Today from 12 noon until 3pm, all are welcome to visit the Lecturers’ Common Room in the Raised Faculty Building (details below) to see a display of UL books from and about Central Asia curated by visiting fellow Dr Ainur Akhmetova. There will also be a 30-minute talk by Dr Akhmetova in the room starting at 1pm and followed by a Q&A.
Continue reading “TODAY: Central Asian book display and talk (10 May 2024)”
Today, Victory in Europe Day, marks the anniversary of the end of World War II on the Eastern European Front on 8 May 1945. We are delighted to share the video-recording (hosted on Cambridge University Library’s YouTube channel) of the talk on the Chadwyck-Healey Liberation collection (1944-1946) we gave on 19 March, as part of the 2024 Cambridge Festival, in partnership with the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics.
This year will mark the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings and the Liberation of France from German occupation, at the end of the Second World War. As part of the ongoing promotion of and research into Cambridge University’s Library Liberation collection (1944-1946), we have been delighted to shed light on Sophie Dubillot’s AHRC-funded collaborative (Cambridge UL and Open University) PhD project: ‘Ce n’est pas une blague: Purposes and Limits of Visual Humour in Early Post-War France (1944-46)’ and on the Liberation Collection (1944-46) Visiting Scholarship at Cambridge UL, whose first recipient will be announced in the next few weeks. We would be very happy to welcome you on Tuesday 19th March, 5-6pm at the Faculty of Divinity on the Sidgwick site, for Sophie Dubillot and Irène Fabry-Tehranchi’s talk on the Liberation collection: Illustrated books and humour in Cambridge University Library’s Liberation collection (1944-46), as part of the Cambridge Festival (you can register here).
This talk will examine a selection of the Liberation collection’s illustrated works (ranging from deluxe fundraising anthologies to commemorative works, clandestine printing and poetry), as well as humorous drawings representing struggles (such as restrictions, housing issues, and missing family members), in an ideologically divided country in dire need of reconstruction.
Irène Fabry-Tehranchi
As part of the Cambridge Festival 2022 programme, you can now book a place to attend a talk exploring the representations of French children during the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune. It will take place on Thursday 31 March from 5 to 6 pm in the Milstein room. We will be using literary and visual material from a historical collection of caricatures that will be on display at Cambridge University Library from 10 March to 7 May 2022.
From September 1870 to May 1871, the siege of Paris by the Prussians was followed by a civil war which opposed the radical left-wing members of the Paris Commune to the more moderate Republicans leading the French government. The French military defeat, the hardships of life under prolonged sieges, and the political experiments of the Paris Commune –which ended in a massacre–, had a profound impact on the daily lives of Parisian people and especially children.
Their perspective is reflected in the works of writers such as Alphonse Daudet and Guy de Maupassant. In Paris, this fuelled the production of a flurry of caricatures which circulated widely, often disseminated by the illustrated press. They portray children as victims of the war as well as privileged witnesses of the historical events unfolding around them. If children are often used as beacons of hope, torchbearers for the progressive aims of the Commune, they are also invested with the ideology of revenge against the Germans…
This special event is hosted by Cambridge University Library, in partnership with the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, and the Cambridge Alliance Française. It will feature Dr Irene Fabry-Tehranchi (French and Francophone collections, Cambridge UL) and Dr Marion Glaumaud-Carbonnier (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, European Commission).
We are also delighted that a long awaited display of the Franco-Prussian caricatures, featuring, among others, Emperors Napoleon III and Wilhelm I, and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, will take place from 10 March to 7 May 2022 in one of the Royal enclosures on the first floor of the University Library. Members of the University need to bring their blue card. External visitors can sign in and get a lanyard from the Reader Services Desk in the entrance hall, in order to come and see the small exhibition. If you cannot make it in person, here is a link to the virtual exhibition!
Irene Fabry-Tehranchi
Languages across Borders 