Fall 2008 - Spring 2009
Flim screening with panel discussion: Tekkon Kinkreet (2006, Dir. Arias)
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Schedule of events:
6:00-7:00 PM - Panel Discussion
Markus Nornes (U Michigan / Harvard), Susan Napier (Tufts), Anthony Weintraub (Tekkon Kinkreet screenwriter), and Ian Condry (MIT)
7:00-8:45 PM - Film Screening
8:45-9:30 PM - Q&A & Discussion with Panelists
Date: Wednesday October 1, 2008
Time: 6:00-9:30 PM
Location:
Harvard University
Tsai Auditorium
CGIS South
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
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Center for Biligual/Bicultural Studies Symposium 2008 - Organized by Tuli Banerjee & Emma Teng
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On October 16-18 we are celebrating Isabelle de Courtivron's long and successful career at MIT with an international symposium TRANSMISSIONS, to be held at Le Meridien (formerly Hotel at MIT). The Center for Biligual/Bicultural Studies Symposium (CB/BS) symposium will take a close look at the various areas that Isabelle has researched, taught and written on over the years, including panels and roundtable discussions on Bilingual and Bicultural authors, Franco-American cultural issues, Memoirs, and International Women Writers. Speakers will include Assia Djebar (keynote address in French), Homi Bhabha, Roger Celestin, Jill Conway, Nilüfer Göle, and Shirley Geok-lin Lim among others. The symposium will end with a gala dinner and dancing on Saturday the 18th of October.
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October 16, 17 & 18, 2008
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All events are at the following location:
Le Meridien, Cambridge
20 Sidney Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 577-0200
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Thursday, October 16, 2008
- 6:00 - 6:15 PM - CANCELLED - Opening/Intro: Edward Turk (MIT Foreign Language & Literatures)
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6:15 - 7:30 PM - CANCELLED - Keynote Address (in French) by Algerian novelist, Assia Djebar, "Dialogue en sororité.....dans l'exil" (Taylor Room)
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Friday, October 17, 2008
- 9:30 - 10:00 AM - Breakfast and Opening by Emma Teng (MIT Foreign Language & Literatures)
- 10.00 - 11:30 AM - Vive la Différence: Franco-American Cultural Relations
- Moderator: Isabelle de Courtivron
- Panelists: Brigitte Bouvier, Roger Célestin, Gilberte Furstenberg, Claire Kramsch
- 11.30 - 1:00 - Break
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1:00 - 2:30 PM - French Women Today - Bilingual Session (English/French)
- Moderator: Elyane Dezon-Jones
- Panelists: Benedicte Berner, Michèle Sarde, Geneviève Sellier, Susan Suleiman
- 2:30 - 3:00 PM - Coffee
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3:00 - 4:30 - Narrating the Self: The Culture of Memoirs
- Moderator: Jill Conway
- Panelists: Whitney Chadwick, Evelyne Ender, Shirley Geok-lin Lim
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Saturday, October 18, 2008
- 9:30 - 10:00 AM Breakfast and Opening by Tuli Banerjee (MIT Foreign Language & Literatures)
- 10:00 - 11:30 AM Writing in Two Languages - Who? What? Where?
- Moderator: Edward Turk
- Panelists: Laura Ceia-Minjares, Eva Hoffman, Kathleen Kelly Lainé, Pierre Saint-Amand
- 11:30 - 1:00 PM Lunch
- 1:00 - 2:30 PM - Biculturalism Blues
- Moderator: Emma Teng
- Panelists: Homi Bhabha, Caroline Fache, Nilüfer Göle
- 2:30 - 3:00 PM - Coffee
- 3:00 - 4:30 PM - A Sense of Place: International Perspectives on Women Writers
- Moderator: Elissa Gelfand
- Panelists: Tuli Banerjee, Marie Françoise Berthu-Courtivron, Odile Cazenave, Monika Totten
- 4:30 - 5:30 PM - Rest
- 5:30 - 6:00 PM - Cocktails/Chorallaries
- 6:00 - 7:00 PM - Tribute
- 7:00 - 8:30PM - Dinner (buffet)
- 8:30 - Midnight - Dancing
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Sponsored by MIT Foreign Languages & Literatures and the MIT Contemporary French Studies Fund
Lecture by Nilüfer Göle
The Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar at MIT will celebrate its 23nd anniversary this year. Dr. Nilufer Gole, Professor of Sociology at the Ecole des Haute Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and author of “The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling (Critical Perspectives on Women and Gender)” will give a lecture entitled “Islam and Europe: the Changing Face of Public Culture.”
