Newsletter for Fall 2010

Note from the Chair

Dear Alumni and Friends,

This has been a year filled with events bringing people together at UVa to share their interest in French language, literature, and culture. From a series of distinguished guest speakers, to a weekend-colloquium, to a weeklong series of plays by Théâtre Bacchus (from our sister city, Besançon), we have seen an impressive show of the many paths to knowledge and enjoyment that French Studies offers.

If you are a Facebook user, I hope you will join our French Department page. You will find a link on our departmental home page. Catch up with friends in the “UVA Francophiles, where are you now?” discussion on our FB page, and please share your own story and pictures there, too.

As always, I thank our generous donors for the gifts that have helped us sustain our mission in uncertain times.

And now....bonne lecture!

Cheryl Krueger, Department Chair

                                             

Faculty News

Among Stéphanie Bérard’s numerous publications this year are a book chapter on Maryse Condé’s play “Comme deux frères: huis clos nocturne pour d’obscurs désirs” and one article on José Pliya, “The Impossible ‘Return to the Native Land’: Exile, Loss of Memory and Identity in José Pliya’s play Nous étions assis sur le rivage du monde…,” in Callaloo.  She co-edited a special issue of Africultures, “Emergences Caraïbe(s): une création théâtrale archipélique.”

Ari Blatt was awarded a University Teaching Fellowship for the 2010-2011 academic year and is using that opportunity to design new courses on Jewish France and "Paris as Palimpsest." He recently published an article on contemporary novelist Tanguy Viel’s “manic” fictions (Contemporary French and Franco-phone Studies, September 2010) and is putting the finishing touches on a book on visual culture in contemporary French fiction (under contract with the University of Nebraska Press).  Other projects include an essay on gruesome crime in the work of Swiss novelist Jacques Chessex and a new book project on French national photography.

Janet Horne is hard at work on a transnational cultural history of the Alliance Française, tentatively entitled, "Empire of Language: The Alliance Francaise and the Making of Modern France." Following a Fulbright Research grant in 2006-07, when she worked in the Alliance’s home office in Paris, she has received two recent grants that took her to the missionary archives of the “Padri bianchi” in Rome (2009) and the “Centre des archives d’outre-mer” in Aix-en-Provence (2010). She continues to direct UVA in Lyon and reports that the program is flourishing. Professor Horne has been invited to speak at the 2010 annual meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies on “Studying French History through Travel and Study Abroad.”

The University of Toronto Press recently published a bilingual edition of the sixteenth-century Lyon poet Pernette du Guillet, edited with an extensive scholarly introduction by Karen James.

Cheryl Krueger has just completed the third edition of her French composition textbook, Tâches d’encre, with coauthors Fauvel and Siskin. She is preparing a volume on Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris for the MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature series. Her current book project examines perfume and its relation to language, olfactory perception, hygiene reform, geography, and industry in French fiction from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She has presented papers related to this project at Nineteenth-Century French Studies in the US and the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes in Wales and plans to speak about perfume and poetry for the Alliance française in January. This fall she was the keynote speaker at Harvard’s pre-service workshop for TAs and TFs in Romance Languages and Literatures, where she presented a lecture and a workshop on “The Language of Cinema.”

In late 2009, Alison Levine worked for three months at the French colonial archives in Aix-en-Provence in preparation for her new book project. She published "Framing the Nation: Documentary Film in Interwar France" with Continuum Press in 2010. She also recently completed the website "A Vos Plumes! The French Writing Center," http://avosplumes.web.virginia.edu,with a grant from the Teaching + Technology Initiative. The site is designed to help students and professors of French improve students' writing skills. 

John Lyons gave one of the plenary lectures at the annual conference of the Society for French Studies in Swansea (UK) in July.  His French Literature: a Very Short Introduction appeared in May.

Deborah McGrady is  spending this year as Florence Gould Foundation Fellow at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, where she is finalizing work on a co-edited collection of essays entitled, A Companion to Guillaume de Machaut – an Interdisciplinary Approach to the Master, and working on her new book project, Beyond Patronage: Literary Circulation during the Hundred Years War.

