman@depauw.edu

Lots of reading to catch up on

in the Beauvoir scholarship world. First, a few reviews: check out Jennifer McWeeny’s account of the collection Differences: Reading Beauvoir and Irigaray (edited by Emily Parker and Anne van Leeuwen) here in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Sonia Kruks writes about Lori Marso’s Politics with Beauvoir: Freedom in the Encounter in Political Theory  (July 2018). And there’s a very comprehensive, thoughtful review of the Blackwell Companion to Simone de Beauvoir by Rose Trappes (Universität Bielefeld) in Phenomenological Reviews, accessible here.

Other books to be aware of include Jonathan Webber’s Rethinking Existentialism (OUP), which puts Beauvoir front and center in arguing for the continuing relevance of an ethics rooted in freedom and authenticity; and Manon Garcia’s On ne nait pas soumise, on le devient, a Beauvoir-inspired investigation of female sexual subjectivity today in all its paradox. Too many new articles to mention them all! Among the more unusual, Alice Caffarel-Cayron has a linguistics-informed chapter about the Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée in a book called On Verbal Art ; and Screen (yes, *that Screen) has a piece by Lauren du Graf on “Cinema in the Eyes of Simone de Beauvoir” (Autumn 2018).

En France, the big occasion of the year was the long-delayed recognition of Beauvoir’s place in France’s literary firmament with the appearance  of  Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée in the Êditions de la Pléaide. It’s a beautiful and deeply scholarly two-volume edition undertaken by Jean-Louis Jeanelle and Éliane Lecarme-Tabone, with the collaboration of Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir and others. Truly a labor of love as well as a milestone in Beauvoir scholarship and reception.

Jean-Louis Jeanelle has also edited this collection,

which includes interventions from a number of our French colleagues, including Michèle le Doeuff and Pierre Bras, as well as some of Beauvoir’s early letters presented by Sylvie de Bon de Beauvoir. There are also special issues of Littérature and Self dedicated to the Mémoires. (The Cahiers de l’Herne volume on Beauvoir,  which has some inédits and responses from contemporary writers as well as scholars, is not as new, but I only came across it this summer: it’s worth a look, and part of what seems (at least from where I sit) to be a happy sea-change in French attitudes toward Beauvoir’s legacy.

Meanwhile, I’ve been remiss in not acknowledging earlier the hospitality of the UK Sartre Society conference (Oxford, July 2018) toward Beauvoir’s thinking and those of us who study it. In addition to the keynote address by Sonia Kruks, “Simone de Beauvoir and the New Materialisms: Questioning the Posthuman Turn,” very interesting new work related to Beauvoir was presented by Chris Jung-chao Ma (“Merleau-Ponty, Existential Phenomenology, and Transgender Politics”), Fiona Gray (“Situating Women’s Experience of Pornography”) and Kate Kirkpatrick (“Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Biography”). Kate was on her way to the archives: she’s working on a new biography of Beauvoir herself. We also learned that Sarah Richmond’s new translation of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness is now available from Routledge; the “translator’s preface” might be of particular interest.

And then there was this, from the New York Times: “Tapping into the Feminine Wild (with help from Simone de Beauvoir).”
Make of it what you will.

I’m sure I’ve missed a lot. Please send me notes and thoughts (maltman@depauw.edu).

Oh, and if you’re in Chicago right after New Year’s, please join us at the MLA Special Session, “Simone de Beauvoir’s Fiction: Questions of Privilege.”

Beauvoir pour la rentrée

le site Fabula signale “le moment Beauvoir,” y compris la parution des Mémoires dans la Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, notre colloque, et plusieurs choses intéressantes …

https://www.fabula.org

 

 

 

Announcing the relaunch of Simone de Beauvoir Studies!

Simone de Beauvoir Studies (SdBS) is currently accepting submissions. Please find instructions for authors and calls for special issue themes at www.brill.com/sdbs. The first volume of the relaunched journal will appear in 2019, and includes thematic issues on “The New Face of Simone de Beauvoir Studies” (Vol. 30, no. 1) and “Beauvoir in Conversation” (Vol. 30, no 2). SdBS is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary journal dedicated to advancing scholarship relevant to the writings, thinking, and legacy of Simone de Beauvoir.SdBS places particular emphasis on recognizing diverse social, cultural, and disciplinary receptions of Beauvoir’s thought and on featuring cutting-edge approaches to the investigation of her oeuvre. Articles are published in English and French.

Les Simone de Beauvoir Studies (SdBS) acceptent des articles pour être publiés dans la revue. Merci de regarder le site de la revue pour les instructions aux auteurs et aux autrices, et pour soumettre un article : www.brill.com/sdbs. Son premier numéro paraîtra en 2019 et il contiendra les articles sur les thèmes « Nouveau visage pour les Simone de Beauvoir Studies » (vol. 30, no. 1) et « Dialogues avec Beauvoir » (vol. 31, no. 2). SdBS est une revue interdisciplinaire à comité de redaction dédiée aux écrits, à la pensée et à l’héritage de Simone de Beauvoir. SdBS souligne l’importance de reconnaître les multiples réceptions de Beauvoir provenant de divers milieux socioculturels et de différentes disciplines. La revue vise à faire paraître les formes les plus récentes des études consacrées à Beauvoir et publie des travaux en français et en anglais qui traitent directement de ses écrits ou qui contribuent au progrès de l’analyse des thèmes fondamentaux de sa pensée.

