8th International Conference
Emile Zola and Naturalism
5th International Film Festival

In Memory of Monique Fol

October 7-9, 1999

hosted by

Organizers:

Prof. Anna Gural-Migdal, President of the AIZEN, (University of Alberta, Canada)
Prof. Robert Singer, Vice President of the AIZEN, (Kingsborough Community College, CUNY, USA)
Assistant to organizers: Dr. Carolyn Snipes-Hoyt, Secretary of the AIZEN, (University of Alberta, Canada)

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7

Drew Limsky (New York University, USA), "Sexual Warfare in Naturalist Cinema: The Films of Todd Solondz and Neil LaBute"

Monty Kosbial Ernst (Fairfield University, USA), "Beyond the Limitations of Form: Dreiser from Sister Carrie to An American Tragedy"

Lawrence Hussman (Wright State University, USA), "Doomed Desire and Existential Ethics in American Fiction from Naturalism to Postmodernism"

11:45-1:00 PM LUNCH AND OPENING SPEECHES:
Statler Wing, Pierre Coste Room

Robert Singer, Vice President of the AIZEN

Jacquelyn W. Green, Chair, Foreign Language Department, City College of San Francisco

Bruce Smith, Dean, School of Liberal Arts, City College of San Francisco

Emmanuel Delloye, Consulat Général de France, San Francisco

Anna Gural-Migdal, President of the AIZEN

Section B

1:15-2:15 PM, Room 301

Eric Cahm (Université de Tours, France), "Zola, the Dreyfus Affair and North American Opinion in 1898"

Lorraine Beitler (Beitler Family Foundation, USA), "An American Theatrical Response to the Dreyfus Affair from the Collections of the Beitler Family Foundation"

Section C

2:15-3:45 PM, Room 301

Evlyn Gould (University of Oregon, Eugene, USA), "Educating Consumers in Au Bonheur des Dames and Vérité"

Renée Kingcaid (Saint Mary’s College, USA), "Of Polars and Polarités: The Creation of the Citizen-Reader in Zola’s Vérité"

Katrina Perry (University of Richmond, USA), "L’encre et le lait: Writing the Future in Fécondité"

Fernando Barroso (James Madison University, USA), "La Pardo Bazan y su vision del Naturalismo"

Gayle Roof Nunley (University of Vermont, USA), "Modelling French Culture in Blasco Ibáñez’s Early Works"

Duane Hodges Bell (University of Arizona, USA), "Observaciones sobre el naturalismo zoliano en Arroz y tartana de Vicente Blasco Ibáñez"

Rosemary Peters-Crick (Harvard University, USA), "Origins of the Criminal Species: Sue to Zola"

Marie-Sophie Armstrong (Lehigh University, USA), "Intertexte et Psychotexte: Zola, Hugo et Germinal"

Bernadette Lintz (Colgate University, USA), "De ‘Nox’ à ‘Lux’: parcours parodiques hugoliens dans Nana"

Jennifer K. Wolter (Ohio State University, Columbus, USA), "Viewing Au Bonheur des Dames in the context of Occupied France"

Katherine Golsan (University of the Pacific, USA), "From Theater to Cinema: Jean Renoir’s Nana (1926)"

Section G

2:15-3:45 PM, Room 304

Scott Sprenger (Brigham Young University, USA), "The Logic of Failed Union in Zola’s Thérèse Raquin"

Silvia Iankova (University of Toronto, Canada), "La Figure de la machine dans La Bête humaine"

Mihaela Marin (Ohio State University, Columbus, USA), "La ville structuraliste de Zola: urbanisme et architecture romanesque dans L’Assommoir"

3:45-4:00 PM BREAK

Section H

4:00-5:30 PM, ROOM 304

Yvonne Bargues-Rollins (North Carolina State University, USA), "Il était une fois un pauvre homme: Le Ventre de Paris"

