October/November Newsletter, 2005    Departmental News:The Department welcomes its new administrative coordinator, Margaret Stein. Maggie has a B.S. from Elmira College with a major in marketing and a minor in philosophy. Maggie is bravely keeping the Department office going as sole staff member during November and December. LoriAnne Barnett joins us in December as Department manager and fiscal specialist. She comes to us from the Media Studies program. LoriAnne has a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Shippensburg University and she is currently pursuing a graduate degree in Environmental Education at Prescott College. On November 3, the faculty hosted a lunch in the Colonnade Club to say farewell to Terri Smith and Jessica Wood. Terri, after seven years with us, accepted the position of Graduate Registrar in the School of Commerce. Jessie, who was with us for five years, is enjoying her son Jackson, born this past June, and will continue her career in web design. We celebrate Terri and Jessie’s good news and thank them for the long and happy time in which we had the good fortune to work with them. Pictures from the luncheon can be seen here. John Lyons recently joined the editorial committee of the startup internet journal of French studies, @nalyses, published by the French department of the University of Ottawa. Articles of his that appeared this fall include “Self-Knowledge and the Advantages of Concealment: Pierre Nicole’s On Self-Knowledge,” (in Culture and Sovereignty in the Baroque, ed. Massimo Ciavolella and Patrick Coleman [Toronto: University of Toronto Press]), “ L’Heptaméron, l’expérience et la modernité,” in Méthode! and “Mademoiselle de Chartres at the Jeweler’s Shop: Knowledge and Commerce in La Princesse de Clèves,” Seventeenth-Century French Studies. Jennifer Tsien presented a paper on riddles in verse that were featured in a popular 17th/18th-century journal. The paper was entitled "Audience Participation and the Enigmas of the Mercure Galant" and it was given at the conference of the Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies, which was held at Bowdoin College in Maine.
Mary McKinley was the D.L. Jordan Endowment Lecturer at Roanoke College on November 9th. She spoke to the Senior Humanities Seminar on Montaigne's On Cannibals and gave a lecture entitled "Clandestine Encounters: Calvin, Marguerite de Navarre, and the Rhetoric of Nicodemism." Kandioura Dramé was invited to deliver a lecture on "Litterature et philosophie" at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, 21 November 2005. Shortly after leaving the happy meadows of Albermarle County,
Philippe Roger was back on this continent for
an international conference in Princeton on «Anti-Americanism
in Europe» (Nov.18-19).
In a very timely way, New Republic (Nov. 28-Dec. 5 issue)
published a long and thorough piece par Paul Berman entitled «The
Anti-Anti-Americans» where
The American Enemy is discussed at length. Before flying
back to Paris, Philippe Roger the Barthesian (as opposed to Philippe
Roger
the anti-anti-American) was invited to Columbia by his old accomplice
Antoine Compagnon (who just got elected to the Collège de
France last weekend, three cheers !) for another «Barthes
duo».
A note from Philippe: Amanda Blumberg (MA 2005) is a Faculty Research Assistant at the Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL) at the University of Maryland. CASL is the nation’s tenth University-Affiliated Research Center (UARC) and is tasked with serving the nation by improving the language performance of the Intelligence and the Department of Defense workforce. The October 6, 2005 dedication of the secure facility in College Park, Maryland was marked with a speech by CIA Director Porter J. Goss. During Thanksgiving Jacqueline Couti presented a paper "Au sommet du mat: erotisme et masculinité dans le mat de Cocagne de René Depestre" at the conference organized by the CERALEC at the UAG (université des Antilles et de la Guyane). Her article "Tambour-Ka, Cyclones, and Awakenings of Body and Spirit in Pineau’s Macadam Dreams" has been accepted by Mango Season, a review published by the Caribbean Women Writers Alliance at the Caribbean Centre, Goldsmiths College, University of London. Jacqueline has also been invited to present "What’s Love got to do with it? : Sex in the Tropics in Gisèle’s Pineau’s Esperance-Macadam" at the 20th Century Literature Conference organized by the University of Louisville in February 2006. The recipient of this year's departmental Outstanding GTA Award is Paula Sato. Congratulations Paula! Undergraduate News:
BOURSES EIFFEL Meg Merwin, UVa French 2002, visited the French Department on October 20th. Meg is the French Embassy's liaison for the French Ministry of Education's assistantship, internship, and fellowhip programs. She gave an information session for students interested in those programs. Further information about the programs is available at: www.frenchculture.org/education |
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