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Avital Ronell

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Avital Ronell is an American academic who writes about continental philosophy, literary studies, psychoanalysis, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the humanities and in the departments of Germanic languages and literature and comparative literature at New York University. As Jacques Derrida Professor of Philosophy, Ronell also teaches at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee. Ronell was born in Prague to Israeli diplomats and was a performance artist before entering academia. She emigrated to New York in 1956. An eleven-month investigation at New York University determined that Ronell sexually harassed a male graduate student, and the university suspended her without pay for the 2018–2019 academic year. [Description above from the Wikipedia article Avital Ronell, licensed under CC-BY-SA; full list of contributors on Wikipedia.]
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Elisabeth Roudinesco

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Élisabeth Roudinesco (born 10 September 1944) is a French scholar, historian and psychoanalyst. She conducts a seminar on the history of psychoanalysis at the École Normale Supérieure. Roudinesco's work focuses mainly on psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis in France, but also worldwide. She has written biographies of Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud. Her biography of Freud, Freud, In his Time and Ours, was awarded the "Prix Décembre" 2014 and The "Prix des Prix" 2014. With Michel Plon, she published a huge Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (7th édition in 2023), which was translated into many languages, though not yet into English. Her book Généalogies (also unpublished in English) was awarded The Best Book Prize by The Société française d'histoire de la médecine. Her work has been translated into thirty languages. Roudinesco was born to half-Jewish parents in newly liberated Paris in September 1944, and grew up there. Her mother was Jenny Aubry, née Weiss, a daughter of the Judeo-Protestant bourgeoise, a renowned psychoanalyst and hospital neuro-paediatrician who spent her whole life looking after suffering children: abandoned, ill and in difficulty. She was an anglophile who, in the 1950s, introduced to France John Bowlby's theories on the importance of maternal care, and she worked in collaboration with the Tavistock Clinic in London. She was a friend of Jacques Lacan - and whose sister was the feminist Louise Weiss, of the Javal family. Her father was physician Alexandre Roudinesco, of Romanian origin, who had "a passion for history and a phenomenal library". He was born in Bucharest in a Jewish and francophile milieu, and his father had been an editor. She received her secondary education in Paris at the Collège Sévigné. She studied Literature at the Sorbonne, with a minor in Linguistics; her master's degree was supervised by Tzvetan Todorov, and her doctoral thesis, entitled Inscription du désir et roman du sujet [Inscription of the desire and novel of the subject], by Jean Levaillant at the Université Paris VIII-Vincennes in 1975. She also took classes with Michel de Certeau, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault at the time of her master's degree. She next defended her "habilitation à diriger des recherches" (H.D.R – the French accreditation needed to supervise doctoral dissertations) in 1991 with Michelle Perrot as supervisor and Alain Corbin, Dominique Lecourt, Jean-Claude Passeron, Robert Castel, and Serge Leclaire as members of the examining committee. This work was published under the title Généalogies. From 1969 to 1981, she was a member of the École Freudienne de Paris, founded by psychoanalyst and philosopher Jacques Lacan. She was also a member of the editorial board of Action Poétique (1969–1979). She has written for French national newspapers, Libération (1986–1996), and then Le Monde since 1996. For the past 30 years, she has been married to Olivier Bétourné, CEO of Éditions du Seuil. ... Source: Article "Élisabeth Roudinesco" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Philippe Sollers

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Philippe Sollers (born Philippe Joyaux; 28 November 1936 – 5 May 2023) was a French writer and critic. In 1960 he founded the avant garde literary journal Tel Quel (along with writer and art critic Marcelin Pleynet), which was published by Le Seuil and ran until 1982. Sollers then created the journal L'Infini, published first by Denoel, then by Gallimard with Sollers remaining as sole editor. Sollers was at the heart of the period of intellectual fervour in the Paris of the 1960s and 1970s. He contributed to the publication of critics and thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, and Roland Barthes. Some of them were later described in his novel Femmes (1983), alongside other figures of French intellectualism active before and after May 1968. His writings and approach to language were examined and praised by French critic Roland Barthes in his book Writer Sollers. Sollers was born as Philippe Joyaux on 28 November 1936, in Talence, France. His family ran the local Société Joyaux Frères, the iron factory Recalt producing material for kitchens, metal constructions and machines for the aircraft manufacturer SNCASO under the German military administration in occupied France during World War II. His parents were Octave Joyaux and Marcelle Molinié. He moved to Paris in 1955, studied at the Lycée privé Sainte-Geneviève of Versailles and at the ESSEC Business School. Sollers married Julia Kristeva in 1967. He died on 5 May 2023, at the age of 86. Following his first novel, A Strange Solitude (1958), hailed by François Mauriac and Louis Aragon, Sollers began, with The Park (1961) the experiments in narrative form that would lead to Event (Drame, 1965) and Nombres (1968). Jacques Derrida analyzed these novels in his book Dissemination. Sollers then attempted to counter the high seriousness of Nombres in Lois (1972), which featured greater stylistic interest through the use of wordplay and a less formal style. The direction taken by Lois was developed through the heightened rhythmic intensity of non-punctuated texts such as Paradis (1981). Sollers's other novels include Women (1983), Portrait du joueur (1984), Le coeur absolu (1986), Watteau in Venice (1991), Studio (1997), Passion fixe (2000), and L'étoile des amants (2002), which introduced a degree of realism to his fiction, in that they make more explicit use of plot, character, and thematic development. They offer the reader a fictional study of the society in which he or she lives by reinterpreting, among other things, the roles of politics, media, sex, religion, and the arts. Source: Article "Philippe Sollers" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Forbes Masson

