Begag's lecture and site visit for center (fwd)

["Clement M. Henry" <chenry@mail.la.utexas.edu>]

Here is an event that may interest some of you as we will be discussing
the Maghreb at this time - first with Prof. Mounira Charrad the week of
March 19 and then, reading Ali el Kenz, with me on my return the following
week.

*****************************
Clement M. Henry
Professor of Government
University of Texas at Austin
Austin TX 78712
tel 471-5121, fax 471-1061

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 08:44:20 -0600
From: Dina Sherzer <dsherzer@mail.utexas.edu>
To: kwalters@mail.utexas.edu, kapchan@mail.utexas.edu,
        charrad-mail.la.utexas.edu, htissieres@mail.utexas.edu,
        geovet@mail.utexas.edu, chenry@mail.la.utexas.edu
Subject: Begag's lecture and site visit for center

*On March 19 the department of French and Italian will present a lecture
by Azouz Begag, French novelist and Researcher at the CNRS, currently
visiting professor at the Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French
and Francophone Studies at Florida State University in Tallahassee. His
lecture in French is entitled: 'Immigration, humour, écriture' will take
place in Homer Rainey Hall 2.118 at 3.30 PM Tuesday March 19.
Please tell your students.

Azouz Begag is the best known and most prolific author of post-colonial
immigrant origin in France. The son of Algerian immigrants, he is the
author of autobiographical and other narratives which are widely studied
in North American and other anglophone countries as well as in France and
elsewhere in the francophone world. His best known autobiographical
narratives include Le Gone du Chaâba (1986), recently transformed into a
successful feature film, and Béni ou le paradis privé (1989), featuring a
culturally hybrid blend of French, North African and anglophone elements
fused in multi-leveled layers of irony and humor. Keenly attuned to the
cultural and political dynamics of France, North Africa and the
anglophone world, Begag has explored pressing issues of social justice
and identity politics in novels such as Quand on est mort, c'est pour
toute la vie (1995), Les Chiens aussi (1995), Dis oualla! (1997) and Le
Passeport (2000). Alongside his work as an imaginative writer, Begag has
published widely as a professional sociologist and political activist. He
has also held visiting positions at Cornell University and Swarthmore
College, and in the Spring of 2002 is a Visiting Professor at the
Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies
at Florida State University. A researcher with the CNRS in France and
frequent contributor to Le Monde and other media outlets, Begag has
combined grass-roots contacts among minority ethnic groups with an
unusual openness to British and American policy models, challenging
French political élites with his original and often irreverent views.
Frequently cited as an exemplar of the French model of 'integration',
variously courted and criticized by activists from different parts of the
political spectrum, Begag speaks with exceptional authority and clarity
on the complexities and contradictions characterizing the debates over
immigration, 'race' and ethnic relations in France.