Mary McKinley is enjoying teaching after a year’s research leave.  Her graduate seminar on Montaigne has prompted research on Socrates’ daemon in the Essais.  At the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in Montreal in October, she gave the first of two papers on Marguerite de Navarre’s depiction of the Islamic Mediterranean.   Virginia was well represented in Montreal with papers by alumni Peter Eubanks, Kendall Tarte, Nicolas Russell, Jeff Persels, George Hoffmann, and Sarah Skrainka, as well as current dissertants Caroline Gates and Nicholas Shangler. 

After a year mostly spent teaching at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), the University of Geneva, New York University as Global Distinguished Visiting Professor, and of course UVA this fall, Philippe Roger, editor of Critique, hopes for a more sedentary life in 2011 to complete a book on the poetics and politics of self-sacrifice from the Age of Enlightenment to the French Revolution.

Jennifer Tsien organized a conference on Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie, which featured presentations by scholars from literature, history, music, and media studies departments and by Roger Chartier, expert in the history of the book. Professor Tsien is currently finishing her book The Bad Taste of Others, a study of accusations of bad poetry, bad literature, and bad taste in general, in eighteenth-century France. It will appear in the fall of 2011. She is eagerly looking forward to doing more research on her next project, which will be on colonial Louisiana.

 

Graduate Program News

In April 2010, the department held four PhD oral defenses: Isabelle Choquet, Scot Allen, Kelly Peebles, and Pascale Hapgood successfully defended their doctoral dissertations.

Caroline Gates currently holds the Department Dissertation Fellowship for 2010-2011.

Nick Shangler and Caroline Gates received the GSAS Huskey Travel Funds to deliver papers at the 16th-century French Studies Colloquium in Montreal during fall 2010.

Jacqueline Couti is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures & Cultures at the University of Kentucky.

This year five of our graduate students have gone to France to teach during 2010-11 at the following universities with which we have regular exchanges:  Kelly McConnell (Lyon), Brandon Guernsey (Aix), Gayle Jones and  Elizabeth Head (Paris Créteil), and Jennifer Holm (Nice). While these students are away, we welcome as visiting graduate assistants Camille Tang (Aix), Diana Ouzounian (ENS Paris), Fanny Gusciglio (Lyon), Catherine Arragon (Paris Créteil) and Idris Belhadi (Paris Créteil).

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York awarded a grant to the University for a dissertation seminar in the humanities to be conducted by a member of the Department.  The seminar, “Poetics and Modern Emotions,” will be offered to 15 dissertation-stage students during the summer of 2011 and again in the summer of 2013.

 

Graduate Alumnae

Mary Sue Fields, a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. Department of State, is currently serving as Public Affairs Officer for the U.S. Consulate General in Chengdu, China.

Salif Traoré, after teaching French at Hampden Sydney, is working in Stuttgart for the US Africa Command. His address: Social Scientist Research Center, US-AFRICOM, Stuttgart, Germany.

Lt. Col. Scot T. Allen is Deputy Director of International Programs for the US Air Force Academy.

Isabelle Choquet is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Languages at Denison College.

Jennifer Bemis is working at Connecticut College in the Center for International Studies in the Liberal Arts. She writes that "essentially, [it] is an interdisciplinary honors program, the components of which include developing foreign language proficiency, internationally-focused study across the curriculum, and a funded summer internship in another country. I will be running the internship program, serving as an advisor to the students in the program, and working heavily on the Center's publications, lecture series, etc."

 

French Majors

With the help of funds from the Arts and Sciences Council (and Ang Li, its representative to the French Department, 2009-2010) we were able to sponsor several activities organized by undergraduates during the year, notably a Power Point presentation and discussion on “Translation as a Profession," featuring Gabrielle Garcia (UVA Alumna and professional translator and interpreter with the Department of State, in Washington, D.C.). The event, held in Minor Hall Auditorium in February for all undergraduate foreign language majors, was a grand success.  We are looking forward to a return visit by Gabrielle in the spring.

The Department recognized 61 students who graduated in 2010 with a first or second major in French, eight of whom were Distinguished Majors (members of the DMP) and one of whom--Sarah Rosen--was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.

