The Fabric of Citizenship: seminar series
50 years since May 1968! Events are buzzing to celebrate the anniversary of the protests, and the Book Office would like to share an angle of approach explored by the Higher Education, Research and Innovation department of the French Embassy, the Institut français du Royaume-Uni and King's College London: a series of seminar highlighting the writing of national narratives and the fabric of citizenship.
English and French researchers are taking part in this series of talks on Franco-British culture, history, and theory, kick-started on the Night of Ideas 2018 where researchers discussed the idea of revolution and the myths behind it.
Take out your diaries and have a look at the programme!
It took 50 years to the French government to acknowledge the implication of the State machinery in the worst consequences of collaboration with the Third Reich. Is the remembrance of this dark past today mostly considered as masochistic and an insult to the glorious past of France? Is this everlasting memory of 1940 to 1944 so doomed it cannot be treated as what it is, a page of history?
Discussion with Polytechnicien and Enarque Marc Olivier Baruch (Professor of history at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris) and Richard Vinen (Professor of history at King’s College).
26 March, Institut français
A special Franco-British conversation about leading figures of our shared history, in the presence of Tristan Mendès France who discusses his grandfather Pierre Mendès France’s special connection with Britain. Rare family archives are to be displayed on this occasion.
Historians Richard Toye and Christian Destremau will then examine Winston Churchill’s relationship to France and Europe, and the different narratives that have been built since.
18 April, Institut français
On the occasion of the publication in paperback of Stefan Collini’s Common Writing: Essays on Literary Culture and Public Debates, join Stefan Collini, Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature (Cambridge), and Adam Phillips, psychotherapist, essayist and journalist, author of In Writing (Hamish Hamilton, 2017) who will discuss the relations between literary/intellectual culture and public debate in Britain and France from the 1920s to the present.
23 April, Institut français
This conference brings together artists, scholars, and witnesses from the UK and France with a view to interrogating and evaluating May 1968 in 2018. How has the revolution aged? How have the intervening five decades refracted the histories, identities, memories, and representations of May 1968? Which languages and media help us make sense of its legacies? What frameworks do we need to think through its ongoing appropriations? Or is it time to forget May 1968 and move on?
This interdisciplinary conference hosted by King’s College London in partnership with the Université Paris Diderot, the Institut Français du Royaume-Uni, the Embassy of France, and the National Archives.
May 2 to 5, King's College London
Leading figures of children’s illustration, such as Axel Scheffler, Stephanie Blake, Claude K. Dubois and Patrick George give us their vision of Europe in this exhibition. This pan-European initiative was launched in 2017 by German publisher Moritz Verlag during the Frankfurt Book Fair, in order to demonstrate the kind of community, solidarity and cooperation that make the EU today.
Join Axel Scheffler on Europe Day, on 9 May for a special tour of the exhibition, followed by a talk on European citizenship with Alexander Freiherr Knigge (Pulse of Europe) and Kalypso Nicolaidis (Centre for International Studies, Oxford University).
May 9, Institut français
Part of our Beyond Words Festival, this exhibition of works by late French photographer Philippe Gras tells the story of May ’68, fifty years after the event, translating the passions of the moment, the joyfulness that striking students and workers frequently displayed.
May 14, Institut français
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