Date: Tuesday October 21, 2008
Time: 4:30-6:30 PM
Location: E51-095
Film screening with a Q/A with the director Soda Kazuhiro.
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The director uses an “observational method” (no voiceover, no textual explanation) to document the campaign of a political neophyte caught up in the big world politics of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. It’s a black comedy.
Date: Tuesday October 21, 2008
Time: 7:00-10:00 PM
Location: 32-141 (MIT Stata Center)
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The Cultural Capital of Nostalgia:
How the Comics Industry Invests in the Past
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Jeet Heer
The seminar series is aimed at faculty, grad students, and high level undergrads with an interest in the intersections of culture and economy, with particular attention to methods for doing research on cultural production. Please feel free to invite friends, students, and colleagues.
Jeet Heer's talk will be brief, informal, and designed to prompt our general discussion. He will talk about the comics industry’s use of nostalgia to give the medium a distinguished lineage and to find new ways of exploiting old intellectual properties. He'll present some examples: the refurbishing of old characters (Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, etc.), the publication of archival editions of old comics, and the creation of a market for original art. He'll also briefly explore what this exploitation of nostalgia has to do with political globalization and with new technologies of reproduction and distribution.
WHAT IS ICC? The International Cultural Capital study group was launched last year, under the auspices of Foreign Languages and Literatures, to provide a forum for faculty and graduate students from various MIT programs and departments to rethink the relationship between “cultural production” and “economic production” from international and multi-disciplinary perspectives. The overarching notion is that that new humanities needs to pay greater attention to the processes by which culture is produced, whether we are talking about brand culture, city culture, digital culture, performance culture, or national culture.
Jeet Heer is co-editor of Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium (University of Mississippi Press, 2004). With Chris Ware and Chris Oliveros, he is editing a series of volumes reprinting Frank King’s Gasoline Alley. And he has several other books in production, including reprintings of Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie (to be designed by Chester Brown) and of Gluyas Williams’s Suburban Heights (to be designed by Chris Ware).
Sponsored by the SHASS Dean's Office, Foreign Languages and Literatures, and Literature.
Contacts: Sarah Brouillette (sabrouil@mit.edu); or Prof. Ian Condry (condry@mit.edu).
Date: Friday October 24, 2008Time: 12:00 - 1:30 PM
Location: 14E-304
In eighteenth-century Paris songs served as the functional equivalent of today’s blogs. Every day Parisians composed new words to old tunes, and the lyrics served as a running commentary on current events. This sung newspaper, easily memorized and repeated through networks of oral communication, circulated everywhere in the streets. It had such an effect that it helped bring down the government in 1749. Thanks to police files and musical archives, the songs can be reconstructed and their path followed as they were actually sung 250 years ago. Robert Darnton, a historian at Harvard, and Helene Delavault, a cabaret artist in Paris, will collaborate in a “cabaret-lecture” designed to explore a new genre of communications research and to make history sing.
Date: Wednesday October 29, 2008
Time: 6:00 PM
Location: Killian Hall (Building 14)
Seminar with Professor Yoshitaka Mori (Tokyo University of the Arts) who will discuss his research on youth politics and digital/mobile media in Japan.
Date: Thursday November 6, 2008
Time: 12:30-2:00 PM
Location: 14E-304
The Edge of Heaven (Auf der anderen Seite) Film screening followed by a panel discussion.
Film directed by Fatih Akin, (German/Turkish/English, 2007, 116 minutes).