The DMP thesis topics and directors are as follows:

1. Dianne Becker (Pour une dimension culturelle de la traduction: le domaine du langage populaire), Adviser: Gladys Saunders

2. Kathryn Bowman (Les femmes africaines puissantes : Cachées et incomprises, mais très courageuses), Adviser: Kandioura Dramé

3. Margaret Ellen Gerhardt (Victor Hugo et ses Dessins: La vision, les voyages et l’art hugolien), Adviser: Marva Barnett

4. Margaret Chandler Mansfield (Captain Henry Hill et sa collection d'art français au 19ème siècle: Une étude socio-historique d'une vie, d'une époque, et d'une collection rare), Adviser: Gladys Saunders

5. Caitryn McCallum («La paix du cœur et la tranquillité dans ma tête, je préfère ça»: L’Expérience de la Femme Immigrée Subsaharienne au Maroc), Adviser: Mary McKinley

6. Tessa Nunn (Les Algériennes hors de leur appartement), Adviser: Kandioura Dramé

7. Kate Walton (La Construction d’une Identité Européenne en France), Adviser: Janet Horne

8. Fredericka T. Wicker (L’engagement social et l’innovation: les théories de la littérature des années cinquante), Adviser: Cheryl Krueger

 

News from Alumni and Alumnae

Here are messages from some of the students who received the B.A. in French in May 2010:

Christine Azelby is enrolled in the post-baccalaureate pre-medical program at the University of Rochester.

As has been the case for years, many of our graduates go to France to teach English in lycées and collèges. This year Frances Bernard is teaching in Rouen,  Sarah Brown in Strasbourg, Mark Benson in Lorraine, and Mitchell Gamso in Lille. Tessa Nunn is teaching English in Nantes and then plans to return to the States to teach high school French.

Katie Bowman went back to Kenya to work with HEART (Health Education Africa Resource Team), the same organization she had interned with in summer 2009. After an invigorating yet exhausting three months in Kenya, she was offered a position as Human Rights Intern with the International Justice Mission's Africa Team,  a Christian human rights agency that works all over the world and is located in Crystal City, just outside of Washington, D.C.  She will be there from January through April and hopes to go to graduate school in international affairs and continue in human rights work.

Oriana Hargrove is working in advertising sales at CQ Roll Call, a newspaper in DC.

Kristina Wolf is in law school at Wake Forest University, where our own Kendall Tarte is an Associate Professor of French and in charge of the French house, where Kristina hopes to continue speaking French for the next three years.

Laura Sole is studying towards a PhD in Chemistry at Northwestern University.

Eric Wulf is in the Peace Corps in Mali, where French is the official language, in the Small Business Development Program. 

Grace Sharp is studying law at the University of Richmond's T.C. Williams School of Law.

Ciana Mickolus  is attending graduate school at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, FL, to get a doctorate in clinical psychology.

Carolyn Yohn is an ESL instructor at the American Language Center in Rabat, Morocco.  This summer she worked at a young children’s language camp in Switzerland.

Cristina Liebolt is working as a paralegal for the next two years at a firm in New York City and hopes to go to law school after that. “My French knowledge helped out,” she writes, “because this is a large international firm.”  The interview was conducted partly in French.

Kate Walton is working as a legal analyst at Kobre & Kim LLP and plans to attend law school in the next few years. Margaret Mansfield is working in Financial Sales and Analytics at Bloomberg in New York City.Chelsea Matchett is in a master’s program in translation/interpretation at the University of Manchester (UK).

Tatianna Yeh is teaching PreK/K1 in French at the International School of Charlottesville.

Margaret Gerhardt is working as a legal assistant with the law firm of Friedlander, Friedlander, and Earman in McLean, VA.

Allissia Gilmartin received a Fulbright Grant for 2010-2011to study hepatitis c at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.

Corynn Hicks did a marketing internship with Walt Disney Company (at Disneyland, in Anaheim, CA) and is now teaching English at the WILS Language School in Seoul, South Korea.

Codi Trigger is studying international relations at the Graduate Institute of Geneva (l'Institut de Hautes Études Internationales et du Développement).

Colleen Law is going to graduate school for Sociology at the University of Manchester (UK).

