2003-2004
September 17th: in collaboration with the French Services Culturels of the French Embassy, the HPFI hosted the second Poetry and Translation series with leading Lebanese-French poet Venus Khoury-Ghata.
September 18th: the Leading French Historians Series resumed with the visit of defining scholar of French medieval history, Jean-Claude Schmitt.
2004-2005
October 21 and 22: The Graduate Center hosted the distinguished critic, writer and philosopher Julia Kristeva, a visit sponsored by the HPFI in collaboration with the Ph.D. Programs in French, English, Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages, the Certificate Program in Women’s Studies, and the Center for the Humanities. Professor Kristeva spoke on the theme of “French Theory.” She also participated in a reception in her honor at the Service Culturel of the French Embassy. All this was made possible by the generous support of the HPFI.
Fall 2004: the HPFI supported the very prestigious series On Set with French Cinema, a program on French film directors, with events in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, on academic campuses and in public screenings at such venues as Lincoln Center in New York. The series took place on CCNY campus, organized by Graduate Center Professor Jerry Carlson of CUNY-TV and was open and free to graduate students.
Fall 2004: talk by Jacques Julliard, a leading French political scientist, commentator and journalist, specialist of Franco-US relations, , an event organized in collaboration with the National office of the Alliance Française in Washington, DC.
February 14, 2005: the HPFI, with the Ph.D. Program in French, celebrated the publication by The Yale University Press of Henri Peyre: His Life in Letters, edited by the late John W. Kneller (2005) and The Yale Anthology of 20th-Century French Poetry, edited by Distinguished Professor Mary Ann Caws (2004).
March 9, 2005: Poetry and Translation Series, with the poet and translator Emmanuel Moses, author of four collections of poems and two novels, recipient of the Prix Max Jacob in 1993.
April 22, 2005: the HPFI co-sponsored the CUNY Spring Renaissance Studies Colloquium, on the theme of Performance and Patronage: Women Rulers and Spectacle in the Renaissance, featuring renowned national and international scholars Dympna Callaghan, Honey Meconi, Antonio Feros and Malcolm Smuts.
Fall 2005: co-sponsorship of a national-level French Theatre festival, Act French, with a sub-program entitled “Carte Blanche,” held at The Graduate Center during the Fall 2005 semester. The festival featured world-renowned directors and performance artists speaking in New York during the entire Fall 05 season.