yale department of french fall 2016

GREETINGS qualities that have distinguished him as the truly incomparable candidate in his FROM THE field, and as a leading intellectual across the humanities in general. CHAIR A second hire at the junior level was also cause for rejoicing. JILL JARVIS (below with Pierre Saint-Amand), our new assistant professor in North African literature, works on Maghrebi literature written in French and Arabic. Her hire brings to a conclusion our determined search for a vibrant scholar who works in both linguistic and cultural traditions. Jarvis’s dissertation, “Absent Witness: The Politics of Fiction in the Postcolony, Algeria 1962-2001,” engages attended his lecture, given in French—a sign with Algerian literary history as a site for the among many that francophone culture on critique of state violence. She is interested our campus is alive and well. Daoud, author in the transformative powers of literature, of the international bestseller, Meursault, beyond what area studies or development contre-enquête, spent his last morning on discourse might accomplish. Her article campus working with the original manuscript “Remnants of Muslims: Reading Agamben’s of Camus’s Le Mythe de Sisyphe, one of the Silence” won the 2014 Ralph Cohen prize treasures of the Beinecke. He later wrote from the journal New Literary History, about the experience in Le Point. Daoud’s awarded to the best essay by an untenured Yale lecture is available with English subtitles scholar. Jill lived in France as a child, but her on YouTube. Support from the Whitney first formal study of the language was via Humanities Center, the Poynter Fellowship, I’M DELIGHTED TO BEGIN THIS our own “French in Action.” Stay tuned for and the Macmillan Center allowed us to newsletter with word of two faculty hires, sightings of Robert and Mireille in Algiers… provide this resource to students reading each of which was long in the planning. Among many memorable lectures and Daoud in English translation. PIERRE SAINT-AMANDth , the events of the season, KAMEL DAOUD’s During this last eventful year as chair, renowned specialist of 18 -century lecture on “Meursault et l’arabe: une I was supported by a truly excellent team: literature, joined the faculty this July as the robinsonnade malheureuse” stands out. CHRISTOPHER MILLER, returning as Benjamin Barge Professor of French. The During a week when the campus was DGS, CHRISTOPHER SEMK, returning Barge chair, intended for a native speaker of engaged in protests over issues of race and as DUS, and RUTH KOIZIM, in her first French, was held by Naomi Schor until her free speech, at the dawn of an important year as the Language Program Director. In death in 2001. It is especially meaningful Black Lives Matter movement, Daoud (top July, I passed the reins of the Department to us that Pierre should succeed her, since right) addressed hard questions of what it to MAURICE SAMUELS, who brings to the they were close friends and colleagues at means to be “othered.” Over 120 students job his many talents and achievements: a th Brown University. Pierre joins the ranks of former French DGS and former member of a long and distinguished cohort of 18 - the Humanities Divisional Committee, he is century French scholars at Yale, going back also the Director of Yale’s Program for the to Henri Peyre and including his mentor Study of Anti-Semitism (YPSA). Maurie Georges May, whose portrait hangs in Samuels is a dynamic and admired teacher th the French department’s hallway. Pierre’s at the graduate and undergraduate levels many books and scholarly editions have as well as a prize-winning scholar in 19 - challenged us to think differently and more century literature and culture and in Jewish deeply about the Enlightenment, to look Studies. Maurie’s leadership at Yale and in at its shadows and its margins, to read the profession at large will consolidate our closely. His integrity as a theorist based recent gains and take the department in 1 in close reading, his elegance as a writer, exciting new directions. and his critical generosity are among the — Alice Kaplan RETIREMENT TRIBUTE—THOMAS M. KAVANAGH GOUVERNEMENT 2016-17 Chair: MAURICE SAMUELS THOMAS KAVANAGH, B.S. Holy Cross College, DGS: CHRIS MILLER in the Fall, Ph.D. Yale University, faculty member at SUNY Buffalo, R. HOWARD BLOCH the universities of Colorado, Michigan, and California Berkeley, and Augustus R. Street Professor of French in the Spring. TOM CONNOLLY at Yale since 2002: your capacious mind and eloquent DUS: voice have dominated our understanding of the culture LPD: RUTH KOIZIM will continue as the of the French Enlightenment over the last four decades. director of the Language Program. th You had the courage to tackle neglected aspects of the 18 century, to synthesize the study of literature and the MERCIS social sciences, to reconcile esthetics, philosophy, and We’re grateful to: literature in a series of influential books, articles, and reviews focused on the major EMILY BAKEMEIER, Deputy Provost, Dean figures of the period—Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, Casanova, Graffigny, Watteau, of Faculty Affairs of FAS Poussin, Boucher, and Fragonard. In your first book, The Vacant Mirror, you used TAMAR GENDLER French theory to revise our understanding of the mimetic conventions of story- , Dean of the Facuty of Arts and Sciences telling. Your second book, Writing the Truth, contained a startling psychoanalytic AMY HUNGERFORD interpretation of Rousseau’s combined literary, political, and personal writings. In , Chair of the Humanities Divisional Committee in FAS your third free-standing volume, Enlightenment and the Shadows of Chance, which JOHN MANGAN won the Modern Language Association’s prestigious Scaglione Prize, you traced , Senior Associate Dean with consummate brilliance and erudition the coincident growth of the novel as of FAS DOREEN NEELANS a form and of the probability theory that made us mathematically modern. Your , Operations Manager IAN SHAPIRO move into the field of art history in your 1997 volume Esthetics of the Moment , Director of the MacMillan embraced the various ways the Enlightenment valorized the present moment—as Center, for providing research fund support an Epicurean, an epiphanic, a supra-historical, or a fortuitous experience of the for faculty and graduate students in French here and now. At the apex of a distinguished career, you not so much indulged for their support of our many endeavors, your life-long love of gambling as made playing the numbers worthy of genuine and their gift for problem solving and open intellectual inquiry. Your 2005 volume Dice, Cards, Wheels: A Different History of dialogue. We feel lucky to work with such French Culture and your 2010 Enlightened Pleasures: Eighteenth-Century France and an excellent team. the New Epicureanism make the history of French literature richer, more challenging, and more pleasurable. Yale’s French Department has benefitted immensely from your wisdom as an JALONS We are delighted to welcome VANESSA undergraduate teacher and mentor of graduate students, and from your twinkly, VYSOSIAS to the rank of senior lector 1 equanimous, steady hand as departmental chair. As you retire from this faculty, your colleagues, proud of the multiplicity of your gifts and your achievements, celebrate your significant and original contributions to French studies, literary studies, and to the humanities writ large. R. HOWARD BLOCH

