Afleveringen
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Peter Francev: ‘Gushing Over Nature, or Janine’s Sexual Exhibitionism’
Abstract: For the past few years, I have been interested in the topic of Albert Camus and empathyand, rightfully so, as I am currently writing a monograph on the subject, it makes sense that I wouldbe interested in such a subject. However, for as long as I have been formally and informally studyingCamus (which is surpassing 25 years), I have always been plagued (no pun intended) by the seeminglyhard-lined interpretation that the protagonist of one of Camus’s most recognizable short stories ‘TheAdulterous Woman’, Janine has been largely contextualized as an unhappily married woman to herhusband Marcel and has an ‘affair’ of sorts that is anything but sexual. In this paper, I plan to quicklyexamine what previous scholars have said about Janine, her mental state of mind and her supposedlyadulterous actions, before I offer what seems to me a rather conventional and entirely plausible readingand interpretation of the short story, including Janine’s indeed adulterous actions. And this is not tosay that Janine cannot be linked to previous Camusian characters who are both female and aware oftheir sexuality, namely Marie from The Stranger.
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In this episode I review the December 2022 publication of States of Plague: Reading Camus in a Pandemic by Alice Kaplan and Laura Marris, published by The University of Chicago Press.
Enjoy!
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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A review of a book that is very hard to find: Albert Camus and the Men of Stone from 1971. It is a series of illuminating interviews of men who worked with Camus as coy editors, editors, printers, and typesetters.
Enjoy!
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A review by Dr. Berg of a new (2022) important book for the English reading audience. 34 lectures and speeches written by Camus on many important topics.
Enjoy!
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Whilst there is no mention of the empathy or ethics of Edith Stein in the fiction and non-fiction of Albert Camus, one can easily surmise that Camus, being a part of the Parisian café scene during the years leading up to, including and beyond the second world war, would have encountered some discussions of Stein’s thought through Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir or Maurice Merleau-Ponty, prior to his falling out with both men. It is then the purpose of this paper to set out and accomplish several things: firstly, I would like to provide a very brief introduction to the empathy of Stein; secondly, I should like to offer readers a concise summary of Stein’s principle text on empathy (On the Problem of Empathy)1; finally, I would like to offer an exposition and an analysis of Stein’s concept of empathy, from a phenomenological perspective, whilst keeping in mind Camus’s philosophy of the absurd as posited in The Myth of Sisyphus.
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Gina Breen: ‘French-Algerian Exile’
Albert Camus’s L’Exil et le Royaume was Camus’s last official literary publication before his death in 1960. It is a collection of six short stories, published in 1957, seven months before he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. In his acceptance speech, which was misreported, Camus specifically addressed justice and the Algerian situation, by discussing the role of the writer and the importance of truth, communicating his belief that the writer has a social duty as they bear witness to history.
In this paper, I will discuss three of the six short stories, namely “La Femme Adultère,” “Les Muets” and “L’Hôte” which are all set in Algeria. Written at the beginning of the armed struggle, the stories were published three years into the Algerian War. I argue that these stories demonstrate the moral dilemmas of the colonial situation, and they are vital to our understanding of Camus’s mythopoetics and the evolution of the pied-noir myth Camus first presents in L’étranger fifteen years earlier. Like Meursault, the characters in these stories suffer from estrangement. As the title suggests, Camus’s identity crisis still exists as he depicts the poverty, self-exile, exclusion, and solitude inherent in these dystopic Algerian spaces. None of the stories end with resolutions and the characters’ neutrality makes them victims of French colonialism. The stories and protagonists also mirror many of Camus’s personal confrontations because they hesitate about the future. They imply a certain degree of hopefulness, but their true feelings remain hidden
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In this episode Tom Hammer gives his paper to the Albert Camus Society's annual conference. The paper is titled "The Formal Structure of Existential Absurdity". It is a very engaging paper and a slight, but rewarding divergence from the typical paper we hear as it has an analytic approach.
Enjoy!
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In this podcast you will hear from one of the leading Camus scholars in the world. Professor Heffernan of Merrimack College has been widely published and quoted on Camus across the years. Enjoy this engaging talk on Camus and the question of Meursault's guilt in The Stranger.
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First in a series of podcasts taken directly from the action at the annual meeting of The Albert Camus Society held on-line in November, 2021. This series of podcasts will give listeners first access to the newest (yet to be published) research on Albert Camus from the top Camus scholars in the world. The papers you hear on these podcasts will eventually appear in The Journal of Camus Studies, click HERE to go to the journal's webpage.
First up - Siimon Lea of the U.K. His paper on Camus and Nietzsche and Myth is a deeply engaging tour of this under-researched area in both Camus and Nietzsche studies. You will fine Simon Lea a very engaging speaker mixing just a bit of humor with loads of top-flight scholarship. Enjoy.