Panelists:
Nilüfer Göle (Professor of Sociology, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris)
Leslie Adelson (Professor of German, Cornell University)
Kurt Fendt (Research Director, MIT), digital media and culture specialist, director of MIT European Short Film Festival
Film screening followed by panel discussion with Nilüfer Göle (Professor of Sociology, EHESS, Paris), prominent expert on the European public culture in its encounter with Islam, Leslie Adelson (Professor of German, Cornell), leading scholar in the field of Turkish-German literature, and Kurt Fendt (Research Director, MIT), digital media and culture specialist, director of MIT European Short Film Festival. Panelists will engage in a reading of the film from the perspective of their intellectual and personal trajectories. These intersecting voices will highlight the in-between-ness of the film that cannot be grasped by any single cultural point-of-view.
Open to the public free of charge.
Sponsored by Foreign Languages & Literatures and the Center for Bilingual/Bicultural Studies.
Date: Tuesday November 18, 2008
Time: 6:00-10:00 PM
Location: 6-120
Seminar with Professor Jennifer Robertson (University of Michigan) who will discuss her research on robotics in Japan, in which she examines from the perspective of feminist anthropology.
Robertson explores and interrogates the gendering of humanoid robots manufactured today in Japan for use in the home and workplace. She shows that Japanese roboticists assign gender to their creations based on rigid assumptions about female and male sex and gender roles. Thus, humanoid robots can productively be understood as the vanguard of a “posthuman sexism,” and are being developed in a socio-political climate of reactionary conservatism.
For more information about the Cool Japan research project, visit: http://www.mitcooljapan.com
Date: Thursday March 5, 2009
Time: 5:00-7:00 PM
Location: 32-155
Co-sponsored by MIT Women's and Gender Studies Program, and MIT Comparative Media Studies
Seminar with Professor Toshiya Ueno (Wako University [Japan]).
Topic: What's wrong with the talk about "soft power" and the narcisstic nationalism of "cool Japan"? What can the resolutely uncool "otaku" (obsessive fans) teach us about popular culture and political protest? What does the life of philosopher Tsurumi Shunsuke tell us about the changing meaning of politics in the postwar period and the new millennium?
Come join in a dialogue with one of Japan's leading cultural studies scholars. Prof. Toshiya Ueno of Wako University (Tokyo) and McGill University (Montreal) is the author of many books in Japanese including "Red Metal Suits: Anime as War Zone" (1998) and "Urban Tribal Studies: A Sociology of Party Club Culture" (2005).
RSVP requested, but not required: condry@mit.edu.
For more information about the Cool Japan research project, visit: http://www.mitcooljapan.com
Date: Tuesday March 17, 2009
Time: 12:30-2:00 PM
Location: 14E-310
Türsprachen / Door Languages
Poetry Reading in German and English (with translator, Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright)
Date: Thursday April 2, 2009
Time: 5:00 PM
Location: 14S-200
Co-sponsored by Foreign Languages & Literatures, MISTI MIT-Germany Program, and Kelly Douglas Fund
MIT's European Short Film Festival – now in its 5th year - offers a unique glimpse into the most recent short-film productions from Europe, with a special focus on productions from European film schools and award-winning films from recent Festivals in Europe.
The MIT European Short-Film Festival caters to a diverse audience drawn from many local universities and a rich mix of international communities from the larger Boston area. The festival is co-sponsored by a variety of MIT departments and European cultural institutions located in Boston.
All films are shown in Room 10-250, programs start at 7:00 pm.
Free Admission – All films with English subtitles.
Date: Friday April 17-Sunday April 19, 2009
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: 10-250
For further information please contact the Short Film Festival Team: mitshortfilm@mit.edu
The Festival is co-sponsored by: The Foreign Languages and Literatures Section (MIT), The Comparative Media Studies Program (MIT), The Goethe-Institute (Boston), The French Consulate (Boston)
The Language Learning and Resource Center (LLARC) is announcing April as foreign language film festival month.
Every Wednesday, starting at 7:00 p.m. we will show 1-2 films in 16-676. All are welcome to attend.
Schedule:
4/1 - Chinese- 7:00 -8:30 p.m. - Postmen of the Mountains
An old postman has spent his whole life delivering mail to the mountain of Hunan and is about to retire. His only son is due to take over his duties. As father and son journey through the mountains, the son begins to appreciate the toil and burden his father has to bear as postman for the villagers, and the old postman is also deeply moved as his son relates his mother's anxiety as she waits for him to return home from every trip. - 8:45 - 10:45 p.m. - House of Flying Daggers
In the Ninth Century, the Tang Dynasty in China is weak and corrupt, and an army of rebels called "The House of the Flying Daggers" fights against the government military forces, and steals from the rich to give to the poor. Leo and Jin, two captains of the government army, plot a scheme against the rebels using the blind dancer Mei to approach their leaders, but all is not as it seems.
