September Newsletter, 2003

   

Departmental News:

Roy Harris' article "The Story of Samson and Delilah in the Occitan Bible d'Acre (Ms. BNF, fr. 2426)" appeared in the spring/summer 2003 issue of La France Latine, nº 136, 117-155, a journal of the Centre d'Enseignement et de Recherche d'Oc, Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne.

Lisette Luton (Ph.D. 1997) was promoted to Associate Professor of French at Charleston Southern University in the Spring of 2003.

Cheryl Krueger's article "Surgical Imprecision and the Baudelairean poème en prose" appears in French Forum (vol. 27 no.5) pp.55-72. Her article "Being Madame Bovary" appears in the current issue of Literature/Film Quarterly
(vol.31, no.3, 2003).

Nathalie Charron (Ph.D. 2003) has accepted a one-year visiting professor position at Haverford College.

A. J. Arnold has received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to organize a seminar for 23 Caribbeanists at the Villa Serbelloni Conference Center on Lake Como in late June 2004. The subject of the seminar is The Caribbean Literature Archive project, of which he is the director. The second and final part of his article exposing the 1948 "Mayotte Capécia" hoax was published in the Spring 2003 issue of the Revue de Littérature Comparée in Paris, at about the time he was named to the Advisory Board of the journal Review: Latin American Literature and Arts, which is published by the Americas Society in New York.

Maggie McColley presented a paper at the International conference "Women in Motion" at Mt. Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada in May.

Gladys Saunders' article, «Un chapitre dans l’histoire de la linguistique: Louis Gauchat et le changement phonétique» appears in volume V (pp.283-293), of Les Actes du XXe Congrès International de linguistique et philologie romanes, edited by Fernando Sánchez-Miret (U. of Salamanca), and published in June 2003, by Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tubingen, Niemeyer. Her book review of "Social and Stylistic Variation in Spoken French: A Comparative
Approach," by Niegel Armstrong, also appeared in June (in volume 79 of the journal Language).

During the summer Elisabeth Ladenson taught a graduate course on "Littérature et censure au 19e siècle" at the Institut d'études françaises in Avignon (Bryn Mawr College). While in France she went to Cerisy-la-Salle for a colloquium on "Lire, écrire la honte," where she gave a talk entitled "Honte, mémoire, censure", and found out what all the fuss is about about Cerisy (details on request).

Undergraduate News:

Undergraduate French (and International Affairs) major Anouck McCall spent the summer working on Capitol Hill, as Assistant Press Secretary to Congresswoman Katherine Harris, Thirteenth District, Florida. She continues her job on the Hill this fall. How Anouck manages to juggle her final semester of course work at the University, her commute to and from Washington, and her exciting work as Assistant Press Secretary to Congresswoman Harris, is a manifestation of her keen self-discipline, her intellectual energy and her physical stamina. Congratulations Anouck!!

   

Obituary:

Jesse Richard Pitts est décédé à Charlottesville le 2 août 2003. Né de mère française et de père américain, Jesse avait fait ses études secondaires au Lycée Voltaire et avait obtenu son baccalauréat en 1938. Il poursuivit ensuite ses études universitaires à Harvard, dont il sortit magna cum laude en 1941. Durant la Seconde Guerre, il s'engagea et servit comme co-pilote d'un bombardier B-17 dans la Eighth Air Force. Il prit part à 25 missions en France et en Allemagne et fut décoré de la Distinguished Flying Cross et de la Croix de Guerre.

Après avoir obtenu son Ph.D. en sociologie à Harvard en 1958, Jesse Pitts enseigna successivement à Wayne State University (1959-64) et à Oakland University (1964-86). Il enseigna également à l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (1966-68), à l'Institut d'Etudes politiques de Paris (1976-7), et à l'école d'été de Harvard (61, 70, 75).

Fondateur de La Revue Tocqueville/The Tocqueville Review, il en assuma les responsabilités de rédacteur de 1979 à 1991. Il est l'auteur de nombreux articles en anglais et en français qui ont paru dans Society Today, Dissent, The Tocqueville Review, Esprit, Contrepoint, Commentaire. Il est également co-auteur de Theories of Society (1966) et de In Search of France (1963). Au moment de sa mort, Jesse Pitts venait de finir le manuscrit de ses mémoires de guerre, Return to Base, à paraître en 2004.

Jesse Pitts et son épouse, Monique, ont été pendant de longues années des familiers du Département de Français de UVa. Monique y enseigna de nombreux cours de langue et de littérature. Quant à Jesse, qui enseignait alors dans le Département de Sociologie, il participait volontiers comme conférencier dans nos cours sur la société et la culture françaises.

Vous êtes tous cordialement invités à une cérémonie en l'honneur de Jesse Richard Pitts, à 14h00, le 21 septembre 2003, dans la salle McGregor de la bibliothèque Alderman.

   

Up-coming Events & Announcements:

 Wednesday, October 1, 4:00 p.m. Location TBA

Original Skin: Flaying and Thinking in Late Medieval Culture

By Sarah Kay
Professor of French, University of Cambridge, and fellow of Girton College
Her most recent books include Zizeck, a critical introduction (2003), Courtly contradictions: the emergence of the literary object in the twelfth century (2001), The Romance of the Rose (1995), and The Chansons de geste in the age of romance (1995).

Sponsored by the Commonwealth Professorship of French.

 N'oubliez pas ces activités hebdomadaires à la Maison Française:

"La Pause Café", tous les Mercredis de 16h à 18h (beginning September 17)
"Le Ciné-Club", tous les Jeudis, à 19h (beginning September 18. Fall 2003 film schedule coming soon to the Maison Française web site)

The Committee on Lectures and Colloquia will be announcing its fall lineup, in the coming days, on this web site. Stay tuned. . .