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In October 2010, we congratulated Christina Calabrese, who notified us that Harvard University wants to have her master’s thesis (in Urban Planning) published as part of Platform, their ongoing exhibition of student work at the Graduate School of Design. Her thesis is titled "Reading and Constructing Spatial Narratives." For more information, see: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/reading-and-constructing-spatial-narratives/12927909 .

Kate Hofstra is a postgraduate student at the London School of Economics where she is completing an MSc in Human Rights. Prior to starting at the LSE in September, Kate spent the summer in Bosnia where she worked as an intern at the Summer Research University on Genocide and Transitional Justice in Srebrenica, BiH.

After working for two years in Niger in the Peace Corps,Danielle Sewell is Program Coordinator at SkillUp Washington in Seattle, a funders’collaborative which invests in workforce training and education initiatives. She is planning to start graduate school in international development and business next year.

Laura Wagner is a laboratory manager in the Immersive Virtual Environment Testing Area within the Social and Behavioral Research Branch of the National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH.  She is planning to go to grad school for a degree in public health.

 

Language Program

Healthy enrollments in our elementary and intermediate classes indicate that French is alive and well at UVa.  In the spring 2010 semester, 473 students took Elementary and Intermediate French. In fall 2010, a total of 521 students are enrolled in 29 French classes at the 1000 and 2000 levels.  Many students take these courses to fulfill their foreign language requirement in the College, while others choose French as an elective for academic and professional goals or personal interest.

This fall, our teaching staff in the language program includes eighteen Graduate Teaching Assistants (M.A. and Ph.D. students in our department) and five visiting Teaching Assistants from France who come to us via our exchange programs with universities in Paris, Lyon, Aix, and Nice.

New materials for the Elementary French curriculum include a wealth of French audio and video resources, accessible via the Internet for use in class and for students’ homework assignments.  Current music videos continue to be a favorite learning tool at all levels, and French and Francophone films remain an integral part of the language courses, particularly at the intermediate level.  Among the films incorporated in our 1000 and 2000 level classes this fall are: Amélie; Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien; Indochine; Le diner de cons; Entre les murs, La promesse; Joyeux Noël, and Un long dimanche de fiançailles.

Students may earn “culture points” by attending and participating in events in the Department and around Grounds that pertain to French and Francophone language and culture.  Many participate in the weekly conversation hour (“Pause-café”) at the Maison française.  This fall, French 2010 students are reading scenes from Marivaux’s “Ile des esclaves,” before attending the November performance of the play by the Théâtre Bacchus.

 

Maison Française

The Maison Française has had a busy fall.  The Thursday afternoon "Pause Café" has been welcoming about thirty francophiles each week, students as well as people from the community, who gather to speak French and enjoy good coffee and conversation.   Professor Philippe Roger gave an after-dinner causerie on the recent strikes in France; Stéphanie Bérard hosted an evening of Caribbean poetry; and actors from the Compagnie Bacchus gave an atelier de théâtre during their recent visit from Besançon.  The Maison welcomes French Department alumni and friends to its activities.  Send an e-mail to Mary McKinley, ,if you wish to be notified about upcoming events.  

 

French Events

In mid-October the Department hosted a conference on civility, honnêteté, and other forms of vivre ensemble. Giving papers were Olivier Delers (Richmond), Emma Gilby (Cambridge), Hélène Merlin-Kajman (Université de Paris III and Institut Universitaire de France), Brian Owensby (History), Giulia Pacini (William and Mary), and Philippe Roger.

The Théâtre Bacchus, from Charlottesville’s sister city, Besançon, visited in November and performed two plays in Old Cabell Hall: Marivaux’s  L'Ile des Esclaves and Tardieu’s La Comédie du langage.  The active collaboration between the two cities owes much to the enthusiastic initiative of our friend Louisa Dixon, whom some of you will remember from the days when she worked here in the French Department.

On November 5, George Hoffmann gave a lecture on Montaigne.  In attendance were Carrie Hanlon, Ainslie McLees, Jeff Persels, Charles Rice, Renée Severin, and Martha Walker.

 

Archives of Newsletters from Past Years

2008-2009 (.pdf, 227KB)

2006 and earlier editions

If you are a U.Va. French Department alumnus and have some news to share, use this form to Submit your updates.