Equinoxes: “Initiations: Savoir Apprendre / À prendre” The Department of French Studies at Brown University Announces its Ninth Annual Graduate Conference March 8-9, 2002

We invite graduate students to present 15-minute papers relevant to the theme of Initiation as it pertains to the appropriation and dissemination of knowledge at the individual or collective level. While the topic supports a broad approach, we hope to focus on knowledge as commodity in the educational economy, initiation as introduction into an elite, and the complex relational dynamics at work in the academy. We welcome submissions that treat French and Francophone forms of artistic expression, as well as broader sociological or theoretical issues, from the Middle Ages to the present and into the future.

Topics addressed may include, but will not be limited to, the following:

• Power & Passion in the Student / Teacher Dialectic
• The Colonial Experience
• Traités Poétiques: Formation Littéraire
• Inculcation & Indoctrination
• Myths, Fables & other Instructive Tales
• Representations of Educational Processes in Literature and Film
• Bildungsroman
• Récits Initiatiques
• Manuels de Politesse au XVIIe
• The Pedagogue: Innovator or Conformist
• Rites of Passage
• Miseducation / Teaching Ignorance
• The Preface: An Instructional Meta-Text
• Gender and Teaching

Papers may be presented in French or English.

Please send one-page abstracts by January 15, 2002 to Adele_Parker@brown.edu Address all queries to Claudia_Esposito@brown.edu