Vanessa Vysosias (l) and Lauren Pinzka (r) Newsletter published annually by Editors: the Department of French. Agnès Bolton Elaine Piraino-Holevoet and to announce that RUTH KOIZIM Your comments, suggestions and Robyn Pront (right) news are most welcome! Photographers: was reappointed as Nathalie Batraville and Ayah Elarabi) senior lector 1. Agnès Bolton (Special events) French Newsletter TOM KAVANAGH P.O. Box 208251 Michael Marsland (Faculty portraits, departmental group photos, and HGS was named professor New Haven, CT 06520-8251 [email protected] Designer: emeritus. R. HowardCONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE Elaine Piraino-Holevoet/PIROET Bloch wrote a 2 wonderful tribute. (See box)

MERCIS AUSSI to our colleagues RAMLA BEDOUI (left), who added so much to our language curriculum and was a vibrant member of our intellectual community, and NATASHA LEE, who taught a graduate seminar in the Fall which asked how political, th scientific, and religious discourses marked individuals as “others” in the 18 century; and to LAURA BERGOUGNOU (below left), PAUL LANGLOIS (center), EMILIE POLAK (right), and FRANÇOIS EXPERT (missing from photo),the students from the Ecole Normale Supérieure participating in the exchange program between the department and the ENS, for their active contribution to our Language Program. Gouvernement: Chris Miller, DGS; Maurie Samuels, Chair; Tom Connolly, DUS

DISTINCTIONS French Department alum BENJAMIN HOFFMANN’s (left) fourth novel, American Pandemonium, was published by Gallimard. Please see the review published by “ Le Monde des Livres” here. PATRICK WEIL (right) received the 2016 Jean Zay Prize, a literary prize awarded to a work reflecting the values of the French Republic, for his book Le Sens de la République. The book has been adapted into an illustrated version by Grasset jeunesse. Below: The Yale Department of French, Fall 2016

3 September 23, 2003 REMEMBERING NAOMI SCHOR THROUGH JOAN WALLACH SCOTT THE NAOMI SCHOR MEMORIAL LECTURE SERIES Printeton University Naomi Schor Inaugural Memorial Lecture : The Naomi Schor Lecture Fund was established in 2002 to “French Universalism in the Nineties” honor and perpetuate the memory of Professor Schor by November 9, 2004 bringing to the Yale community distinguished speakers on FRANÇOISE GASPARD th the broad range of topics represented by her teaching and Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences research. NAOMI SCHOR was a scholar of 19 -century Sociales, Paris "Universalism and Diversity— French literature and culture, whose writings focused on French Feminism and the Veil" the novel, but whose interests spanned a much wider area, October 10, 2005 including feminist theory, women’s and gender studies, the PEGGY PHELAN visual arts, interdisciplinary approaches to literature and Stanford University history, and the relationship of universalism, human rights, "Political Details, or, The Distraction of and citizenship to the more particular national ethnic, and History in the Age of Performance" immigrant identities of America and France. November 12, 2007 LINDA NOCHLIN New York University "Dislocating Tradition: Women Artists and the Body, from Cassatt to Whiteread" April 13, 2009 JUDITH BUTLER UC Berkeley "What Does Gender Want of Me?" April 7, 2010 ALICE KAPLAN Yale University "Susan Sontag's Parisian Year" March 1, 2011 PATRICK WEIL Paris 1-Sorbonne, Yale Law School "Being French: The Four Pillars of Nationality" November 5, 2012 ROYA HAKAKIAN Writer, journalist, human rights activist "9/17/1992: The Political Assassination, Stubborn Prosecutor, and Historic Verdict that Shook Iran and Europe” November 5, 2013 GRISELDA POLLOCK University of Leeds, UK “Crimes, Confession and the Everyday: Challenges in Reading Charlotte Salomon's Leben? oder Theater? 1941-42” April 15, 2015 SUSAN SULEIMAN Harvard University "How to Become a Famous Woman Writer in Interwar France: Irène Némirovsky’s Choices, 1920-1939" April 12, 2016 MAURICE SAMUELS Yale University “The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews” April 4, 2017 PIERRE SAINT-AMAND 4 Yale University TBA ÉVÉNEMENTS 2015 February 8 April 15-16 September 24 CHRISTOPHER CARSTEN Displacements/Déplacements: PATRICK WEIL Translator A graduate conference hosted by the Yale Law School, CNRS, Université Paris-1 “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Fable: Jean Yale French Department. “After the Paris Attacks: Is There a Future de La Fontaine in a New English Version Guest speaker: for the Jews and the Muslims in France?” Translation” ANDREA GOULET (left) September 28 April 5 University of DOMINIQUE KALIFA ALBAN CERISIER Pennsylvania Université Paris-1 Archiviste, historien, éditeur et auteur “Les Drames de “The True Story of the Belle Époque” aux éditions Gallimard, la Rue: Politics, (co-sponsored by the Dept. of History) “Un siècle d’édition française: quelques Theater, and Crime vues sur les archives inédites des th Octpber 29 in/off the Streets PIERRE SAINT-AMAND Editions Gallimard” of 19 -Century Brown University April 12 Paris” “Trouble dans la mode: Petits-maîtres et fats MAURICE SAMUELS au XVIIIe siècle” Yale University Annual Lecture in Memory of Naomi Schor November 3 MARTINE REID “The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews” University Lille-III, France “La France à l’heure du ‘genre’ ” November 9 KAMEL DAOUD Writer and journalist, Yale Poynter Fellow “Meursault et l’arabe: une robinsonnade malheureuse”

April 28 MICHAEL LUCEY UC Berkeley “Proust and Bourdieu, Distinction and Form”

