News
Celebrating 500 years of Machiavelli's "Mandrake"
October 15, 2018
On October 12-13, 2018, the University of Wisconsin-Madison hosted a number of world-renowned scholars, who traveled from all over the country to convene on campus in honor of the 500th anniversary of Niccolò Machiavelli’s 16th century comedy, The Mandrake. The Symposium was organized by Professor of Italian and Art History, Dr. Kristin Phillips-Court, whose own research focuses on Machiavelli and the visual arts, among other topics. The event was generously sponsored by the Department of French & Italian, along with the Anonymous Fund, the Institute for Research in the Humanities, and the Departments of Art History and Integrated Liberal Studies.
“On Human Nature: Machiavelli’s Mandrake at 500” explored many themes over the course of the two-day event, including sickness and medicine, manipulation and flattery, politics and power, and religion and ritual. Scholars from universities such as Dartmouth, University of Washington-Seattle, Brown, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, Yale, and Notre Dame joined colleagues at UW-Madison to revisit established interpretations of Machiavelli’s famous play, and to posit new venues for exploration. The Department of French & Italian is honored to have had a role in this important intellectual endeavor!
French House to Celebrate 100 Years
September 19, 2018
Have you heard? The French House is turning 100! With more than 2000 undergraduate residents over the years, scores of conferences and lectures hosted, and who knows how many baguettes and boeuf bourguignons enjoyed, what was once just the clever idea of a few forward-thinking professors has blossomed into a Madison landmark. Celebrations began in January and will conclude with a Centennial Gala on Friday, October 19 at the Memorial Union Great Hall. Join alumni and friends of the French House to honor the past 100 years and look forward to the next century of French language and francophone culture in Madison. To register, visit uwfrenchhouse.org. Au plaisir de vous avoir parmi nous!
Yves Citton visits FRIT for Hilldale Lecture in the Arts and Humanities
September 5, 2018
In April 2018, the Department of French and Italian hosted Professor Yves Citton who presented the 2018 Hilldale Lecture in the Arts & Humanities entitled “The Humanities as Arts of Attention in the Age of Computational Mediarchy.” In his lecture, Yves Citton analyzes how digital and computational technologies reconfigure our collective attentions. He presents the Humanities as arts of collective embodied attention which can orient and steer the techniques of automated attention currently mobilized through computational assemblages. Citton's lecture is now available online . Citton is professor of French Literature at the Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis. Co-editor of the journal Multitudes, his latest publication is Médiarchie (Paris, Seuil, 2017).