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Romance Languages in the News
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Douthwaite article reveals existence of French Frankenstein
by Shannon Chapla
Julia Douthwaite, professor of Romance languages and literatures at the University of Notre Dame, recently published an article that reveals the existence of a French “Frankenstein,” 28 years before the publication of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece.
A Successful Exchange
By Mollie Zubek and Gail Hinchion Mancini
Marie Sanquer, an exchange student from University of Rennes, will study at Notre Dame against next fall after a summer home in France. Headline…headline..headline By Mollie Zubek and Gail Mancini Marie Sanquer came from France this year to study French language and literature. For her effort, she found that the American education system truly can offer something about her native language that her native universities do not.
Sanquer, a master’s degree student, is the first student to be part of an exchange program with the University of Rennes instituted by Julia Douthwaite, assistant provost for international studies and a faculty member of the French department.
In fall semester, Sanquer signed up for Douthwaite’s class on “Revolution in Fiction.” Douthwaite had decided to take her class in a fresh direction by assigning students to to create a project that connects an aspect of the course they found particularly meaningful to their own experience of revolution.
“The goal in this project was to allow students to engage creatively with historical material produced during or after the French Revolution,” said Douthwaite, who credits anthropologist Dan Lende’s work on blogs as her inspiration to try something different. “The students could create a poem, story, painting, collage, Internet site, film or an ‘altered book.’”
The creative project, while educational, also served as a way to step away from the more challenging aspects of the course, such as it being taught entirely in French or writing a 10 to 12 page mid-term paper in French. “The creative project leveled the playing field and empowered some students to show strengths that were invisible when we focused on oral/written proficiency alone,” Douthwaite said.
Sanquer would have no problem in a class taught in French, or writing in French. But she had not been exposed to the freedom of such creative expression. She chose to make a film, something for which she had great interest, but no experience.
To help students understand the concept, Douthwaite asked for help from Jean Dibble, associate professor of art and art history. Dibbles recent work embeds current and historic imagery as a way of challenging the viewer with the rich entanglement of the present and our remembered cultural past.
“The creative dimension allows each student to tap into his or her own way of engaging with material,” said Douthwaite. “In fact, it demanded that they become personally invested in the material we learned about from reading books, in a wholly different way.”
Although not a filmmaker, Sanquer chose to make a film. “It’s not a story. It’s a movie showing me at Notre Dame trying to make a movie about the French Revolution. How to find a camera, how to find a set,” Sanquer says. But the vision that inspired Sanquer was clear and compelling.
“Revolution is personal and a question of identity. We have this little sparkle of revolt in us. What makes the revolution go on is if people feel this sparkle,” she explains.
Glad to have had the chance to make a short film, Sanquer also was pleased to observe the creativity of her fellow students, whose works included paintings, drawings and collages.
Sanquer’s year here has served as a spark in general. She has returned to France and will defend her master’s thesis at Rennes this summer. In fall, she will continue working on a Notre Dame master’s while she prepares to apply to study for a doctorate, here in the United States.