2016 January 21 JILL JARVIS Princeton University “Untranslatable Justice: Yamina Mechakra’s Fiction for the Future (Algeria 1973-1999)” February 4 PAULA AMAD University of Iowa “‘The World’s Heavy Gaze:’ Cin-aereality in the Post-War French Avant-Gardes” 5 FACULTY NEWS HOWARD BLOCH chaired Medieval happens when a textual machine escapes Versopolis, a new European review of th st Studies during the 2015-2016 academic its original support. She led a panel at poetry, books, and culture sponsored by year. His book on Stéphane Mallarmé, the 20 / 21 Century French Studies the European Union. She also translated One Toss of the Dice: The Incredible Story Colloquium, “D’une classe à l’autre: 40 four articles by French author Jacqueline of How a Poem Made us Modern , was ans de mobilité sociale à la française,” and Raoul-Duval: “France Pays Homage to Elie published in November 2016 by W. W. showed how Annie Ernaux and Edouard Wiesel,” “Her eyes already half closed: Norton. At present he is working on a Louis profile the social deserter either Bettina Rheims in all of her stages,” “Who MOOC entitled “The Age of Cathedrals.” as an unattainable exception or as a Am I?” and “Paris, Never More: Schubert, MORGANE reproducible example. after the Shooting.” Diane’s book, Letters to Men of Letters, which takes inspiration CADIEU DIANE CHARNEY’s reviews, “Elisabeth from Alice Kaplan’s wonderful French completed the Louise Vigée-Le Brun and the Art of CONTINUED ON PAGE 7 Lessons and Dreaming in French, is slated manuscript of Seduction” and “Supreme Sensations: for publication in 2017. her first book James Tissot exhibit at The Chiostro on Georges del Bramante in Rome” appeared in Perec, Samuel Beckett, Sophie Calle, Italo Calvino, and FROM PIERRE SAINT AMAND Anne Garréta called Marcher au hasard: I presented at Cerisy-la-Salle this summer on déterminisme, clinamen et libre-arbitre en Roland Barthes on the occasion of the centenary littérature au XXème siècle. In her next of his birth. It was the last event of the Barthes book project, entitled Rewriting Rastignac: celebration, arriving a little beyond the anniversary How to Make It in the Contemporary year (2015). For me, it was the occasion to return French Novel, she will explore the renewal to Cerisy where I had been for the first Marguerite of the motif of the “ transfuge” as well Duras conference in 1993. I was pleased to be as the representation of classes and back to this mythical place, this Normandy château social mobility in narratives from the dedicated uniquely to intellectual exchange. This 1970s onward with a focus on liminal was the second Roland Barthes conference at figures of emancipation such as maids, Cerisy. The first one, organized by a young Antoine cashiers, and security guards. She was Compagnon in 1977, famously included Roland awarded a Griswold fellowship to start Barthes himself (a Cerisy tradition is to have the person being paid homage the archival research for her new project present during the debates). This 2016 celebration, I have to admit, felt a little this summer in Paris, Angers, and Caen, strange: it centered a lot on Barthes’s semiological writings. It made evident where she consulted the manuscripts and however how the writings of Barthes had impacted the world. There were correspondence of Jules Vallès, Octave scholars from Brazil, Eastern Europe, Spain, Belgium. I was honored to be the Mirbeau, Christine Angot, and Nella one representing the United States (and Yale—my first presentation under Nobili. Her article, “Stratification of the my new affiliation). And I was pleased to have another take, different from the Urban Space in Contemporary Paris: semiological and the “genetical” Barthes (his writings read and corrected in Modiano, Vasset, and the Data Centers light of his seminars). I spoke on eroticism in Barthes, the way it is brought out of Memory,” is forthcoming in Sites. This by the Neutral (one of Barthes’s key late concepts). Some might have seen an past year, she taught courses on the American influence in this choice of topic with its deliberate gender inflection. history and aesthetics of trains, French Indeed, Eros in Roland Barthes escapes the violence of dichotomy, of binary. fiction since the 1990s, social mobility, The Neutral opens up a space for an eroticism of the surface, of contact, of and literary versions of consumer society. delicacy. It reconfigures relationships in terms of tenderness. At the Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium at Princeton last fall, she A sad intrusion made its way into the serenity of Cerisy when the news of the unearthed the social mapping of the Bastille Day attack in Nice reached the château the following morning. In the cholera in George Sand’s Parisian novels. distance of Normandy, the event felt strangely far, detached from the tumult In the spring, she delivered the keynote of the twenty-four hour news cycle. However, we were able to pay homage address at Brown for the graduate student to the victims on the day when France stood for the minute of silence. The conference on intermediality. Based on conference stopped its work. This place of debate and discussion became her 3D printing of Emile Zola’s train solemn as it froze in silence. in La Bête humaine, she examined what 6 FACULTY NEWS,

continued from page 6

CANDACE THOMAS CONNOLLY returns from a moderator for the Center for Independent SKORUPA Morse fellowship to serve as DUS. Last Study. This fall she is embarking on a , senior year, he published articles on Baudelaire yearlong review of gateway introductory lector, continues and prose poetry in Romance Notes French-language literature courses outside her work in and on Mallarmé and temples in French of Yale. telecollaboration Studies Bulletin. He has articles appearing and the de- Thanks to a Guggenheim Fellowship, on Rimbaud in PMLA, and on musical velopment of a MAURICE SAMUELS was able to take a ekphrasis in Mosaic. His book on the late related larger-scale leave in 2015-16 to complete his new book, work of the poet Paul Celan is scheduled methodology for The Right to Difference: French Universalism to appear with Legenda in 2017. This the curriculum of and the Jews, which will be published by The year, he is teaching courses on Mad Poets, the FREN 145 intermediate intensive course. University of Chicago Press in November Mallarmé, and Ekphrasis, and continuing Sustained teamwork with her Parisian 2016. He is looking forward to his new role research on aniconism and North African partner teacher, Sophie Petrucci, at the as chair of the French Department. francophone poetry. grande école Télécom-ParisTech, benefits CONSTANCE students on both sides of the Atlantic with ALICE KAPLAN’s Looking for The Stranger: SHERAK once weekly, authentic communication in the Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary again served target language. Classic was published this fall by the as chair of At the GLAT conference in Padua, University of Chicago Press and by the our intensive Italy, in May, Candace presented a paper Editions Gallimard (French title: En quête elementary on telecollaborative mediation, “Cross- de L’Etranger). She enjoyed teaching French course Cultural Connections,” to commemorate WWII French Cinema this past spring, last fall and en- the 14 years of the telecollaboration project assisted by French/Film and Media Studies joyed revising that she spear-headed at Smith College in graduate student Sean Strader. In the and teaching 2002 as well as to celebrate the imminent spring semester, in addition to chairing FREN198, “Ap- retirement of her long-term project partner, French, she acted as interim director of plied Advanced French Grammar,” in James Benenson at Télécom-ParisTech. She the Whitney Humanities Center during the spring, a new course she designed was joined at the conference by both of her Gary Tomlinson’s leave. She continues that seeks to refine advanced students’ teaching partners at Télécom-ParisTech, to enjoy writing occasional pieces on skills through grammar review, stylistic Benenson and Petrucci, as well as two of French-American topics: “Le rêve de Nohemi analysis of literary works, translation, and her successors at Smith College, Christiane Gonzalez,” Nouvelle revue française (no. 617, the writing of fiction pieces. She chaired Métrai and (virtually) Mohammed Mack. March 2016); “Greil Marcus et Bob Dylan,” a session on “Somatic Thresholds: Some At Yale this year Candace presented other Contreligne (fall 2015), and “Ode to the Ways of Looking at the Body” at this aspects of her telecollaboration work at Pagode,” The Paris Review Daily (November year’s Nineteenth-Century French Studies a CLS Brown Bag luncheon as well as her 11, 2013). Colloquium in Princeton and is currently recent experience with two new applications LAUREN PINZKA has enjoyed her preparing a paper on anachronism and (“Zoom” and “Padlet”) at a CLS Tech Talk. ongoing role as course co-chair of aesthetics in Balzac that she’ll present In conjunction with the “Focus on FREN160 while teaching two different at this year’s NCFS Colloquium at Brown. French Cinema” in Greenwich, CT, in versions of “Introduction to Literature Constance continued in her role as February, Candace invited the French film in French.” She also happily returned to sophomore advisor and also as co-referee, director Alix Delaporte to her FREN145 teaching the “Advanced Writing Workshop.” with Françoise Schneider, for the annual class and to a department tea for a After teaching FREN160 in Paris for the Montaigne Prize. She attended several discussion of Delaporte’s latest film, “Le first time, she completed an article entitled teaching workshops at the Center for dernier coup de marteau.” FREN145 students “Teaching the French Revolution: Myth and Language Study that inspired revisions also joined Candace on a field trip to the Memory in Modern France” for the MLA’s to her own teaching. This summer, she United Nations in NYC for a special event Approaches to Teaching the French Revolution. taught FREN50, “Advanced Language and screening of the documentary Demain. Her chapter, “Teaching Historical Myth Practice,” in Paris during the Yale Summer At the 2015 Nineteenth-Century and Memory in Indiana,” appeared in Session where floods and train strikes French Studies Colloquium at Princeton, 2015 in the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching contributed to an added “cultural Candace chaired a panel on “The Syphilis Indiana. She enthusiastically continued in experience” for her students. Constance Plague: Prostitution and Hygiene in Fin-de- th her role as Branford fellow and freshman is currently at work on an article on the Siècle France,” building on her interest in and sophomore advisor and regularly pedagogy of the Francophone literary prostitutes in 19 -century literature. attends CLS pedagogy workshops. She also patrimoine through film. served as treasurer and occasional salon 7

