Spending a year at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris was a very rich cultural and intellectual experience for me. Living and studying at the ENS gave me the impression from the very beginning of my stay that I was at the heart of French intellectual life and that I could explore every corner of it from my base at the rue d'Ulm. (The ENS student identification card opens many doors.) It is possible to attend Pierre Bourdieu's lectures at the Collège de France for example or to do research at the Bibliothèque nationale de France or to do a DEA in one of the many universities in Paris. I did not limit myself to only one thing, but rather tried to do as many as possible. I took courses in several different fields (philosophy, literature, language, literary theory); did research at the old and the new Bibliothèque nationale; attended the ballet, opera, theater; and visited many museums in and around Paris, including seventeen trips to the Louvre. After a number of years of specialization at the University of Virginia, I used my year in Paris as a way of exploring how I could connect that expertise to a broader world of knowledge and thought.

Nicolas Russell,
ENS Fellow 1997-98
Assistant Professor, Smith College