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Forbes (Robertson) Masson (born 17 August 1963 in Falkirk) is a Scottish actor and writer. He is an Associate Artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He is best known for his roles in classical theatre, musicals. comedies and appearances in London's West End. He is also known for his comedy partnership with Alan Cumming. Masson and Cumming wrote The High Life, a Scottish situation comedy in which they play the lead characters, Steve McCracken and Sebastian Flight. Characters McCracken and Flight were heavily based on Victor and Barry, famous Scottish comedy alter-egos of Masson and Cumming.
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Zheng Geping

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Tay Kok Peng, also known as Zheng Geping, is a Singaporean actor and executive producer. He works on the Chinese-language Channel 8. Zheng, a former chef and Taekwondo instructor, became a full-time actor in 1987 after completing SBC's 7th Professional Drama Performers' Training Course, and had been given mostly supporting roles. His hard work finally paid off at the Star Awards 2007 ceremony when he won the Best Actor award for his role in Like Father, Like Daughter. After his Best Actor win in 2007, Zheng's popularity rose when he won the Top 10 Most Popular Male Artistes from the years 2009-2013. He bared his body at the age of 47, putting most men to shame with his solid new six pack. Zheng Geping became the brand ambassador of hair consulting company in June 2013. In August 2013, Zheng released a book, Star Fitness, which chronicles his journey to health and fitness, and offers exercises and tips on how to get a great body. Zheng has gotten 9 out of 10 Top 10 Most Popular Male Artistes from 2009-2013, 2015, 2018-2019 respectively.
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Hélène Cixous

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Hélène Cixous (born 5 June 1937) is a French writer, playwright and literary critic. During her academic career, she was primarily associated with the Centre universitaire de Vincennes (today's University of Paris VIII), which she co-founded in 1969 and where she created the first centre of women's studies at a European university. Known for her experimental writing style and great versatility as a writer and thinker, she has written more than seventy books dealing with multiple genres: theater, literary and feminist theory, art criticism, autobiography and poetic fiction. She first gained attention in 1969 with her first work of fiction, Dedans (Inside), a semi-autobiographical novel which won the Prix Médicis and explored the themes of identity, memory, death and writing. She is perhaps best known for her 1976 article "The Laugh of the Medusa", which established her as one of the early thinkers in post-structural feminism. She has collaborated with several artists and directors, such as Adel Abdessemed, Pierre Alechinsky, Simone Benmussa, Jacques Derrida, Simon Hantaï, Daniel Mesguich and Ariane Mnouchkine. She is considered a strong contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Cixous was born in Oran, French Algeria, to Jewish parents, Eve Cixous, née Klein, (1910–2013) and Georges Cixous (1909–1948). Georges Cixous, a physician who had written his dissertation on tuberculosis, died of the disease in 1948. Eve Cixous became a midwife in Algiers following his death, "until her expulsion with the last French doctors and midwives in 1971." Cixous' brother, Pierre, "a medical student and a supporter of Algerian independence" was condemned to death in 1961 by the Organisation armée secrète, and joined Cixous in Bordeaux. Her mother and brother returned to Algeria following the country's independence in 1962. They were arrested, and Cixous "obtained their release with the help of Ahmed Ben Bella's lawyer." Cixous married Guy Berger in 1955, with whom she had three children, Anne-Emmanuelle (b. 1958), Stéphane (1960–1961), and Pierre-François (b. 1961). Cixous and Berger divorced in 1964. Cixous earned her agrégation in English in 1959 and her Doctorat ès lettres in 1968. Her main focus, at this time, was English literature and the works of James Joyce. Cixous became assistante at the University of Bordeaux in 1962, served as maître assistante at the Sorbonne from 1965 to 1967, and was appointed maître de conférence at Paris Nanterre University in 1967. In 1968, following the French student riots, Cixous was charged with founding the University of Paris VIII, "created to serve as an alternative to the traditional French academic environment." Cixous would, in 1974, found the University's center for women's studies, the first in Europe. Cixous is a professor at the University of Paris VIII and at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. In 1968, Cixous published her doctoral dissertation L'Exil de James Joyce ou l'Art du remplacement (The Exile of James Joyce, or the Art of Displacement) and the following year she published her first novel, Dedans (Inside), a semi-autobiographical work that won the Prix Médicis. ... Source: Article "Hélène Cixous" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Sean Connery