FACULTY BOOKSHELF Publisher W. W. Norton writes about control over the fate of their published R. HOWARD BLOCH ’s new book: books: Camus felt this acutely in the “Renowned scholar R. Howard Bloch 1950s when a schoolboy in Melun decodes the poem still considered who had murdered his classmate among the most enigmatic ever claimed to an examining magistrate written. Creating a shimmering that Meursault was to blame. The portrait of Belle-Époque Paris with a victim’s father wrote to Camus asking if cast of exotic characters—Napoleon he would testify for the prosecution by III, the Lumière brothers, Whistler, arguing that his novel couldn’t possibly Rodin, Berthe Morisot, even an provoke a murder. He refused: “If I deny expatriate American dentist—that firmly, with no exceptions, that The recalls Roger Shattuck’s classic The Stranger can incite crime, this book, Banquet Years, Bloch positions Mallarmé as the spiritual giant nevertheless, like all my other books, illustrates, in its own way, my of late nineteenth-century France. Featuring a new translation horror of capital punishment and my anguished questions at any of the poem by J. D. McClatchy, One Toss of the Dice reveals how suspicion of guilt.” Camus would never testify for the prosecution. a masterpiece shaped our perceptual world.” When it was time to publish The Stranger in paperback, he hesitated. He was comfortable with a paperback edition of The Of her new book, nominated for the Prix Médicis, published in both Plague, but The Stranger? ‘It isn’t a book for everyone,’ he told his English (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, October 2016) and publisher. ‘Maybe later.’ ALICE KAPLAN French (Paris: Gallimard, September 2016), writes: Today, as we know, The Stranger is the best-selling paperback “The Stranger has been a staple of the French literature curriculum novel in French publishing history, running neck and neck with The at Yale as early as the first issue of Yale French Studies in 1948, Little Prince. Seventy-four years after its first publication and over a through Pierre Capretz’s lessons on the passé composé and several century after Camus’s birth, over 10.3 million copies of The Stranger generations of lecture courses on The Modern French Novel. In my have sold in France alone. As long as people keep reading novels, new book, Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a The Stranger will live on: that’s more of a guarantee of an afterlife Literary Classic, I set out to write what I think of as the life story of than any author, and most books, can hope for.” that book. How did Camus, who in 1940 was the unknown author of one unpublished novel, hit upon the voice and figure of Meursault, MAURICE SAMUELS says of his the man who says I, not to bring us closer to him, but to keep us new book: “Universal equality is a away. How did Camus’s short, trenchant tale became a classic? What treasured political concept in France, can explain its power over its readers? I wanted to get as close as but recent anxiety over the country’s I could to Camus’s own situation and process—and even state of Muslim minority has led to an emphasis mind—in writing this puzzling, gripping novel. on a new form of universalism, one A working class neighborhood in Algiers, a beach outside Oran, promoting loyalty to the nation at a publisher’s archives: these are some of the places I visited to the expense of all ethnic and religious understand The Stranger’s genesis. I read the Algerian press from affiliations. My new book offers a fresh the 1930s, looking at crimes and trials that Camus covered in his perspective on the debate by showing work as a young court reporter at Alger-Républicain. I found the that French equality has not always “house above the world” in the heights of Algiers where he first tried demanded an erasure of differences. his hand at writing fiction. And I walked through the former Hôtel Through close and contextualized readings of the way that major Poirier on the rue Ravignan in Montmartre, where Camus finished novelists, philosophers, filmmakers, and political figures have his first draft in a few short months, feeling as if the novel were struggled with the question of integrating Jews into French society, already traced within him. I draw lessons about how the French have often understood the Studying the reception of The universal in relation to the particular. Stranger in the spring and summer of I demonstrate that Jewish difference has always been essential 1942, in a France split in two by the to the elaboration of French universalism, whether as its foil or as German occupation, I understood in a proof of its reach. I trace the development of this discourse through concrete way what the theorists mean key moments in French history, from debates over granting Jews by “the death of the author.” The first civil rights during the Revolution, through the Dreyfus Affair and responses to The Stranger were often Vichy, and up to the rise of a “new antisemitism” in recent years. By bizarre and funny—such as the critic recovering the forgotten history of a more open, pluralistic form who thought Meursault had spent of French universalism, I point toward new ways of moving beyond the day after his mother’s funeral in current ethnic and religious dilemmas and argue for a more inclusive a swimming pool. Authors have no 8 view of what constitutes political discourse in France.” GREETINGS AARON SCHLOSSER, who works in FROM THE information technology in San Diego: “The Ethics of Literature: Representations DGS of Exile in the Works of Abdelkébir Khatibi, Nabile Farès, Hélène Cixous, and Jacques Derrida.” In addition, further defying a bizarre and unpredictable job market climate this past year, two of our recent PhDs who were on postdocs found tenure-track jobs: ANNABEL KIM THIS YEAR FOUR OF OUR STUDENTS , who was a provost’s Robyn Pront and Jennie Carr completed their PhDs. Here are their new postdoctoral positions as well as their dissertation and African American Studies, 2012) is now associate at Duke titles: assistant professor of African American University, is NATHALIE Studies at Virginia Commonwealth now assistant BATRAVILLE is now University, where she also teaches dance professor of and visual arts theory. a postdoctoral fellow Romance Languag- at Dartmouth’s es and Literatures On the opposite end of the process, we Society of Fellows: at Harvard University. brought in five outstanding new students: “Révolution poétique KRISTIN CHANDLER ABSHIRE from Wellesley et isolement GRAVES OKOLI, College. politique: l’avant- formerly a Mellon SOPHIA HELVERSON from Reed College, garde littéraire, postdoctoral fellow who worked as a language assistant in haïtienne 1957- at Tulane, is now Orléans. 1971 .” assistant professor JASON HONG from UCLA. COLIN FOSS, assistant professor of of French, African AARON KESTLE, with a BA from Brigham French at Austin College in Sherman, and African- Young and an MA from the University of Texas: “Literature under Siege: Reading American Studies, Utah. and Writing during the Siege of Paris and Gender Studies HANNAH KOSMAN , BA from (1870-1871).” at the University of Central Arkansas. CONTINUED ON PAGE 11 Swarthmore and after two years as a We learned with pleasure that AWENDELA language assistant in Lyon. GRANTHAM (Combined PhD in French

