April Newsletter, 2003

   

Departmental News:

In late March-early April A. J. Arnold participated in the review of the departments of French on the Barbados and Trinidad campuses of the University of the West Indies. His article "Perilous Symmetry: Exoticism and the Geography of Colonial and Postcolonial Culture" has been published in Geo/graphies: Mapping the Imagination in French and Francophone Literature and Film, vol. 30 in the FLS series (New York: Rodopi, 2003), 1-28.

On April 17 Jacqueline Couti and Nadia Mamelouk participated in the session on "Rewriting Resistance" at the conference on "Challenging the Norm..." hosted by the School of Foreign Languages of the University of Maryland in College Park. Jacqueline's paper on "Rewriting the Vichy Regime in Confiant's Le nègre et l'amiral: How to Write in a Dominated Country" and Nadia's on "Tropiques: The Literary Review as 'Border Thinking" and Resistance" originated in the seminar on World War II offered in Fall 2002.

Sandrine Genin has accepted a position teaching French and German at Saint Paul's School in Brooklandville, MD (near Baltimore).

On Thursday 8 May A. J. Arnold will participate in a public reading sponsored by the Americas Society in New York City. Two days later he will moderate a panel on Caribbean literature and culture under the same auspices. Panelists will include Antonia Benítez-Rojo, Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones, and Earl Lovelace.

Gladys Saunders returned to Cabell Hall on the 29th of April to say goodbye to her students in French 339 and 428 (whom she unfortunately had to abandon after her accident) and to thank colleagues and friends for their many acts of kindness during her recovery. Gladys is looking forward to returning to the classroom in the fall.

Gladys in her leg brace

   

Undergraduate News:

Mary McKinley is pleased to announce the students, topics and directors in the Distinguished Majors Program for the year 2003-2004:

Looking ahead...

Sara Choi is graduating with a BA in French and plans to work as an account executive with Bergen Shippers in northern New Jersey starting in late May. She hopes that working for an international company will set her up for a smooth transition into business school in a couple of years.

Christine Chun (Slavic/French) will be entering active duty in the Air Force as an intelligence officer and will be at Maxwell AFB, AL, before attending Intelligence School at Goodfellow AFB, TX. After Intelligence School, she hopes to be stationed in South Korea.

Rebecca Crisafulli (French/Religious Studies) does not yet know what she will be doing in the months following graduation, but her claim to fame is graduating in five semesters. She wants to be a high school French teacher someday.

Craig Foster (French/Philosophy) will be teaching elementary school in Phoenix, AZ through the Teach for America program.

Caroline King is graduating with a double major in Economics and French and will be working in Northern Virginia starting in June.

Meghan Lynch (Foreign Affairs/French) will teach English in France next year through the French National Government's Assistantship Program. After that, she hopes to enter a doctoral program in political science.

Ryan McLoughlin (French/Sociology) will spend a month in Europe this summer traveling throughout France, Greece, Croatia, and Hungary. When he returns, he will move to Los Angeles where he will work on the FOX studio lot in marketing for News America Marketing, FOX Entertainment's sister company.

Michelle Morse (French) plans to attend the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine this August. She hopes to practice some form of pediatrics as well as to focus on treating underserved populations. She also plans to work in a francophone country in Africa during her years of medical school and practice.

This summer Bridget Murray (Foreign Affairs major/French minor) will be traveling to Oregon to work as a children's counselor on a family ranch. She will spend the winter in Jackson Hole, Wyoming working as a ski instructor. She hopes to follow these adventures with a trip back to Africa (inspired by her study abroad in Rabat, Morocco) to work as a human rights volunteer, most likely in a sub-saharan, French-speaking country or in South Africa. Her long term plan is to attend to law school for human rights and international law.

Nicole Pritchard (English/French) is thrilled to be moving to France for a one year teaching assistantship on the Côte d'Azur after she graduates. Thanks to the encouragement of Professor Rubin, obtaining a visa and un travail abroad was much easier than she anticipated! The assistantship places her in a school in the Nice district, and she will be teaching English conversation in either a lycée or école secondaire.

Alison Snow (Foreign Affairs/French) will be spending the month of August at the Universitat in Bonn, Germany where she will continue to learn German through the university's immersion program. Then she'll cross the border to Lyon, France where she will be teaching English at the primary level through the French Embassy.

Congratulations and best wishes to all of our graduates!