France

MacCabe is a Distinguished Professor of English and Film at Pitt, where he has taught since 1985. He also teaches English and the humanities in Birkbeck University of London, where he serves as associate director of the London Consortium, which he helped to found in 1995.

MacCabe is the author and producer, respectively, of Godard: Portrait of the Artist at 70 (2003) and Derek (2008). In 2007, he was awarded a grant of $1,060,000 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom to fund his research project, “Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire.” With the award, MacCabe is cataloguing a collection of more than 7,000 British films from pre-1900 productions to television-era programming. He is the author of James Joyce and the Revolution of the Word; Godard: Images, Sounds, Politics; Tracking the Signifier, and several other books, and he edits the journal Critical Quarterly. He has produced several films, including Caravaggio, Distant Voices/Still Lives, The Long Day Closes, and the 16-part series Century of Cinema.

Background

Sbragia's career accomplishments include being designated as a Jean Monnet Chair ad personam, recognition given by the European Union to elite American academicians whose careers exemplify excellence in teaching and research related to the European Union. She is internationally renowned for her European scholarship.

From 1993 to 1995, Sbragia chaired the European Community Studies Association, the foremost national association for experts in the field. Because of her leadership, the association is now headquartered at Pitt.

She is the author of four books: Comparative Regionalism in an Age of Globalization; Debt Wish: Entrepreneurial Cities, U.S. Federalism, and Economic Development (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996); Euro-Politics: Politics and Policymaking in the "New" European Community (Edited book, Brookings Institution, 1992), largely credited with initiating a new wave of scholarly work in the United States on the topic of European integration; and The Municipal Money Chase: The Politics of Local Government Finance (Edited book, Westview Press, 1983). In addition, she has authored more than 50 articles and presented nearly 200 papers and speeches around the world.

Among Venarde’s writings are Two Women of the Great Schism: The Revelations of Constance of Rabastens and Simone Zanacchi’s Life of Ursulina of Parma, with Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, in press for publication by University of Toronto Press in 2009; Les deux vies de Robert d’Arbrissel: Légendes, écrits et témoignages/The Two Lives of Robert of Arbrissel: Legends, Writings, and Testimonies, trilingual collaboration with five French scholars, (Brepols, 2006); Robert of Arbrissel: A Medieval Religious Life, (Catholic University of America Press, 2003); Women's Monasticism and Medieval Society: Nunneries in France and England, 890-1215, (Cornell University Press, 1997), and many others.

Background
Vivian Curran is a native speaker of French who earned a PhD in French literature and Romance philology before studying law. She is an elected member of both the International Academy of Comparative Law and the American Law Institute. She is the creator of Pitt law school's innovative Languages for Lawyers program, in which students study foreign languages in a legal context, and of English for Lawyers, in which foreign lawyers study English in a legal context.

Curran is the author and editor of two books, Learning French Through the Law (Columbia University, Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law & Juris Publishing, Inc., 1996) and Comparative Law: An Introduction (Carolina Academic Press, 2002). She also translated from German to English Bernhard Grossfeld’s Core Questions of Comparative Law (Carolina Academic Press, 2005). Curran is a past secretary of the American Society of Comparative Law and book review editor of the American Journal of Comparative Law.

In 2007, she was awarded the Grand Decoration of Merit in Gold for Services Rendered to the Republic of Austria for her work as the United States appointee to the Austrian General Settlement Fund Committee for Nazi-era property compensation.

Background
A widely recognized scholar of European politics, John T.S. Keeler is dean of Pitt’s Graduate School for Public and International Affairs. He previously served as chair of the European Union Studies Association and was a professor of political science at the Center for West European Studies and European Union Center of Excellence, University of Washington at Seattle.

Keeler has published broadly in such notable publications as Defending Europe: NATO and the Quest for European Autonomy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Chirac's Challenge: Liberalization, Europeanization and Malaise in France (St. Martin's Press and Macmillan, 1996); Agricultural Policy (2 volumes, Cheltenham and Edward Elgar, 2000); The Politics of Neocorporatism in France: Farmers, the State and Agricultural Policy-making in the Fifth Republic (Oxford University Press, 1987); and Réformer: Les Conditions du Changement Politique (Presses Universitaires de France, 1994). He has published articles in numerous professional journals, including French Politics and Society, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and Journal of Common Market Studies, West European Politics.

Keeler currently is writing a book that examines terrorism and transatlantic relations.