ANNIE DE SAUSSURE, now visiting assistant professor of French at Willammette University in Salem, Oregon: “Global Brittany: Breton Literature and the Francophone World.” 9 New Grad Students: Aaron Kestle, Hannah Kosman, Jason Hong, Chandler Abshire, Sophia Helverson GRADUATE ALUMNI NEWS

JOSEPH ACQUISTO ’03 PhD became chair department: “Costume History through where my family have lived for generations. of the Department of Romance Languages Plays.” Her French background will be put My French degree does not go unused! I have and Linguistics at the University of Vermont. to good use, for the students will be reading French friends, even a Belgie. And I read lots In 2015, he published a co-edited volume Molière, Racine, Hugo, Ionesco and others (in of French fiction. I even finally got around to entitled Poets as Readers in Nineteenth- translation) as they study the interplay of the reading Patrick Modiano.” She adds, talking Century France. His new book, Proust, Music, history of dress and theater combined with about the Newsletter: “I still read every word and Meaning: Theories and Practices of Listening characterization and plot. of it. It’s lovely to see how alive French is at in the Recherche, is forthcoming in early 2017. Yale today.” JEAN-VINCENT BLANCHARD ’97 PhD MARY ANN RORISON CAWS ’56 MA is happy to announce that his story of writes: “My Miracles and Reason: the life and Maréchal Lyautey and the Foreign Legion works of Blaise Pascal (Reaction books, 2016) will be out in February 2017 at Bloomsbury. is in press. I am doing a small surrealist He recently published an article on anthology for New Directions and preparing Corneille and martyr plays and became the Cocteau et le cinema for Jean-Michel Place in editor of the Cahiers du dix-septième: An Paris (collection Poètes et le cinéma).” Interdisciplinary Journal. Hopefully this fall TOM CONNER ’85 PhD, professor and he’ll find some time to polish and publish a former chair of Modern Languages and book-length manuscript on the rhetoric of Literatures and Donald B. King Scholar at St. architecture under Louis XIV. Norbert College in Green Bay, Wisconsin, has NATASHA BOAS ’96 PhD, an international accepted a visiting appointment at the Johns independent curator and consultant writes: Hopkins Center of the University of Nanjing, “I have been nominated to the Yale GSAA for China. His latest book about the Dreyfus a three-year term. I participated in the Beat Affair was nominated for the Shannon prize in Generation Primary Sources symposium at European history. His two forthcoming books the Bibliotheque Kandinsky/Musee national deal with French and German intellectuals in d’art moderne/CCI Centre Pompidou Les the 1930s and with the Norwegian Nobel sources au travail. Bricolages et contre-cultures laureate and collaborationist Knut Hamsun. a l’ere de la reproductibilite technique, 1950- His previous books deal with Chateaubriand VICTOR BROMBERT 1970 (June 23-July 2) presenting primary ’53 PhD, the Henry and Gide. Over the last decade or so Tom research from the San Francisco Rat Bastards Putnam University Professor of Romance has served as visiting professor at the and Mission School with a publication with and Comparative Literatures emeritus at University of the Philippines-Diliman and Bibliothèque Kandinsky.” Princeton University, lectured in Berlin at Nihon and Tsuru Universities in Japan. (Germany), in Cleveland, and in the Hudson KARIN (HARMAN) BOHLEKE ’96 PhD, In addition, he has created a nationally- Review’s “Writers in the School Program.” He Director of the Fashion Archives & Museum recognized volunteer program in Cambodia was interviewed on “American Warrior Radio” of Shippensburg University, opened her to teach students English using his American about the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest inaugural exhibit in the newly renovated students in French back in Wisconsin to during World War II. A section of his recently facility. “Walking the Aisle in the Latest tutor Cambodian students via Skype. His completed memoir appeared in The Hudson Style: Wedding Fashions from the Eighteenth work in Cambodia goes back more than ten Review under the title “Between Two Worlds.” Century to Today” runs through December years when he began work as an observer LORNA BULLWINKLE BRODTKORB 15, 2016. She published two articles in the ’65 at the UN-sponsored war crimes tribunal in 2015 Daguerreian Annual: “Identifying Stages PhD writes: “It is amusing to be asked for my Phnom Penh. At present, Tom is on special of Grief in Nineteenth-Century Images” and news as a Yale PhD as no one left on earth in assignment at the Hamsun Center in Tromsø, “It Was Not Supposed to Turn Out This Way: my “real” world knows this about me. I went Norway. He and his wife, Ikuko, live in Green Sewing and Fitting Errors as Indicators of over the wall, after teaching at Wesleyan, to Bay and Tokyo. Social Class.” In addition, she recently Wall Street, where my Yale degree probably CATHERINE presented her work “The Sterb-Spiegel: A helped my entry. In 1974, men on Wall St. CUSSET ’91 PhD Fashionable Eighteenth-Century Dance did not know any women with PhDs yet. écrit: “Un petit livre of Death” on an extremely rare text from Back then—the 60s and 70s—becoming sur ma Bretagne, Le 1704 —onl­ y four surviving copies known—a­ t money people was pretty much the thing côté gauche de la the Costume Society of America’s annual we despised the most. My academic friends plage, a paru aux symposium in Cleveland, OH. For a special had a tendency to treat me like the whore of éditions Dialogues topic panel at the C19 conference in State Babylon when I went to Wall Street. But I had (Brest) en novembre College, PA, she shared her recent work in fallen in love with cycles and they were what 2015; mon roman her paper “Foreign Origins: African-American sucked me in. I still love the beautiful charts Une éducation CONTINUED ON PAGE 12 Women and Contemporary Fashions in that I send my clients. I retired from that, after catholique est sorti en Folio en février 2016; Early Photographs.” She will be teaching our dotage was secured, and have now lived enfin, mon nouveau roman, L’autre qu’on a new course in the fall for the theater for some decades in10 the Connecticut village GREETINGS FROM THE DGS,

