About Us

The fourteen full-time faculty members and six part-time faculty members of the Department of French represent a broad spectrum of knowledge of the French-speaking world of all periods, from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. It offers the B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in French in a collaborative atmosphere in which teaching, advising, and creative scholarship are valued. Studies in French are supported by a very rich collection of books, manuscripts, and videos in the University library, and particularly by the Gordon Collection of rare editions of works from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment.

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  Jefferson's French Passport

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  Jefferson's House in Paris

The Department of French, like the other departments of modern foreign languages at the University of Virginia, descends from the School of Modern Languages in Thomas Jefferson’s original organization of the faculty and curriculum. France served from the start as an inspiration: the general design of the central grounds, the “Academical Village,” follows the outline of Lenôtre’s plan for the Château de Marly, and the ten individual pavilions that surround the Lawn were inspired by Parisian hôtels particuliers admired by Jefferson during his residency in Paris from 1784-1789. Jefferson also specified that a French family of good reputation should reside at the University and take boarders desirous of practicing their French—this is the distant historical basis for today’s French House. As in Jefferson’s time, it is not only the French language that was important but many aspects of French civilization and of world culture available through the medium of the language. The studies pursued in this Department draw on many disciplines and focus on many historical periods and geographic areas. Literary criticism, literary and cultural history, applied linguistics, socio-linguistics, the history of the language, film study, politics, and rhetoric and the emerging fields of text-image studies and digital humanities are but a few of the disciplines routinely invoked in courses and in faculty scholarship. As the world changes, so does the study of French. Our Department aspires to a position of leadership in the growth of the field, for example in the development of the study of the literatures and cultures of French-speaking countries and regions other than France as well as in the creation of new approaches to the culture of France itself.

In addition to the disciplinary and geographic diversity of French studies, the Department recognizes the diversity of purposes that the study of French serves in the intellectual lives of students. For many undergraduates, French is a first or second foreign language studied either for the minimal fulfillment of the language requirement or for basic communicative abilities. For other undergraduates, the intermediate and advanced study of the language along with courses in literature and culture provides knowledge of European, African, and American societies and may satisfy several of the College area requirements (such as humanities, non-Western perspectives, and historical perspectives). Some of these students will complete a major in French, often with another major in such departments as Politics, Economics, Art History, or Commerce and, less conventionally, neuro-biology, engineering and pre-med. A small number of the majors participate in a joint program with the School of Education to obtain both the B.A. in French and the Master of Teaching in five years.