4/8 - French
- 7:00 p.m. - 8:15 p.m. - Le Diner de Cons (The Dinner Game)
When Pierre decided to play a game to see who could bring the biggest idiot to a dinner party, he never imagined he'd be the one playing the fool. But when Pierre's selfish ways come to light before the main course, he gets his just deserts. - 8:30 p.m. - 10:10 p.m. - TINTIN "Le Crabe aux Princes d'or" (The Crab with the Golden Claws) and "Tintin au Tibet" (Tintin in Tibet)
Puzzled by a mysterious riddle involving tin cans of crab meat, Tintin meets a man who will become his most faithful friend, Captain Haddock. Haddock is held prisoner on his own ship by his treacherous Lieutenant, Allan. Haddock is a wreck struggling with alcoholism, but before going sober, he will utter some of his best expletives.
Tintin then heads for the site of a plane crash in Nepal when he learns his friend Tchang was aboard the fated aircraft. And even though rescue teams did not find a single trace of any survivor, Tintin's hope is stronger than fate.
4/15 - German
- 7:00 - 8:45 p.m. - Schultze Gets the Blues
This is the story of Schultze, who has spent his whole life in a small town in Sachsen-Anhalt. Schultze's life, divided between work and the pub, the allotment, folk music, and fishing is rudely interrupted when he and his mates, Manfred and Jürgen, are made redundant. As entropy sets in and maintaining the daily routine deteriorates into a farce, Schultze discovers a life on the other side of the hill. - 9:00 – 10:35 p.m. - Im Juli (In July)
Daniel, a shy Hamburg student teacher, impulsively resolves to follow a beautiful tourist he just met to Istanbul. His odyssey is complicated by the irrepressible Juli, a street vendor who sold him an enchanted ring she guaranteed would help him find his true love.
4/22 - Japanese
- 7:00 - 8:50 p.m. - Rajio no jikan (Welcome Back Mr. McDonald)
An exuberant and constantly surprising backstage farce. As they are about to go on the air, the temperamental star of a radio play demands certain "small" changes to their soapy script. The co-stars all weigh in with increasingly arbitrary demands, transforming a romance into an ersatz American gangster drama cum disaster epic. - 9:00 – 10:30 p.m. - Paprika
An anime thriller about a revolutionary machine that allows scientists to enter and record a subject's dreams. After it is stolen, a fearless detective and brilliant therapist join forces to recover the device before it falls into the hands of a "dream terrorist".
4/29 - Spanish
- 7:00 - 8:50 p.m. - Sin dejar Huella (Without a Trace)
Fleeing from a serial killer, a young mother of two steals some cash and heads south. She comes across beautiful Marilu who's a master at selling fake Mayan art. Although the two women initially blend like oil and water , they come to realize their common purpose of seeking a better life. Embarking on a road trip to Cancun, they have one adventure after another, exploring a side of their country they've never seen. - 9:00 – 10:40 p.m. - Carmen
Antonio, director of a dance company, must find a leading lady for his production of "Carmen". His obsessive search for a fiery and passionate Carmen, takes him to flamenco dance schools where he eventually discovers his Carmen in an untried dancer - named Carmen. As the rigors of rehearsal become more and more intense, Carmen and Antonio find themselves living the "Carmen" story of love and treachery.
Date: Every Wednesday in April, 2009
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: 16-676
Talk and reading (in English) by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, "The Writer and the World: Reflections of an Author."
Open to public (no charge)
Sponsored by: Foreign Languages & Literatures Section, Contemporary French Studies Fund and The French Cultural Services in Boston, MA.
Date: Tuesday April 28, 2009
Time: 6:00-8:00 PM
Location: 32-123
The Center for Bilingual/Bicultural Studies and the Committee on Race and Diversity will be cosponsoring a "diversity dialogue" on April 29 as part of the MIT campus-wide diversity initiatives this spring. Students, staff and faculty are all welcome to attend. You can find the information through the link below:
The Diversity & Inclusion at MIT website (http://web.mit.edu/diversity) has just been updated to announce the upcoming Diversity Dialogues.