continued from page 9 NOTE FROM A GRADUATE STUDENT “Here, try this. It’s much better.” Our bartender smirks as he slides two dangerously full martini glasses across the bar. Throughout the evening, he has chosen to respond to us in English, despite the fact that we speak French fluently, not out of snobbism, but because this is the Parisian cocktail scene. Mixology has come to the banks of the Seine. “North American” is the implicit theme and anything “Brooklyn” has a certain caché. But here in Sherry Butt on the edge of the Marais, authentic New York cool is not the goal. Our bartender’s thick accented English is barely audible over the DJ who is spinning EDM remixes of 80s pop in the corner. He explains to us that he has tried something a bit different with our Rye Manhattans and replaced the Angostura bitters with Peychaud’s and a touch of maraschino. He was right. This Parisian Manhattan is subtler, less medicinal, more floral. A totally different drink. It was just this drink that made me realize that the In April our students, led by Carole Delaitre burgeoning cocktail scene isn’t simply a copy of the New York or London version. and Richard Riddick (above, and matching!), By swapping the Angostura for Peychaud’s, he had Gallicized our drinks. organized a successful conference, Both Angostura and Peychaud’s originated in the Caribbean. But Angostura th “Displacements/Déplacements.” For packs a heavier punch than its Creole cousin Peychaud’s, which was created in a conference information and photos see New Orleans apothecary at the turn of the 19 century from a recipe smuggled page 5 of this newsletter and here. out of Saint Domingue on the brink of the Haitian Revolution. This was Manhattan For this academic year, ROBYN PRONT by way of Francophonie. is at the ENS in Paris. The next day as I descended from Montmartre, crossing the Place Vendôme as I made my way towards the Left Bank for a seminar, I glanced up at the Ritz, Our graduate seminars in 2015-16 were: boarded up, hidden behind the renovators’ scaffolding. Legend has it that the OLD FRENCH Bloody Mary was invented there for Ernest Hemmingway—a tonic to recover R. Howard Bloch TH from the previous night’s indulgences. It’s been almost a century since the writers of the Lost Generation haunted IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE IN 18 - Parisian bars. Americans came to Paris and left new cocktails behind them. Now CENTURY FRANCE mixology has come to Paris, and has been changed by it. A subtler, more refined Natasha Lee cocktail culture is emerging, and it speaks with a French accent. FACT & FICTION IN THE ARCHIVES LAURA JENSEN Alice Kaplan participated in the Exchange Program with the Ecole Normale Supérieure last year on a Fox Fellowship. AIMÉ CÉSAIRE: ONE HUNDRED YEARS Christopher Miller SEMINAR ON THE PROFESSION Christopher Miller THE OLD FRENCH FABLE AND FABLIAUX R. Howard Bloch MONTAIGNE ET D’AUBIGNÉ Edwin Duval THEATER CONTROVERSY Christopher Semk SOCIAL MOBILITY IN CONTEMPORARY FRENCH LITERATURE Morgane Cadieu — Christopher L. Miller

Current graduate students,11 left to right: Shanna Jean-Baptiste, Carole Delaitre, Jessica Kasje, Laura Jensen. GRADUATE ALUMNI NEWS,

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PERRY GETHNER ’77 PhD writes: “Recent SALLY HESS ’91 MPhil sends adorait, paraît à la rentrée littéraire 2016, publications include Volume 4 of an anthology another(incredible!) dance photo. of French women playwrights from the period toujours chez Gallimard. Il se passe en grande partie dans le milieu universitaire américain pre-1800, for which I wrote the general et décrit les cruautés du marché du travail. Il introduction, and Volume 2 of an anthology of est nominé pour le Goncourt et le Renaudot.” women playwrights in English translation. The COLIN FOSS ’16 PhD is now assistant latter volume won an award from the Society professor of French at Austin College. for the Study of Early Modern Women. Critical editions of plays by Rotrou and Thomas Corneille are expected to appear shortly. H. GASTON HALL ’59 PhD writes: “I have little to report other than sadness that Great Britain voted to leave the European Union at the instigation of N. Farage & B. Johnson— something like British counterparts to D. Trump. Last fall’s trips to Bordeaux, to Millsaps College as scholar-in-residence JOAN HINDE STEWART ’70 PhD retired and to New York for a week’s worth of music as president of Hamilton College in June mostly at Carnegie Hall and for birding 2016, after a 13-year tenure. She moved back in Central Park all went swimmingly. My to Durham, NC and has been appointed a article “Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Tragedy 2016-17 resident associate at the National as Ethics and Epic” was published (I am Humanities Center, whereCONTINUED she will ON carry PAGE out 14 told) in the CNRS/University Paul Valéry research on Joan of Arc. electronic “A Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Classical Mythology” in December, this fifth (and best!) piece on that wonderful play being likely my last.“