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A book review of the controversial book Albert Camus and the Minister. The question: Did Camus ask to be baptized and covert to Christianity just before his fateful car accident?
All Albert Camus Radio podcasts are made possible by the generous support of Vectis Consulting. Vectis Consulting is in the business of fighting for the long-term health of the humanities.
www.vectisconsulting,org
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In this episode I review Catelli's 2020 (English translation) of The Death of Camus. In this text he makes the case that Camus was killed by the KGB.
Enjoy.
Thank you to Vectis Consulting for sponsoring this podcast!
www.vectisconsulting.org
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Professor Dan Hieber is a dear friend from The University of Kansas and a very engaging thinker and writer. His book Five Cigarettes is a marvelous read and I encourage you to check it out on Amazon.com. In this podcast we take a tour of Camus through the eyes of an accomplished philosopher that has not spent all of his time in Camus studies. It is a remarkable conversation with fresh insights. Enjoy.
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In this episode we have for you the President of the Polish Camus Society Maciej Kaluza's presentation to The Albert Camus Society in 2020. In this presentation we explore the issue of political violence and Camus. Enjoy!
It is in English
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The tables are turned with the 20 Questions format! I have been put on the spot and asked 20 questions about Camus by Dr. Peter Francev. Enjoy this talk as I enjoyed having this conversation.
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Albert Camus, Edith Stein, and the Problem of Empathy in The Plague
Abstract: Whilst there is no mention of the phenomenology or ethics of Edith Stein (1891-1942) in the fiction and non-fiction of Albert Camus (1913-1960), one can easily surmise that Camus, being a part of the Parisian café scene during the years leading up to, including and beyond the second world war, would have encountered some discussions of Stein’s thought through Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) or Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), prior to his falling out with both men. It is then the purpose of this paper to set out and accomplish several things: firstly, I would like to provide a very brief historical introduction to Stein; secondly, I should like to offer readers a concise summary of Stein’s principle text on empathy (On the Problem of Empathy)[1]; finally, I would like to offer an exposition and analysis of Stein’s concept of empathy, from a phenomenological perspective, in Camus’s novel The Plague[2]. To say that 2020 has been an ‘uneventful’ year is a gross understatement. Clearly, the Covid-19 pandemic affected us in ways which we could have never imagined. One benefit of the pandemic, as you are probably aware, is, once again, the intense interest in The Plague[3]. As I plan to illustrate, the novel contains six major and minor characters (Dr. Rieux, Paneloux, Tarrou, Rambert, Grand, and Cottard) from which Camus utilizes in order to demonstrate an individual’s interaction with empathy in the midst of an epidemic; however, I would like to first look at Stein in order to provide the framework for the novel’s analysis.
[1] Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy. Translated by Waltraut Stein (Springer: The Hague, 1964).
[2] Albert Camus, The Plague. Translated by Stuart Gilbert (Vintage: New York, 1948).
[3] According to the NY Times, The Plague has seen a resurgence on the best seller list. In addition to Vintage having an extremely difficult time keeping the novel in stock, Camus scholars Dr. Robert Zaretsky and Dr. Peter Francev were interviewed by National Public Radio’s Salt Lake City affiliate regarding Camus’s life and the significance of The Plague, respectively.
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A book review of Kamel Daoud's The Meursault Investigation. Published in 2013 in French and 2015 in English, The Meursault Investigation is a fascinating novel based on Camus' The Stranger. Please turn the volume up a bit on this one.
Enjoy!
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In this episode I have uploaded my presentation to the Albert Camus Society annual meeting held on-line on October 23, 2020.
Title: Four Character Studies from The Plague and Their American Counterparts During COVID-19
In this paper I will take a close look at four characters in Camus’ The Plague and situate them in the current (2020) American landscape while suffering under COVID-19. I will illuminate Father Panloux in relation to American Christian response to COVID, particularly the Baptist Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Dr. Rieux and the American medical community paying special attention to the CDC; Cottard as the American radical right; and Rambert and the American press with attention given to the idea of “fake news” and social media. As a bonus, I will identify Dr. Castel and, although difficult, locate the American President Donald Trump in the text. I will use a descriptive tool from Simone Weil known as decreation to help illuminate the normative aspects of this comparison.
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Luke Richardson completed a PhD titled ‘Camus the Athenian – Identity and Antiquity in the Literature of Albert Camus’ in 2014 at University College London where his supervisors were Miriam Leonard and Azzedine Haddour. He has written and published on Camus in the Cambridge 'Classical Receptions Journal' and the 'Journal of Camus' studies, as well as a chapter in the 2020 Brill 'Companion to Camus.' He taught in the humanities faculty at University College London between 2012 and 2016. He has been a member of the Camus Society since 2011.
Enjoy this engaging interview with a real rising star in Camus studies.
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