More on accommodation in Sheffield

My room is available from February. it's small but nice. the house is located at 20 min walking from the university. Anyway there are go plenty of buses, for the university and for the city centre, at 1min walking from home. There is also a big supermaket at the corner and a lot of shops and restaurant on the main road. Probably a double room will be available from mid february but I'd have to check with my flatmate. I found the house on www.gumtree. com but you will not find pictures very often. At the moment I cannot take pictures of the house because i broke my camera but i'll try to do something.

Lorenza Tiberi

Getting started in Perpignan - part 1

     by Poonam Ganglani

All of us have experiences to share about our first few days in Europe, thoughts that ran through our minds thinking about the enormity of the transition, things we learned right from the start, memories that will always be associated to the beginning of their great Mundus adventure….and here’s mine:

It was an unearthly hour in the morning in India when I looked out the tiny window of my Lufthansa flight, watching the Anna International Airport in Chennai recede farther and farther away, feeling my face harden and a headache begin to develop. I remember exactly how I felt too-It was as if I was standing in front of a huge dark hole (wisps of heterology already in my system)--about to jump in with my eyes closed.

Twelve sleepless hours, seven packets of roasted peanuts, four chatty neighbours, three labyrinth-like airports and two connecting flights later, I was finally here…here at Perpignan, and the last one to drag my heavy luggage out of the Rivesaltes airport and into the BMW taxi that was to take me to my new home at the Cité Universitaire. I looked outside, absorbing my first impressions of the city. Finally I could take a deep breath. This however, was cut short when I reached my destination and my taxi driver grandly announced the taxi fare: “Vingt-cinq euros s’il vous plait madame”. That was my Lesson number one and should be yours as well: Be prepared with cash in hand for the taxi ride, 25 euros when you’re travelling from the airport and 10 euros from the SNCF Gare to the Cité U.

I paid of course, relieved that at least that the most difficult part of the trip was over…that was before I met the people at the Secrétariat, so I suppose my naivety could be excused!

Having successfully heaved my back-breaking luggage up the slope of the Cité U, I planted myself in front of the Accueil at the entrance and requested for the keys of my studio. Here’s the reply I got:

“Ah, mais le secretariat est exceptionellement fermé aujourd’hui!“
And here’s the precise thought that went through my mind at that moment :
“Aaarrrggggghhhhhhhhh!!!!!”

Lesson number two (to be marked in red!!): Mail the concerned people at the Secrétariat about your date and time of arrival before coming to Perpignan so that they can make the proper arrangements. That’s what I did and fortunately, the initial worry at the thought of having to make other arrangements for the night was replaced by a huge wave of relief when the lady at the Accueil looked up from her register and said “Ah! Mais vous etes Mlle Pounam Gaunglanie! Vous etes dans la liste!” To make a long story short, I got the keys to my studio at Batiment E (which is at the far end of the Résidence Canigou), and finally….FINALLY settled into my new place. It was 15h48 and I lay down on my bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling dizzy with the thoughts zigzagging through my brain, till I drifted off to a long sleep….

General: Conference Sorbonne 14 et 15 décembre (Will Self / too much noise too much silence)

"Si vous vous intéressez aux romanciers britannique contemporains, voici de quoi satisfaire votre curiosité un peu avant Noel à Paris. Je participe à ce colloque le vendredi après midi pour le débat et j'accueillerai Will Self qui viendra lire des extraits de son prochain roman le samedi après midi.

This is an invitation to attend a confrence on current trends in British fiction to be held at the Sorbonne in December. I will play the role of (im)moderator on Friday afternoon and then will talk about and to Will Self who will be with us on Saturday afternoon to read some extracts of his latest novel.