NEWS FROM THE YALE SUMMER SESSION CANDACE SKORUPA and VANESSA private tour of the Catacombs, a wine VYSOSIAS taught a group of motivated tasting, a boat ride through all four locks and enthusiastic students in the Yale of the Canal Saint-Martin, an evening Summer Session L1-L2 French language outing to the Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris course. After four weeks of study in New (works by George Balanchine and Justin Haven, the intensive class continued Peck), coffee and dessert at Les Deux th for five more weeks at L’Ecole Etoile on Magots, and an invigorating weekend of Boulevard Raspail in Paris. Highlights from Roman, Renaissance, and 19 -century The Wall Street Journal commissioned the packed excursion itinerary included a history in Lyon. RHONDA GARELICK ’91 PhD to do a kir at the Closerie des Lilas, a two-hour A Night at the Opera cover story for its “Off Duty” travel section on the re-opening of the legendary Paris Ritz. Rhonda was the first journalist to stay at the hotel since its closure, and she spent several days there interviewing everyone from the owner and president to housekeeping staff. She sampled tea in the Salon Proust and sat under the deer antlers in the famed Bar Hemingway. The WSJ was especially interested in having a cultural and historical context for the piece, which allowed Rhonda to make use of a lot of the research she’d done for her biography of Coco Chanel— including material on the the Paris Commune, the history of luxury goods in France, literary modernism, and fashion. The article may be accessed here. 12 GREETINGS heuristic devices. The lower-division prize was awarded to two students: XINYU FROM THE GUAN ’18, for an essay on Ourika, and AARON ORBEY ’19, for a creative piece. DUS The Montaigne Prize “for proficiency in st speaking and writing French” was awarded to PHILIP GROENWEGEN ’17 (1 place), nd ANTHONY JASPER ’16 and ELLEN rd JEWETT ’16 (2 place), and THOMAS AVILES ’16 and CHLOE TSANG ’17 (3 place). Last but certainly not least, the James T. King Prize for Distinction in the Senior Essay was awarded to PHILILE SHONGWE . Congratulations to all of our King Prize winner Philile Shongwe with her mother prize recipients! This year’s course offerings at the SHOPPING AND THE NOVEL undergraduate level covered a range of Morgane Cadieu periods, genres, and areas of the French- LOUIS XIV AND THE CULTURE OF speaking world. In addition to the “gateway” ABSOLUTISM courses that prepare students for further Christopher Semk study in literature and culture, four courses FRENCH CINEMA THROUGH THE were offered in French: NEW WAVE FRENCH POETRY: THE FIRST FIVE Dudley Andrew HUNDRED YEARS WORLD WAR II IN FRENCH CINEMA THIS YEAR SAW EIGHT SENIORS Edwin Duval Alice Kaplan graduate with majors in French: FRENCH FICTION SINCE THE 1990s MODERNITIES SUSANNAH BENJAMIN , whose senior Morgane Cadieu R. Howard Bloch and Steven Smith essay analyzed the role of fantasy in Muriel FRENCH CLASSICAL TRAGEDY POSTCOLONIAL THEORY AND Barbery’s La Vie des elfes (dir. by Christopher Christopher Semk LITERATURE Semk); Alexandro Gonzalez-Calvillo, whose WRITERS AND ARTISTS IN PARIS Christopher Miller senior essay examined cross-dressing and 1780-1914 Some of these courses offered options gender identity in Maghrebi literature Marie-Hélène Girard for completing the readings in French and (dir. by Christopher Miller); ANTHONY one course (“Louis XIV”) included a Digital JASPER, with an essay on Amélie Nothomb In addition to these, seven courses were Humanities component in partnership with (dir. by Maryam Sanjabi); ELLEN JEWETT, offered in English: Yale’s DH Lab. with an two-semester essay on Nathalie TRAINS IN FRENCH LITERATURE, FILM, — Christopher Semk Sarraute’s theater (dir. by Morgane Cadieu); AND HISTORY SEWON JUN Morgane Cadieu , with an essay that compared Yale Summer Session FREN130/140 group visits Brussels fin-de-siècle literature and contemporary film (dir. by Morgane Cadieu); ANDREW STAUTZ, whose essay examined the structure of Gaspard de la nuit (dir. by Howard Bloch); PHILILE SHONGWE, with an essay on the postcolonial Congo (dir. by Christopher Miller); and JASON YOUNG, with an essay on beauty and evil in Les Fleurs du mal (dir. by Christopher Semk). Congratulations to all on their hard work! Each year, the Department grants a number of awards to accomplished students from across the university. The Scott Prize “for best essay written in French” received many nominations and was awarded to three students. The upper-division prize went to ELIAS BARTHOLOMEW ’17 for 13 an excellent essay on Antoine Volodine’s GRADUATE ALUMNI NEWS,

