Conference: Crossing Frontiers/ La Traversée des Frontières

March 27, 2018

By Michael Morand

Full information and registration details: https://benjaminfondane.wixsite.com/mysite

CROSSING FRONTIERS EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY, POETRY, AND VISUAL ARTS IN THE WORKS OF BENJAMIN FONDANE

 APRIL 19-20, 2018

Keynote Speaker:

Prof. Kevin Hart, Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies, University of Virginia

THURSDAY, APRIL 19

Panel 1:  Philosophy and Poetry I

11.00-12.30 
Room B 38-39

Chair: Alice Kaplan (Yale University)

Bruce Baugh (Thompson Rivers University), “Benjamin Fondane: From Poetry to a Philosophy of Becoming”                  

Olivier Salazar-Ferrer (University of Glasgow), “Revolt and Finitude in the Representation of Odyssey”

Michel Carassou (Association Benjamin Fondane), “De Charlot à Isaac Laquedem. Figures de l’émigrant dans l’œuvre de Benjamin Fondane” [in French]

Lunch in New Haven

12.30-14.30

Panel 2: Philosophy and Poetry II

14.30-16.00

Room B 38-39

Chair: Maurice Samuels (Yale University)

Alexander Dickow (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), “Rhetorical Impurity in Benjamin Fondane’s Poetic and Philosophical Works”

Cosana Eram (University of the Pacific),  “Consciousness in the Abyss: Benjamin Fondane and the Modern World”

Chantal Ringuet (Brandeis University), “A World Upside Down: Marc Chagall’s Yiddish Paradise According to Benjamin Fondane”

Keynote

16.15

Prof. Kevin Hart, “’Did Reason Ever Go Mad?’: Shestov, Fondane, Husserl, and a Little Beyond.” Introduced by Ramona Fotiade (University of Virginia)

Reception on the Beinecke Library Mezzanine

17.30

Dinner for Speakers

19.00

FRIDAY, APRIL 20

Screening of Short Film from the Fortunoff Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

9.30-10.15

Room B 38-39

Introduced by Stephen Naron, Director of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

Coffee break

10.15-10.45

Panel 3: Visual Arts

10.45-12.15

Room B 38-39

Chair: Julia Elsky (Loyola University Chicago)

Nadja Cohen (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), “The Cinema as école d’intranquillité ​in Fondane’s Poetry and Thought”      

Ramona Fotiade (University of Glasgow), “Benjamin Fondane’s Pictures of the Mind: Dada Cinema and Existential Philosophy”

Eric Freedman (Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights Research, Cardozo School of Law), “Benjamin Fondane’s Ghosts in Maule’s Well”

Lunch in New Haven

12.15-14.15

Panel 4: Philosophy and Religion

14.15-15.45

Room B 38-39

Chair: Eliyahu Stern (Yale University)

Joseph Acquisto (University of Vermont), “Evil, Knowledge, and Ethics Between Philosophy and Theology in Fondane and Baudelaire”

Benjamin Guerin (Independent Scholar), “Crossing Religious Frontiers: B. Fondane’s Philosophical Discussions During the 1930s”

Joel Swanson (University of Chicago Divinity School), “Screaming as a Form of Prayer: Kabbalah in the Works of Benjamin Fondane”

“Crossing Frontiers” has been made possible by generous donations from the following donors:

            Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University

Judaic Studies Program, Yale University

Department of French, Yale University

The conference has been organized in conjunction with the Association Benjamin Fondane (Paris) and the Lev Shestov Studies Society (University of Glasgow)