Douthwaite Elected to Board of American Society for Eighteenth-Century
Studies
By Katie Louvat
Date: April 16, 2009
Julia Douthwaite, assistant provost for international studies and professor of French, was elected member at-large of the executive board for the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Douthwaite's scholarship focuses on 18th- and early 19th-century French literature, the French Revolution, women's writing, intersections between literature and science, and Franco-English literary relations. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Lilly Endowment, and Notre Dame's Nanovic Institute for European Studies. Read full story>
Technology Broadens Impact of New Language, Cultural Center
By Shannon Chapla
Date: March 5, 2009
Gone are the days of students learning foreign languages by donning clunky headsets and repeating phrases in a booth at the campus language lab. The University of Notre Dame's new high-tech home for language and cultural study, the Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures (CSLC) located in 329 DeBartolo Hall, is promoting communication and interaction through a variety of innovative methods designed to appeal to students. Read full story>
Choice Magazine selects Dante volume as outstanding academic
title
By Mollie Zubek
Date: January 29, 2009
The most recent volume in the University of Notre Dame's Devers series
in Dante studies has been placed on Choice Magazine's highly regarded
list of Outstanding Academic Titles for 2008. This is the third time
the series has been honored by Choice. "The Ancient Flame: Dante
and the Poets," the ninth volume in the series, was authored by
Winthrop Wetherbee of Cornell University, and edited by Christian Moevs,
associate professor of Romance languages and literatures and fellow
of Notre Dame's Medieval Institute, and Theodore Cachey, professor of
Romance languages and literatures. Read
full story>
Bishops
honor Notre Dame alumna Stephanie Garza for service to immigrants
By: Michael O. Garvey
Date: November 25, 2008
Stephanie Garza, a 2005 University of Notre Dame alumna, received the Cardinal Bernardin New Leadership Award from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) during the Nov. 10 fall meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in Baltimore. Read full story>
International studies stronger than ever
By Shannon Chapla
Date: December 12, 2008
This fall the Notre Dame added new international study programs in Hong Kong, Cambridge, England, and Leuven, Belgium (open to students enrolled in the seminary program, Old College), bringing to 40 the number of study abroad programs offered in 20 countries worldwide during the academic year and summer. A unique faculty-led program in Jerusalem at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute will begin in summer 2009, and another program will join the line-up next fall − Classics students will have an opportunity to study in Sicily. Read full story>
ND offers new graduate exchange with premier French university
By: Shannon Chapla
Date: June 18, 2008
The University of Notre Dame’s Department of Romance Languages and Literatures this fall will launch a new graduate exchange program at the Université de Rennes 2 in France. The most important research center and higher education community for humanities and social sciences in Western France, Rennes 2 enrolls 20,000 students on three campuses and offers a dynamic intellectual community and lively cultural scene. Read full story >
Grad’s
fortunes bode well for new program
By: Gail Hincheon Mancini
Date: June 25, 2008
James Hussar had the best possible final semester a doctoral candidate
can have. By January, he had accepted a tenure-track teaching position
at his number one choice: California State University, Fullerton.
Read full story >
Notre Dame, IUSB host French American conference to shape new
research
By: Shannon Chapla
Date: September 12, 2008
Shaping future research in revolutionary studies was the focus of Francophone and Anglophone scholars in literature, history and art who gathered for an international conference October 6-7, 2008. Read full story>
International conference brings celebrated Lusophone writers
to Notre Dame
By: Isabel Ferreira Gould
Date: April 16, 2008
Renowned Portuguese poet, novelist and essayist Helder Macedo will be writer-in-residence at the University of Notre Dame delivered the keynote address “Nation Versus Empire” at “Africa in Portuguese, the Portuguese in Africa: An International Research Conference” held April 18-19, 2008 . Read full story >
Foreign
language enrollments jump; new center promotes internationalism
By: Shannon Chapla
Date: February 25, 2008
Four large classrooms on the third floor of DeBartolo Hall will be renovated this summer to create the Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures (CSLC), which will serve as the centerpiece for the College of Arts and Letters’ master plan for advancing foreign language learning and the understanding of world cultures. Read full story >
Graduate School names Shaheen Award winners
By: William G. Gilroy
Date: May 14, 2008
Four doctoral candidates at the University of Notre Dame who are receiving the 2008 Eli J. and Helen Shaheen Graduate School Awards will be recognized at the school’s commencement ceremony at 10 a.m. May 17 (Saturday) in the Joyce Center. Read full story >
Eight
professors earn NEH awards; ND leads nation for past nine years
By: Shannon Chapla
Date: January 14, 2008
Eight University of Notre Dame faculty members have received research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for 2008, bringing to 37 the number of NEH fellowships awarded to Notre Dame in the past nine years, more than any other university in the nation. Read full story >
Study abroad programs rank sixth nationally
By: Shannon Chapla
Date: November 12, 2007
The University of Notre Dame has the sixth-highest percentage among
American research universities of students participating in study abroad
programs, according to a recently released report from the Institute
of International Education (IIE). Read
full story >
Learning to Love Dante: Moevs, Teaching, and Transcendence
By: Jane Marie Russell
Ask most students their opinion about Dante’s Inferno, and
you may prompt grimaces, pained looks, or half-smiles. Ask Christian
Moevs’ students the same question, and you will provoke surprisingly
passionate responses. Read
more >
