From Caroline R. Lundquist ([log in to unmask])



Simone de Beauvoir:  Interpretations and Translations for the 21st Century
19th International Conference of the Simone de Beauvoir Society

Eugene, Oregon (USA) June 15-18th, 2011

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: 

Constance Borde & Sheila Malovany-Chevallier
Sheila Malovany-Chevallier and Constance Borde are the translators of the new English version of The Second Sex, only the second English translation, appearing more than half a century after the first.  Both attended Douglass College (Rutgers University) in the 1960s and have been friends and working partners ever since. They have both lived in France for over 40 years, teaching literature and American civilization and writing English grammar and other books for French speakers. In the 70’s, they both studied and got degrees in linguistics, one at the university of Vincennes, and the other at Nanterre, in Paris, hubs of new thinking in language and social science.  They both had long and active teaching careers at Sciences Po. Notable among their publications have been a series of grammar books (ex: My English is French); a video series, Magic English, for Disney, to teach children English; Focus on American Democracy, explaining the American system of government, and several French cookbooks on American food. All along, they have been translating from French to English: social science, art, and feminist writings. Feminism and politics, as well as knowledge of France and its culture, led them to the translation into English of Le Deuxième Sexe, by Simone de Beauvoir.

Margaret Simons
Margaret A. Simons, Distinguished Research Professor Emerita at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, worked with Simone de Beauvoir in 1972 for her dissertation on Beauvoir's philosophy in The Second Sex.  Simons is a founding editor of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, author of Beauvoir and The Second Sex: Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism (1999); editor of Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir (1995) and The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Critical Essays (2006). She is editor of Beauvoir’s Wartime Diary (2009) and co-editor of Beauvoir’s Philosophical Writings (2004), Diary of a Philosophy Student: 1926-27 (2006), and The Useless Mouths and Other Literary Writings (forthcoming) which are part of the seven volume Beauvoir Series, co-edited with Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, from the University of Illinois Press.

Deirdre Bair
Readers of Beauvoir in English crossed the divide from one century to another waiting for a new translation of her most well-known work.  On the historic occasion of the publication of the new English translation of Le deuxième sexe it is important to consider all the ways in which Beauvoir’s work inspires new translations and interpretations for the 21st Century.  Beauvoir’s analysis of erotic relations, for example, can be put to work to help explain the dynamics of the “hook-up culture” or the teen-age fascination with “vampire love,” only by an act of translation from generation to generation.  New interpretations of Beauvoir’s work in literature, philosophy, history, sociology, and gender studies attest to the interdisciplinary vibrance of her thought. When philosophers teach Beauvoir’s literature or literature scholars delve into her philosophy we translate from fiction to metaphysics.  The international nature of Beauvoir scholarship shows that the relevance of her message is translatable across national boundaries, but also requires interpretation, as it is taken up in specific cultural contexts where new meanings and problems come to the fore.  From academia to politics, from theory to practice, from practice to theory and politics to academia, new interpretations and translations mark the enduring power of Beauvoir’s writing and thinking. And, of course, the literal translation of her texts from one language to another has itself generated new controversy, new scholarship, and new interpretations.   

The 19th International Conference of the Simone de Beauvoir Society will take place at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, from June 15-18th, 2011, hosted by the Department of Philosophy.  We welcome submissions from a broad range of perspectives, disciplines and locations. To submit a proposal for a paper, please send an abstract of no more than 800 words in English or French, and a short Curriculum Vitae which includes your contact details and institutional affiliation, if any, to the conference organizer:  Dr. Bonnie Mann ([log in to unmask]) by April 1st, 2011.  Conference sessions will be in English or French, but we may consider sessions in other languages if requested by participants. 





Caroline R. Lundquist

Philosophy Doctoral Candidate

Instructor, University of Oregon Composition

Coeditor, Philosophical Inquiry into Pregnancy, Childbirth and Mothering

(541) 346-1519



"Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true."

-Richard Feynman