Leslie Ann Minot (University of California, Berkeley, USA), "Dangerous Witnesses: Zola’s Children"

Carmen Mayer-Robin (University of Oregon, Eugene, USA), "The Formidable Flow of Milk Le Docteur Pascal and Fécondité: Two Feminine Allegories for the ‘République en Marche’"

6:45-9:45 PM, Room 301

Regeneration (Raoul Walsh, 1915, USA, 72 min)

This nearly lost silent film, which has been beautifully restored, is a grim and realistic look into the lives of the inhabitants of old New York--immigrants, drunkards, criminals--and slum environments. Based on the autobiography of a turn-of-the-century gangster, Regeneration occasionally lapses into the formula-melodrama, yet it is justifiably read as a seminal Naturalist silent film text for its insistence on milieu and character.

Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962, Italy, 110 min)

In this rare and censored film, Magnani stars as an ex-prostitute trying to escape her past and build a new life for herself and her teenage son. The city of postwar Rome tempts her son into a life of criminal behavior, and then her ex-pimp returns. One of the best postwar Naturalist film texts!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8

Susan Barrow (CUNY Graduate Center, USA), "Zola’s Images of the Parisian Floating World: the Japoniste Landscape of Une Page d’amour"

Jurate Kaminskas (Queen’s University, Canada), "La Débâcle pour une représentation de la guerre de 1870"

Jack D. Street (Beloit College, USA), "The Cinematic, the Visual and Scarcely perceptible Movements in Emile Zola’s La Bête humaine"

10:00-10:15 AM BREAK

Section J

10:15-11:45 AM, Room 301

Michelle Koenen (New York University, USA), "Uncovering Zola’s Banquets"

Elizabeth Emery (Montclair State University, USA), "Dying to taste: Ambiguous Appetites in Zola’s Rome"

Juliana Starr (Christian Brothers University, USA), "Voracious Vixens: Women and Culinary Problems in Three Novels by J.-K. Huysmans"

11:45-12:45 PM LUNCH

Guest Speaker: Jeanne Campbell Reesman (University of Texas, San Antonio, USA), "Socialism and Race in the Fiction of Jack London"

Section L

1:15-3:15 PM, Room 301

Chantal Morel (Institut Français de Londres, UK) "Fécondité. A Fruitful Reception in the UK?"

Denise Merkle (Université de Moncton, Canada), "Quel fut l’apport de Nana ‘en expurgation victorienne’ au système littéraire britannique?"

Francis Lacoste (Université de Sousse, Tunisia), "Barbey d’Aurevilly lecteur de Zola: une dénonciation ambiguë?"

Zlitni Hichem (Université de Sfax, Tunisia), "Zola vu par Flaubert: une admiration nuancée"

3:15-3:30 PM BREAK

Ellen Mayock (Washington and Lee University, USA), "Naturalist Ambience in Zola’s L’Assommoir and Gamboa’s Santa"

Oswaldo Voysest (Beloit College, USA), "Love and Self-Denial in Mercedes Cabello’s Las Consecuencias: An Exemple of Sentimentality and Racial Divide in Peruvian Naturalism"

John Paul Spicer-Escalante (Hope College, USA), "Naturalism’s Paradigms of Self and Nationhood in Eugenio Cambaceres’ Sin rumbo"

Marie-Françoise Delaneuville-Shideler (Carleton University, Canada), "Persuasion et dysfonction familiale dans Le Docteur Pascal d’Emile Zola, et Jennie Gerhardt de Theodore Dreiser"

James C. Madden (University of Illinois, Urbana, USA), "Enfants terribles: Figures of Transgression in Emile Zola and Marie-Claire Blais"

Gilbert Darbouze (Bloomsburg University, USA), "La Prostituée et le Ministre: Transgression et châtiment dans Nana d’Emile Zola et Le Bel immonde de Vumbi-Yoka Mudimbé"

Ada Giusti (Montana State University, Bozeman, USA), "La misère humaine dans l’oeuvre de Zola: Histoire du XIXème siècle ou histoire contemporaine?"

