FYI: Planning your trip for the conference

Dear Presenters,

At last, the news you've all been waiting for!

Our next post, planned for later this week, will give you a day by day schedule of the conference. But for now, here is what you need to know to plan your trip.

1. The conference will take place in Royce Hall 306 on UCLA campus. Here is a map: http://maps.ucla.edu/campus/. 

 
2. Please arrive no later than 8:15am for registration on Thursday, October 11. Coffee, tea, and breakfast will be served at 8am. We hope to begin promptly at 9am. Thursday lunch will be catered, no need to buy your own. There will be light snacks served Thursday evening and a wine and cheese reception on Friday evening, Oct 12. A detailed schedule of these evening events as well as your panel assignment and co-panelists will be provided soon. We recommend that you book your flight so that you will arrive in LA Wednesday evening. A flight arriving Thursday morning would be risky.

 
3. For those using audiovisual equipment (Powerpoint presentation, film clips, etc.),  bring both your laptop and USB key with your presentation on it in case your system is incompatible with ours. 

 
4. Since we have an especially full schedule, we ask you to please limit your presentation to 15-20 minutes. This means papers should be no longer than 6-8 pages. We will have to enforce this rule in order for the conference to run smoothly.  If possible, please send us your paper in advance so that our panel moderators will be able to better assist in fielding questions from the audience and generating a discussion among your fellow panelists.

5. We recommend reserving accommodations at the UCLA Guest House, located on campus. To book a room, call (310) 824-2925. The Claremont Hotel offers reasonable rates ($77/night) and is located within walking distance of campus. http://www.claremonthotel.net/index.html. They do not accept reservations by email. You can reach them by phone at: (310) 208-5957. The blue line bus (locally known as "the big blue bus") based in Santa Monica provides easy access to campus if you want to stay near the beach. Lines 1,2,3,8, and 12 serve UCLA. To map your route, visit http://bigbluebus.com/. The Best Western Gateway Hotel (http://www.gatewayhotel.com/) and Hotel Carmel (http://www.hotelcarmel.com/) are good options for staying in Santa Monica. There is also the American Youth Hostel (http://hiusa.org/santamonica/directions/), only two blocks from the boardwalk.

6. Cab fare from LAX airport to UCLA and Santa Monica typically runs about $40-45 one way. There is a shuttle called the Westwood Flyaway that picks up passengers at LAX a one to two times every hour depending on the time of day. It costs $10 (one way) and drops you off near Kinross Ave and Westwood Blvd. http://www.lawa.org/welcome_lax.aspx?id=4698. From there, UCLA is only a ten minute walk up Westwood Blvd in the direction of Weyburn and LeConte Avenues. 

7. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us via e-mail: uclafrenchgradconference2012@gmail.com. There is a small possibility that graduate colleagues within our department would be willing to be hosts if for whatever reason hotel accommodations near UCLA are not an option for you. In case of an emergency or last-minute cancellation, please contact one of us directly (Lauren, 843-801-2031).

We look forward to having you with us very soon!

Sincerely,
The 2012 UCLA Graduate Student Conference Organizers

Call for Papers Announced!

 17th Annual French & Francophone Studies Graduate Student Conference at UCLA

 October 11-12, 2012

Keynote speaker: Professor Jean-Marie Apostolidès

Plenary session: TBA

Deadline for Submission: April 30, 2012

Spectacle and Spectator: Ways of Seeing and Being Seen

SPECTACULUM [Latin, 13thc.]: “un ensemble de choses qui s'offre au regard”

Spec : to look, to watch (spectre, speculum, spectator)

 In 1969, the French President Georges Pompidou initiated a project for a national arts museum in the historical center of Paris. Architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers won the competition to design the world’s first transparent museum. Their concept depicted the museum design itself by exhibiting the entire infrastructure of the building. According to Rogers, transparency in architecture “is comparable to the concept of transparency in the

organization of a society, and therefore to democracy and openness, to the rupture of ancient hierarchies traditionally hidden behind masonry walls.” A further important element was the architects’ intention to create a meeting space for the museum-goer as well as for the local residents at the piazza in front of the museum. Le Centre Pompidou represents the architecture of seeing.

Competition drawing by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano. [http://www.archdaily.com/64028/ad-classics-centre-georges-pompidou-renzo-piano-richard-rogers/competition-drawings/]

For the 17th annual Graduate Student Conference, the UCLA Department of French

and Francophone Studies invites submissions that explore the relationships between spectator and spectatorship in literature and arts. How do we organize ourselves en masse to experience culture? One way to provide answers to this question is to examine the nature of perception and presentation of various aesthetic experiences ranging from literature, theater, and cinema to bandes dessinées and artist’s books. We welcome submissions on French and Francophone topics from a variety of disciplines. Please email a 300-500 word abstract (in English or French), along with your paper title, affiliation and contact information to uclafrenchgradconference2012@gmail.com. Papers should be no more than 20 minutes in length. Deadline for submission is April 30, 2012. 

Possible topics might include but are not limited to:

PERSONAL SPECTACLE

-­‐ La mise en scène du moi, autobiography, life-writing, testimony

-­‐ Vision, hallucination, blindness

-­‐ Travel narrative, migration, flanerie

-­‐ Romanticism and “le spectacle de la nature,” the scenic

-­‐ Personnage versus persona, masks, mirrors, portraiture, theatricality

POLITICAL SPECTACLE

-­‐ French Revolutions (1789, 1848, 1871), interwar France, May 68

-­‐ Violence, protest, state terror, war, 17 octobre 1961, lieux de mémoire

-­‐ 2012 French election, political scandal, mass campaigns, satire, parody

-­‐ Myth, ritual, (trans)nationalism, nationhood

SPECTACLE AND SOCIETY

-­‐ Theories of the individual, theories of the collective

-­‐ Court society, salons, festivals, street-theatre

-­‐ Industrial and post-industrial consumerism and display, mass media

-­‐ Critics, the senses, synaesthesia, aesthetics, virtuality

-­‐ Medieval theatricality and spectatorship

N.B.:   A selection of papers presented during the conference will be edited into a published collection of essays in the UCLA French Department's graduate journal, Paroles gelées.  To view previous issues, visit us at: http://gsa.asucla.ucla.edu/services/publications/paroles-­‐gelees.