Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier

This event will  take place at the Event Oval, The Diana Center, Barnard College

Widely regarded as the "Bible of feminism," Simone de Beauvoir's Le Deuxième Sexe (1949) is a complex interdisciplinary analysis of the Western notion of "woman" and the power of sexuality. Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, The Second Sex (2010) is as relevant today as it was sixty years ago. In this panel discussion, translators Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier will describe their efforts to render The Second Sex in a manner faithful to its context in existentialist philosophy, their struggle to publish the work, and its reception by the critics.

This event is co-sponsored with the Barnard Center for Translation Studies, the Barnard Center for Research on Women, Columbia Institute for Research on Women and Gender, the Center for Critical Analysis of Social Difference, and the Columbia University Law School, Center for Gender and Sexuality Law. Funding is provided by the Mellon Foundation.

François Dosse is an intellectual historian and professor at the IUFM Créteil, the Institut d’études politiques de Paris, and the Centre d’histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines de l’université Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. He is the author of numerous books including a two-volume history of structuralism. His most recent book is Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: Intersecting Lives, published by Columbia University Press in June 2010.

Partial support for this event is provided by Cultural Services of the French Embassy.