Letter from the President: Conference News

Dear Friends and Fellow International Simone de Beauvoir Society Members,

More than one year has now passed since June 2017 when we gathered for the momentous 24^thInternational Conference of the Simone de Beauvoir Society “Simone de Beauvoir’s Feminism(s)” at the University of Haifa, Israel. Thanks to many months of hard work and preparations by Sara Cohen Shabot, Beauvoir scholars from a wide variety of countries were able to congregate in a vibrant and inspiring setting and exchange their many ideas and insights on Beauvoir, while embracing the wonderful opportunity to meet and bond with so many fellow Beauvoirians. The Haifa conference was made all the more extraordinary by the fact that it marked the first time our Society’s conference was held in this region of the world, expanding the Society’s international scope, while strengthening our Society’s international profile.

As you are probably aware, this year’s conference, the Society’s 25^th International Conference, is rapidly approaching. It will take place October 11-13, 2018 at L’Université Paris-Diderot, Paris. The Society’s 2018 conference will be part of the Forum Penser avec Simone de Beauvoir aujourd’hui, organized by the University of Paris-Diderot, the Simone de Beauvoir Foundation, the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for the Liberty of Women, and the International Simone de Beauvoir Society. 2018 is a significant year for Beauvoir scholars as it marks the 110^thanniversary of Simone Beauvoir’s birth, the 10^thyear anniversary for the Prix Simone de Beauvoir, and the publication of the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade edition of Beauvoir’s autobiographical works.

It has been ten years since the Society’s conference was held in Paris, and this will also be the first time the Simone de Beauvoir Foundation, the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for the Liberty of Women and the International Simone de Beauvoir Society jointly undertake a conference of this kind. The Society is honored to be part of Forum Penser avec Simone de Beauvoir aujourd’hui. In the planning for this year’s conference, I have worked closely with Connie Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, who together with their team in Paris, have worked diligently to make this event possible. The Society is very excited about this opportunity to re-visit Beauvoir’s work and legacy, and together reflect on her contributions to today’s feminism, philosophy and literature, as well ethical and political challenges posed by contemporary society. We look forward to sharing such a rich event with a diverse, international group of scholars and admirers of Simone de Beauvoir.

During the three days of the forum there will be parallel sessions where members of the International Simone de Beauvoir Society present their papers (20-minute presentations), as well as roundtable discussions, testimonies, plenaries and interviews. The conference’s program, information about lodging/accommodations, and other logistical details are available both at the Forum’s website https://penseravecsdb.sciencesconf.organd on the Society’s website https://beauvoir.weebly.com/2018-conference.html. Please check these sites for additional information and further updates.

The Society received a very high number of submissions in response to our call for papers and would like thank everyone who submitted their proposal. With limited slots available, many fine papers unfortunately could not be included. Nonetheless, we hope as many Society members as possible will be attending the Forum, as well the Society’s annual meeting on Thursday October 11^that 9:00-11:00, in Salle 88c des Grands Moulins.

Looking further ahead, next year’s conference, the 26th International Conference, will take place June 3-5, 2019 at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. It will be part of the second Diverse Lineages of Existentialism, where Gail Weiss, George Washington University and Debra Bergoffen are among the organizers. As many of you will recall, the first Diverse Lineages of Existentialism (DLE I) conference took place in June 2014 in St. Louis, where Margaret (Peg) Simons from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville was the event’s main organizer. This was an incredible and exciting conference, and we are thrilled that there will be a second such event. Currently, 19 philosophical organizations have signed up for participation in DLE II. More information, including the cfp, is available at both https://dleii.comand  https://beauvoir.weebly.com/2019-conference.html

Please note that the Society’s deadline for submitting proposals has been extended to November 1, 2018.

I greatly look forward to joining many of you in Paris this coming October, and I hope to receive many proposals for June 2019’s exciting conference in Washington D.C.

 With Kind Regards

Dr. Tove Pettersen, University of Oslo

President of The International Simone de Beauvoir Society

New beginnings.

Long-time members will fondly remember the arrival (in an envelope) of the Simone de Beauvoir Society Newsletter, lovingly created for many years by the Society’s founder, Yolanda Patterson, and containing all manner of information too short for the Society’s journal, Simone de Beauvoir Studies, but too interesting to miss out on. With the Society’s reorganization (and the re-start of the journal) we’re keeping the Newsletter, too, just without the envelope. Look to this space for timely announcements, news, short scholarly notes, and links — and please send content you’d like to share. Looking forward!