Didier Girard"

International conference

« VOICES AND SILENCE IN THE CONTEMPORARY NOVEL IN ENGLISH »

with

WILL SELF
14 and 15 December 2007

Paris IV Sorbonne. 1 rue Victor Cousin, 75005 Paris (Friday and Saturday afternoon)
Maison de la recherche. 28 rue Serpente, 75006 Paris (Saturday morning)

Research centre ERCLA (http://www.ercla.paris4.sorbonne.fr)
François Gallix and Vanessa Guignery

With the support of the Scientific Committee and Doctoral School IV of Paris IV-Sorbonne, and of the British Council

Friday 14 December 2007
Paris IV Sorbonne. 1 rue Victor Cousin, 75005 Paris

8h45-12h30 Salle du CIO, Galerie Claude Bernard, ground floor.
Chair : Vanessa Guignery (Paris IV)

8h45 Welcome
9h Laurence Tatarian (Bordeaux 3): Graham Swift’s vocal silences

9h30 Isabelle Roblin (Université du Littoral-Côte d'Opale): Graham Swift’s Tomorrow: once more upon the breach...

10h00 Hélène Fau (Metz) : Making the voice wordless in A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro

10h30 Coffee break

Chair :
11h00 Annette Kern-Stähler (Münster, Germany): Jackie Kay, Why don’t you stop talking?

11h30 Cécile Léonard (Orléans): Salman Rushdie’s Art of Sentencing the Excess

12h Elsa Sacksick (Cergy-Pontoise): Cries and Whispers (Salman Rushdie/Arundhati Roy) 
12h30-14h30: Lunch break

14h30-18h00 English Department, Salle Louis Bonnerot, G Stairs, 2nd floor.
Chair:  Prof. Didier Girard

14h30 Tetyana Lunyova (Poltava State Pedagogical University, Ukraine): The Told, the Written, and the Unuttered: on the Representation of speech in the novel Music and Silence by Rose Tremain

15h00 Monica Girard (Nancy): Breaking the Silence in Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin

15h30 Judith Munat (Pisa, Italy): The representation and interpretation of silence in contemporary African fiction

16h00 Coffee break

16h30 Sonia Saubion (Montpellier III) : From Logorrhoea to Silence in John Fowles’s The Collector

17h00 Judith Misrahi-Barak (Montpellier III) : Ryhaan Shah’s Silent Screams of A Silent Life

17h30 Christina Mesa (Stanford University, USA): Still Life and Active Erotic Excess in Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy and Zadie Smith’s On Beauty
Saturday 15 December 2007

9h00-12h30 Maison de la recherche, 28 rue Serpente, Salle D323, 3rd floor.
Chair : 

9h00 Geneviève Ducros (Bordeaux II) : ‘The silent ghostly I-figure in Coetzee’s Boyhood : Scenes from Provincial Life and the grotesque writing of an unnameable secret.’

9h30 Bozena Kucala (Poland): Resisting history, resisting story: J.M. Coetzee’s The Life and Times of Michael K

10h00 Nicole Terrien (Rouen) : So many Silent Voices, which are mine? (Jenny Diski)
10h30 Break
Chair : 
11h00 Benjamine Toussaint (Paris IV-Sorbonne) : The narrator’s voice lost and found in Ronald Frame’s The Lantern Bearers

11h30 Ingrid Bertrand (Louvain, Belgium): Filling in what was Left out: Voices and Silences of Biblical Women (Michèle Roberts, Margaret Atwood)

12h00 Eleftheria Kavazi (Oxford): Voicing Silence and Silencing the Voices: The Interplay of Verbosity and Absence of Speech in Samuel Beckett’s Drama

12h30-14h30: Lunch break

14h30-18h00 Milne Edwards lecture room, B stairs, 3rd floor, Sorbonne, 1 rue Victor Cousin
Chair : Prof. François Gallix (Paris IV)

14h30 Paulina Kupisz (Warsaw, Poland): Giving voice to silence: A.S.Byatt’s Possession.

15h00 Ben Winsworth (Orléans): Passing Over in Silence: Towards Quietism in Graham Swift’s Shuttlecock

15h30 Pascale Tollance (Lille 3) : « You cross a line » : l’excès d’une parole contenue dans The Light of Day de Graham Swift

16h00 Break

16h30 Didier Girard (Perpignan): Radical No-Saying : PAradoxes of the Will/Self

17h00 Reading and discussion with Will SELF

18h30 Cocktail