Pierre Sauvage
Documentary Filmmaker, Chambon Foundation
“Weapons of the Spirit”
October 11, 2006, Lang Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.
“Americans Who Cared”
October 12, 2006, Sabin 102, 7:00 p.m.
Pierre Sauvage will present his prize-winning 1989 documentary “Weapons of the Spirit” on the French village of Le Chambon during the Nazi occupation. In and around Le Chambon, 5,000 Jews were sheltered by 5,000 Christians. Sauvage and his parents were among the rescued.
In “Americans Who Cared,” Sauvage presents excerpts from his upcoming documentary “And Crown Thy Good: Varian Fry in Marseille,” 2006. Fry was a New York intellectual who in 1940-41 ran the most successful private American rescue operation of those challenging times, helping to save some 2,000 people. Miriam Davenport Ebel, a member of Fry’s rescue team and a long-term Iowa resident, will also be featured in this film.
Pierre Sauvage, born in Le Chambon, a small village in south-central France, is a child survivor of the Holocaust, and an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. In 1982 he founded the non-profit educational Chambon Foundation whose mission is to explore and communicate “the necessary and challenging lessons of hope intertwined with the Holocaust’s unavoidable lessons of despair.”
Mr. Sauvage serves as president of the Chambon Foundation and its division, the Varian Fry Institute, established in 2005. [Sources: Chambon Foundation http://www.chambon.org; Varian Fry Institute http://www.varianfry.org].
These events are also part of the UNI Holocaust Remembrance and Education Program. For more info see www.uni.edu/holocaust.
Ruth Kluger
Professor Emerita of German Literature at the University of California – Irvine, Holocaust Survivor
“Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered”
November 14, 2006, Lang Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.
Ruth Kluger will read from her internationally acclaimed memoir, “Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered” (2001), an English version of the German weiter leben. Eine Jugend (1992). Kluger provides a powerful account of her experiences during and after the Holocaust, such as the anti-Semitism in Vienna, her years in the concentration camps, her escape, and her struggle to establish a life as a refugee survivor after emigrating to the U.S. in 1947. Her memoir has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Czech, Japanese, and Portuguese.
Ruth Kluger is professor emerita of German literature at the University of California, Irvine. She previously taught at the University of Virginia, was Chair of the German Department at the University of Princeton, and has been a guest professor at the University of Göttingen, Germany and the University of Vienna, Austria. She is a highly accomplished scholar and book author in German literature and literary criticism, including feminist and gender studies. Selected publications are Katastrophen. Über deutsche Literatur. Essays (1994), Frauen lesen anders. Essays (1996), Von hoher und niedriger Literatur. Bonner Poetik-Vorlesung (1996), Dichter und Historiker: Fakten und Fiktionen, Wiener Vorlesungen (2000), Schnitzlers Damen, Weiber, Mädeln, Frauen. Wiener Vorlesungen (2001), Alte Menschen in der Literatur (2003), Gelesene Wirklichkeit. Faktion und Fiktionen in der Literatur. Essays (2006).
Ruth Kluger has received numerous distinguished awards and honors, such as the Heinrich-Heine Preis (1997), Österreichischer Staatspreis für Literaturkritik (1998), Prix de la Shoah (Paris 1998), and Honorary Doctorate of the University of Göttingen (2003). She is also a member of the prestigious Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung.
This event is also part of the UNI Holocaust Remembrance and Education Program. For more info see www.uni.edu/holocaust.
Ilan Stavans
Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture and Five College 40th Anniversary Professor at Amherst College
“Who Owns the English Language?"
February 21, 2007, Lang Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.
In his presentation, Ilan Stavans will reflect on the history of the English language, the various language registers, and the tension between language purists and experimentalists. He will also talk about English as a language shaped by successive outward and inward immigrations.
Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture and Five College 40th Anniversary Professor at Amherst College. His books include The Hispanic Condition (1995), The Riddle of Cantinflas (1997), On Borrowed Words (2001), Spanglish (2003), Dictionary Days (2005), and The Disappearance (2006). He is the editor of, among other works, The Oxford Book of Latin American Essays (1998), The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (2003), the 4-volume Encyclopedia Latina (2005), and Lengua Fresca (2006). He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Latino Hall of Fame Award, Chile’s Presidential Medal, the Rubén Darío Medal, and the National Jewish Book Award. Routledge published The Essential Ilan Stavans in 2000 and University of Wisconsin Press brought out Ilan Stavans: Eight Conversations, by Neal Sokol, in 2004. His œuvre has been translated into a dozen languages.
For more info see http://www.amherst.edu/~facultyprofiles/stavans_ilan.html
February 9, 10:00 a.m.
Live radio interview with Ilan Stavans on KHKE.
http://www.khke.org/
T. R. Reid
Washington Post’s Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief
“The United States of America and the United States of Europe”
March 5, 2007, Lang Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.
T. R. Reid will discuss the state of the European Union and its political, economic, and social implications for the United States: At the dawn of the 21st century, a geo-political revolution has swept the continent of Europe. Some 480 million people in 27 countries have come together to form a federal union with a president, a parliament, a supreme court, a bill of rights, and a common currency. The goal was to end Europe's lethal pattern of recurring warfare; so far, the experiment in peace has been successful. But the Europeans have also created the world's biggest single market, with more people, more wealth, more trade, and far more foreign aid donations to developing nations than the USA. Europe is betting that it can become a global superpower -- without military force.
T. R. Reid, the Washington Post’s Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief, has become one of the nation’s best-known correspondents through his coverage of global affairs for the Post, his books and films, and his light-hearted commentaries on National Public Radio.
Reid took a roundabout path to the Post. He majored in Classics at Princeton University, and subsequently worked as a teacher, naval officer during the Vietnam War, lawyer, and at a few other jobs along the way. At the Washington Post, he has covered Congress, national politics, and four presidential campaigns. He has spent most of the past decade overseas, as the paper’s bureau chief in Tokyo and in London. He has reported from three dozen countries on four continents.
Reid has written and hosted documentary films for National Geographic TV, for PBS, and for the A&E network. He is a regular commentator on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.” He has served as a visiting professor at Colorado College and the University of Michigan. He has been a board member at Princeton University, the University of Colorado Medical School, and a number of community organizations and schools.
T. R. Reid has written six books in English and three in Japanese, and translated one book from the Japanese. His latest book, The United States of Europe, was published by The Penguin Press in November, 2004, and quickly became a national best-seller. [Source: Washington Post, Public Relations Department].
February 26, 10:00 a.m.
Live radio interview with T.R. Reid on KHKE.
http://www.khke.org/
All events are free and open to the public.
For more information on these events, contact:
Siegrun Wildner, Chair
Meryl Norton Hearst Lecture Series Committee
Department of Modern Languages
University of Northern Iowa
Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0504
siegrun.wildner@uni.edu, 319-273-7131.
Funding for this series is provided by the Meryl Norton Hearst Chair in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, with additional support from the Department of Modern Languages, the Department of Communications Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, and the College of Business Administration at the University of Northern Iowa.
Sponsered by the Department of Modern Languages under the auspices of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts at UNI. |