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Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 – October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer who won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award. Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (every film from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again), between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000). Connery was polled in a 2004 The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He received a lifetime achievement award in the United States with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama. On 31 October 2020, it was announced that Connery had died at the age of 90. Description above from the Wikipedia article Sean Connery, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
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Magda Vizcaíno

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Daughter of José de Jesús Vizcaíno, one of the most prolific writers of the golden age of radio in Mexico. Since the beginning of her career, her voice has accompanied the history of Radio UNAM, Radio Educación, IMER, XEW and XEQ. Graduated from INBA and CUT, she was part of the National Theater Company of UNAM, which with the plays Divinas Palabras (dir. Juan Ibáñez) and Olímpica (dir. Héctor Azar) toured various cities in Europe during 1964 and 1965, winning multiple awards. For the play La Ronda de las Arpías (dir. Mercedes de la Cruz, Pablo Leder) she was recognized as Best Supporting Actress in 1991. Throughout her life she has participated in dozens of plays. On television, her first role was as a storyteller on a program that was broadcast every Sunday on Channel Five. Later she participated in teletheaters, soap operas and educational programs, among which Santa (Miguel Sabido) and Fonda Susilla stand out. In cinema, she started with films such as Para servir a usted, Maten al león and Los indolentes by José Estrada and Divinas Palabras and A Fuego Lento by Juan Ibáñez. Her voice was immortalized as the narrator of the classic El grito, México 1968, by Leobardo López Arretche. With her performance in Martha, by Marcelino Islas, which debuted at the Venice Critics' Week, she conquered audiences around the world and was recognized in Mexico with the Ariel for Best Actress. In 2019, she starred in Encuentro, by Ivan Löwenberg, becoming one of the eldest actresses ever to portray an LGBT+ character.
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Daniel Fathers

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Daniel was born and raised in London, England to a family completely immersed in show business. His mother Tessa Shaw was an actress, most notably of the 'Dr. Who' series fame and his father George Fathers, was one of the West End's most respected Scenic Designers. Known for his physical, as well as 'Machiavellian' roles, having been a former professional athlete (Rugby and Bull Riding), Daniel easily interchanges between American and UK accents, having moved to Canada when he was in his late teens. He is a former Canadian Armed Forces Militia Soldier and is still a Commissioned Officer in the British Army, as a part-time Instructor, which lends himself to playing his fare share of military and ex-military roles. However, he is also a trained dancer (Ballet Rambert, Central School of Dance), which helped in being cast on stage in the Tony Award Winning 'Mamma Mia!' by Phyllida Llyod, playing two of the Leads, Bill Austin and Harry Bright in the Toronto Company. Daniel is an accomplished equestrian and an expert swordsman, which he showed in CW's 'Reign' and 'Pompeii' Daniel's first big opportunity came as a young boy in front of Franco Zeffereli for the title role in the 1977 classic 'Jesus of Nazareth'. However, as a boy he was much more interested in sports, going on to be selected for England's U16 Rugby Final Trials and reaching the final of the All England Schools 400m Hurdles in which he came 5th. Daniel is known the world over by teens having starred in Disney's 'Camp Rock' movies opposite teen sensations, the Jonas Brothers and Demi Lovato, playing the affable Brown Cessario, an old time rock 'n' roller and Uncle of the Jonas Brothers. 'Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam' won the Peoples Choice Award (2011). On the big screen, Daniel has starred opposite such stars as Oscar® nominee, Ellen Page in the critically acclaimed film, 'The Tracy Fragments', Sir Derek Jacobi ('Gladiator'), Ken Welsh ('The Void'). On television he played opposite Golden Globe nominated Tatiana Maslany in 'Orphan Black', Rob Lowe in Lifetime's 'Beach Girls'. For David Levien and Brian Koppleman of 'Billions' fame, Daniel reprized his role as gangster poker player 'Muff Lannigan' opposite Michael Madsen. As a Presenter/Host he was privileged to present at the inaugural Canadian Screen Awards in 2013, of which the show he hosted, 'Canada's Greatest Know It All' for Discovery, was a nominated for numerous CSA's in 2013 and 2014.
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Caroline Wilkinson

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Caroline M. Wilkinson (born 27 October 1965) is a British anthropologist who has been a professor at the Liverpool John Moores University's School of Art and Design since 2014. She is best known for her work in forensic facial reconstruction and has been a contributor to many television programmes on the subject, as well as the creator of reconstructed heads of kings Richard III of England in 2013 and Robert the Bruce of Scotland in 2016. Wilkinson holds a PhD in facial anthropology from the University of Manchester (2000), and from 2000 to 2005 led the Unit of Art and Medicine at the university. Between 2005 and 2014 she taught at the University of Dundee in the award-winning Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, where from 2011 she was Professor of Craniofacial Identification and Head of Human Identification. She first became known to television audiences as a result of her regular appearances on the BBC series Meet the Ancestors, and also appeared on History Cold Case while working at the University of Dundee (2005 – 2014).
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