Date: Wednesday April 29, 2009
Time: TBA
Location: TBA
 Live Action Anime 2009 |
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Performances at Anime Boston (May 22, Fri. at 4pm) Hynes Convention Center and at Tokyo University of the Arts (May 29-30, Fri/Sat. at 7pm) in Japan
How can Massachusetts Institute of Technology students bring to life the excitement and eccentricities of anime? The MIT Dance Theater Ensemble will demonstrate the possibilities with its performance Live Action Anime 2009: Madness at Mokuba at the convention Anime Boston on May 22, 2009 (Fri.) in the Hynes Convention Center. The troupe will then take the show to Japan, where they will collaborate with Japanese students to perform the play at Tokyo University of the Arts on May 29-30, 2009.
This project highlights the diverse paths of globalization by drawing inspiration from fan activities around Japanese popular culture. Globalization is not driven only by large corporations and national governments, but also through the less understood but increasingly important channels of grassroots fan activities and digital media—a kind of globalization from below. Anime (Japanese animated films and TV shows) is a popular culture form that is driving American interest in Japan, especially among young people. Live Action Anime 2009: Madness at Mokuba aims to bring some of that energy back to Japan, while also underscoring the on-going importance of Boston as a center for US-Japan cultural exchange.
Who else but MIT students and faculty could invent “live action anime”? Part homage to anime history, part commentary on the plight of undocumented workers in the US, and over-the-top tribute to anime creators and fans worldwide, this original theatrical production features giant robots, a Japanese schoolgirl, a lovelorn fanboy, a masterless samurai, a gamer woman, evil media magnates, and a vengeful deathgod who all battle for truth, justice, and the anime way.
SYNOPSIS: The stage is set for the finals of the giant robot battle contest at the Mokuba Institute of Technology. But as the two teams prepare for battle, a strange disease called VIRTIGO is sweeping the school, causing unpredictable reality slippages. And it's getting worse. Does it have something to do the suspicious arrest of undocumented Japanese gamers at Infinite Channel Network? Can our heroes solve the mystery of VIRTIGO, help the workers, and find love?
 Photo credit: Eric Levenson (2007) |
Performed first in December 2007 at MIT’s Kresge Little Theater to sold out crowds, the show has been updated for a performance on May 22 at 4:00pm at Anime Boston at the Hynes Convention Center. Anime Boston is a convention that draws upwards of 15,000 anime fans over three days. People wishing to see the play in Boston must register for the Anime Boston convention (see http://animeboston.com for more details).
The fifteen-member crew will then take the show to Japan where they will perform at Tokyo University of the Arts (Kitasenju campus) on May 29-30 2009 (Fri, Sat.) at 7pm both nights. Profs. DeFrantz and Condry (MIT) are collaborating with Profs. Sachio Ichimura and Yoshitaka Mori (Tokyo U. of the Arts) to create this unique international exchange event. The show in Tokyo will include a dance performance by students at Tokyo University of the Arts (a.k.a., Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku, http://www.geidai.ac.jp/english/index.html ).
Live Action Anime is a collaborative project that is performed by the MIT Dance Theater Ensemble. This particular project emerged out of two on-going initiatives at MIT, namely, SLIPPAGE: Performance, Culture, Technology, and the MIT Cool Japan research project.
Live Action Anime 2009 is sponsored by the MIT Japan Program, MISTI Global Seed Funds, MIT Office of the Arts, MIT Council of the Arts, the De Florez Fund for Humor, MIT Music and Theater Arts, MIT Foreign Languages and Literatures, SLIPPAGE: Performance, Culture, Technology, and the MIT Cool Japan research project.
For more information, please visit http://www.liveactionanime2009.com or http://www.mitcooljapan.com
Date:
Friday May 22, 2009 (Boston) and
Friday May 29-30, 2009 (Tokyo, Japan)
Time:
4/22: 4:00 PM, 4/29-4/30: 7:00 PM
Location:
Boston: Anime Boston - Hynes Convention Center
Tokyo: Tokyo University of the Arts