Gary Smith (University of Toronto, Canada), "Zola and the Polemical Approach to Law Reform"

Jean-Philippe Mathy (University of Illinois, Urbana, USA), "La mémoire du dreyfusisme: Zola, Bourdieu et la République"

11:45-12:45 PM LUNCH

Ian F. Roberts (Missouri Western State College, USA), "Un/Civil Discourse: Jack London’s Representation of the City"

Isabelle Schaffner (Université de Paris III, France), "The City as Matter in Movement in La Curée and The Pit"

Mary E. Wolf (New Mexico State University, USA), "Workers and Immigrants in Fin-de-Siècle France: Zola’s Goutte d’or"

Amy Reid (New College of the University of South Florida, USA), "Talking Back: The Voices of Working-class Women in Huysmans’ Naturalist Novels"

3:15-3:30 PM BREAK

Section Q

3:30-5:00 PM, ROOM 304

Elizabeth Lanois (Maryville College, USA), "Spatial Limits: Emile Zola’s La Curée"

Carolyn Snipes-Hoyt (University of Alberta, Canada), "La femme cuirassée chez Zola et Huysmans"

Christian Mbarga (Johns Hopkins University, USA), "Hommes et femmes: l’enjeu du pouvoir dans les Rougon-Macquart"

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9

Leonard R. Koos (Mary Washington College, USA), "Touchy Subjects: Naturalist Influence and/or Naturalist Parody in Paul Bonnetains’s Charlot s’amuse..."

Philippe Chavasse (Southern Illinois University, USA), "Deux points de vue "décadents" sur le Naturalisme: Bourget et Wilde"

Didier Maleuvre (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA), "Philosophy in a Naturalist Setting"

Holly Woodson Waddell (Northwestern University, USA), "Au Bonheur des Dames: ‘La misère en robe de soie’"

Eleanor Salotto (Sweet Briar College, USA), "Shopping for an ‘I’: Zola’s the Ladies’ Paradise and the Spectacle of Identity"




From left: Carmen Mayer-Robin, recipient of the Aizen Award, 1999; her dissertation supervisor, Evelyn Gould.

Naturalist Film Festival

12:45-1:30 PM, Room 301
Just Another Girl on the IRT (Leslie Harris, 1993, USA, 97 min)

A Naturalist film about a black teenage girl living in a housing project in contemporary Brooklyn. Her experiences in school, on the street, and by herself reveal a complex and contradictory disposition. The performances and location shots in Harris’s film are powerful!

12:45-2:30 PM, Room 304Gravesend (Salvatore Stabile, 1997, USA, 90 min)
Gravesend (Salvatore Stabile, 1997, USA, 90 min)

This recent Naturalist urban film text is fiercely original and detailed; it takes Scorsese’s Mean Streets one block further. Produced in the white ghettos of Brooklyn, Gravesend examines the lives of the working-class, disaffected youth of the other "’hood." The introduction of drugs, violence, and a criminal code of conduct underscores the aimlessness of the lives of these four young men.

Astrid Weigert (Georgetown University, USA), "Gender-Arts-Science: Elsa Bernstein’s Critique of Naturalist Aesthetics"

Jennifer Askey (Washington University, USA), "I read it secretly: Clara Viebig’s Struggle with Naturalism"

Robert B. McFarland (University of California, Berkely, USA), "From Zola’s Milieu to Zille’s Milljoeh: Berlin and the spaces of Naturalism"

Kerstin Gaddy (Catholic University of America, USA), "Contemporary Reality in Hauptmann’s Vor Sonnenaufgang: Helen’s Struggle for Emancipation"

Norman Roessler (University of Pennsylvania, USA), "Exploring the Dynamics of Wax-Work Cabinets: Naturalist Theater and the Bourgeois Carnavalization of History"