August 24, 2005
Spring 2005 Simone de Beauvoir Circle Newsletter
Simone de Beauvoir Circle
Spring 2005 Newsletter
Simone de Beauvoir Circle Board of Officers
Kristana Arp
Nancy Bauer
Laura Hengehold
Margaret A. Simons
Past Board Members
Barbara S. Andrew
Julie K. Ward
IN THIS ISSUE:
Announcements, New/Forthcoming Publications
Announcements:
Caroline Lundquist has established a website where scholars interested in Beauvoir can let Random House/Knopf know how important it is that The Second Sex be retranslated into English and published in its entirety. The online petition is available here: PETITION and is very easy to sign. Please let the publisher know that there is a market for a new translation, and please forward this email to colleagues, grad students, and friends who will be supportive of this project, encouraging them to add their signatures! Any questions about the petition process can be directed to Caroline at
The first volume of Beauvoir’s Philosophical Writings, ed. Margaret A. Simons with Marybeth Timmerman and Mary Beth Mader, is now available from University of Illinois Press. See http://www.press.uillinois.edu/f04/beauvoir.html to order for your library. If someone would like to write a review of Beauvoir's Philosophical Writings or knows of a journal that might be interested in reviewing the volume, please contact Margaret Simons (msimons@siue.edu) so that she can have University of Illinois Press forward review copies to the appropriate parties. She would also like to hear from anyone with ideas for conference program sessions addressing possible controversies raised by these early essays of Beauvoir’s.
Reports:
The Simone de Beauvoir Circle heard papers by Andrea Veltman (York University) and Julie K. Ward (Loyola University of Chicago), with a comment by Jean Tan (Loyola University of Chicago) at the Central Division APA last month. Veltman argued that the notion of “transcendence” at work in The Second Sex is neither metaphysical nor Sartrean, because it involves constructive activity as well as consciousness. Understanding Beauvoir’s belief in the normative value of constructive activity allows us to explain her critique of institutions like maternity and housework. Ward compares feminist analyses of the “female viewer” seduced or occluded in traditional film to the phenomenon of “feminine narcissism” described in The Second Sex, suggesting that Beauvoir’s concept of the gaze does not require female viewers to either identify with a masculine position or to identify with passive objects of male action. In her responses to both papers, Tan argued the merits of prioritizing ambiguity over transcendence in Beauvoirian ethics and in a normatively feminist film criticism. She also situated the kind of narcissism troubling Beauvoir, Veltman and Ward – narcissistic identification with a passive image or object such as a doll – with respect to other forms of narcisissm or “doubling” discussed in Beauvoir’s psychoanalytic sources.
New/Forthcoming Publications:
Susan Bainbrigge. Writing Against Death: The Autobiographies of Simone de Beauvoir. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2005. ISBN 9042018453, $68.00. This study explores Beauvoir’s autobiographical oeuvre using the notion of “autothanatography” found in writers such as Derrida and Louis Marin, bringing questions of gender to bear on these and other understandings of autobiography as a literary genre. [see www.amazon.com]
Galster, Ingrid, ed. Le Deuxième Sexe de Simone de Beauvoir. Le Livre Fondateur du Feminisme Moderne en Situation. Éditions Honoré Champion, 2004. ISBN 2745311069, 55 Euros. This 520 page collection analyzing the past and present relevance of Le Deuxième Sexe, chapter by chapter, includes contributions by numerous international feminist philosophers, historians and sociologists, including Élizabeth Badinter, Geneviève Fraisse, Eva Gothlin, Michèle le Doeuff, Françoise Heritier, Kate Millet, Naomi Schor, Margaret Simons, Susan Rubin Suleiman, and more. [see www.honorechampion.com]
Hazel Rowley. Tête-a-Tête: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Harpercollins, October 2005. ISBN 0060520590, hardcover, $26.95. Noted biographer of Richard Wright and Australian writer Christina Stead explores the psychology and mythology of their relationship using new primary source materials. [http://www.harpercollins.com/subrights/London2005RightsGuide_Web.pdf]
Sally J. Scholz and Shannon M. Mussett, eds. The Contradictions of Freedom: Philosophical Essays on Simone de Beauvoir’s The Mandarins. SUNY Press, October 2005. ISBN 0791465608, paper, $25.95. Contributors include Peg Brand, Thomas W. Busch, Eleanore Holveck, Sonia Kruks, William L. McBride, Jen McWeeny, Shannon M. Mussett, Sally J. Scholz, Ursula Tidd, Karen Vintges, and Gail Weiss. [see www.sunypress.edu]
Please contact Laura Hengehold (laura.hengehold@case.edu) at Case Western Reserve University if you want to share announcements or information about new publications with other members of the SDB Circle, or update our mailing list.
August 22, 2005
Sept 15 - Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Thurs, Sept. 15, 11:30 am, Severance Hall
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. presents the Anisfield-Wolf Lecture
"Pursuing a Dream: W.E.B. Dubois and His Encyclopedia"
To register for the event, see registration. For more information, see Gates
Sept, 1, 2005 Kidder
Mountains beyond Mountains author Tracy Kidder will talk about work of Paul Farmer at Case’s Fall Convocation
Thursday, Sept. 1, 4:30 pm, Severance Hall. Free and open to the public — although registration is required by visiting convocation
For some of Paul Farmer's books, see Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor and
Infections and Inequalities:The Modern Plagues
For more information about the event, see Kidder