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THOMAS MARTIN ’03 MPhil writes: “After HENRY PILLSBURY ’58 BA, ’60 MA has ROBERT P. HOLLEY ’71 PhD writes: “I ten years living in New York, my wife, Paula, come out with a brief book of poetry, Grace retired a year ago on August 5, 2015 as a and I now call New Orleans home. La Nouvelle Damns. He continues working in theater in professor of Library & Information Science Orléans is a fabulously strange place, and France — mostly in production now. at Wayne State University. I spent 25 years we have already dug in to its culture. True MICHAEL J. PRETINA, JR. ’67 PhD retired as a librarian/library administrator at Yale, to my Francophile self, I participate in in 2005 from his position as executive the University of Utah, and Wayne State the Mardi Gras season by marching every director of the Camargo Foundation in Cassis University and 19 years as a professor/ Epiphany with the Krewe de Jeanne d’Arc, and is still living in France. He writes: “Best department chair in the School of Library & a parade dedicated to all things Joan and wishes to all those who may remember me Information Science at Wayne State University, medieval France. True to my geeky self, the from our graduate school days at Yale.” Detroit. The skills that I learned from getting weekend before Mardi Gras, I march with the AMY REID my PhD in French served me well. According Krewe of Chewbacchus, a parade dedicated ’96 PhD writes: “The start of the to Google Scholar, I have 159 publications, to everything sci-fi. For any Whovians out school year brought a new milestone: our including seven edited books, research there, I’ve been roped into costuming as eldest son has started high school — it’s articles, opinion pieces, and columns for two the eleventh Doctor Who. On an altogether hard to believe how quickly time flies. On library publications. I frequently reviewed different note, I am pleased to report that I the work front, I’m happy to announce that French library publications for various will be returning to graduate studies in French I have two articles forthcoming in a volume journals. My research areas are: collection at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. of Présence Africaine on the work of the Ivorian development, scholarly communication, Since my time at Yale, too long ago, I have author Véronique Tadjo: Écrire, traduire, academic libraries, self-publishing, and held several language teaching positions but peindre. The focus of my work continues intellectual freedom with an emphasis upon always intended on completing my doctorate to be on translation. My translation of the Humanities that is often lacking in library in literature. I anticipate a rewarding, new Patrice Nganang’s Mount Pleasant came publications. I also selected French materials experience in research and teaching at LSU.” out this spring with Farrar, Strauss & at the University of Utah and Wayne State Giroux—the novel received a starred review University for the French faculty and served from Kirkus and was recommended both by on Romance Language doctoral committees. I Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine, in the May have held multiple positions of responsibility edition, and by The New Yorker, in August. I in the American Library Association and have also been awarded a NEA Translation the International Federation of Library grant to work on my next project, translating Associations where French was often an asset. Nganang’s La SaisonCONTINUED des Prunes ON (2PAGE014), 16 I have maintained my French language skills which focuses on Cameroonian civilians by listening to the francophone radio station and tirailleurs during the Second World War.” in Windsor, Canada, just across the river from The Department of French Detroit; vacations to francophone countries; will hold its traditional cash and reading novels, lately with an emphasis upon Quebec literature. I intend to keep up bar for alumni, faculty, and my scholarly interests in retirement.” current graduate students ANNABEL KIM ’16 PhD is starting her at the annual meeting of first year as assistant professor of Romance the MODERN LANGUAGE JULIA M. McNAMARA Languages and Literatures at Harvard ’80 PhD writes: ASSOCIATION. Please join us: University. “At its annual meeting in September 2015, JAMES MAGRUDER ’84 MA, ’92 DFA, is the Board of Trustees of Albertus Magnus pleased to announce the publication of his College accepted my decision to retire FRIDAY, third book of fiction, Love Slaves of Helen from the position of president. This change Hadley Hall, in June 2016. A roman à clef became effective on June 30, 2016. I’ll be on JANUARY 6, 2017 twenty years in the making, Love Slaves is sabbatical during the 2016-2017 academic set at Yale in 1983-1984 and celebrates his year and have been given the honorary title 7:00–8:15 pm first two semesters in the French department of president emerita.” and on the third R. MATILDE MÉSAVAGE ’79 PhD continues floor of the to teach yoga and study Japanese. She has Franklin 9 infamously randy recently returned from a three-month study Philadelphia Marriott and international period in Kanazawa, while on sabbatical. graduate dorm She published “Le chaos du néant: théâtralité, at 420 Temple musique et la magie du verbe dans Le Sablier Street. He de Sofia Guellaty”; “L’Espace onirique dans continues to les romans d’Abdelhak Serhane ”; “Voyage teach dramaturgy au bout de la nuit des temps : Ballade du at Swarthmore séquestré académique de Najib Redouane”; College. and “Métamorphose de la mémoire: Le Rêve de Djamila par Fatiha14 Benatsou.” TH Photo: Getty Images, Ben Gabbe COMMEMORATING THE 70 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF ALBERT CAMUS’S “HUMAN CRISIS” SPEECH On March 28, 2016, Alice Kaplan participated in a unique event sponsored by the Maison Française of Columbia and the Camus estate: actor Viggo Mortensen performed the speech that Camus gave to a New York audience on his only American journey in March 1946, speaking in the same auditorium, and on the same date. After Mortensen’s beautiful performance, the actor was joined in a roundtable conversation about Camus with Professor Kaplan and Professor Bachir Diagne, chair of the Columbia French Department. The auditorium was full and captivated by Mortensen’s reading. Many listening to the speech were struck by the urgency of Camus’s message from 1946, which speaks to so many of our concerns in 2016. You can access the speech, and the roundtable, at this link. What follows is Alice Kaplan’s introduction of Viggo Mortensen, setting the scene for the reenactment: Let’s imagine the scene that late March evening of 1946…On stage, three writers represent the spirit of the French Resistance. France, cut off from the rest of the world during four years of Nazi occupation, has been free for a single year, struggling to find its Columbia professor Souleymane Bachir Diagne; actor, poet, and musician Viggo Moretnsen; and Alice Kaplan way. How many people in the audience had relatives deported from France, who never returned; how many had made it out of the country just in time? How many were veterans of the North in the Columbia French Department, called him “the boldest writer African landing or the Liberation of Paris? Nicola Chiaromonte was in France today.” in the audience—he’d flown in Malraux’s squadron in the Spanish Camus was on an official government mission to promote Civil War, escaped Europe through Oran, where Camus was his host. French culture—and he answered to Claude Lévi-Strauss, the great Now he was writing for The New Republic. Jacques Schiffrin was there anthropologist who directed the cultural services of the French too, forced out of his job at Gallimard publishers by the anti-Jewish embassy in New York. “Exclusively literary topics please!” the young laws, and exiled in New York, where he founded Pantheon Books. writer was warned. “I never thought my talks in the U.S. would be Whether they were Americans or French in exile, New Yorkers of a political nature,” Camus replied, “Of course I can talk about were starved for news from France. They wanted to hear about strictly literary matters, but I really don’t think that any of the artistic the recovery, but even more, they wanted to know what moral and problems of the day can be considered apart from their human ethical conclusions could be drawn from what had taken place. consequences.” They finally settled on a general topic, “The Human The three men on stage represented the intellectual standards Crisis,” that could be as literary, or philosophical, as he wanted. of a struggle against evil, but no one more than Albert Camus. A A French friend in New York warned Camus that Americans decade younger than the other speakers, Camus, at age 32, was don’t like ideas: “That’s what they say,” he wrote in his diary, “I’m the star editorial writer for Combat, a daily newspaper whose motto not so sure.” He was incapable of talking down to any audience— was: “From Resistance to the Revolution.” Army veterans, in a show and indeed the concrete examples in his talk are shored up with of support, came to the lecture carrying copies of Combat they challenging abstractions, references to the Hegelian dialectic and had brought home with them from France. In a week, Knopf would the Absurd. publish the first English translation of Camus’s 1942 novel, The Six hundred people were expected at the MacMillan theater; Stranger. In a full page ad placed in Publisher’s Weekly, Knopf was 1500 showed up, crowding into every available space. Proceeds from promising an existentialist revelation. modest ticket sales were supposed to go to a fund for French war Camus had been in New York for two days. The trip began badly. orphans, but someone stole the cash box; Professor O’Brien made When his ship, the S.S. Oregon, docked in the New York harbor on an announcement, and people dug into their pockets to replace March 26, he was detained by immigration officials for four hours the stolen funds. Camus was struck by the New Yorkers’ generosity. of questioning, to which he responded with utter silence, until a “Their hospitality, their cordiality are like that too,” he noted— young attaché from French cultural services came to rescue him. J. “spontaneous and without affectation. It’s what’s best in them.” Edgar Hoover had gotten word of his arrival and asked an agent to Like Viggo Mortensen, Albert Camus was an editor, an artist, investigate his possible links to the Communist Party: the FBI’s most and an actor—a seasoned performer: “In the evening a little stage reliable source turned out to be an article in The Nation by Hannah fright,” he reported in his diary, “but I throw myself into it right Arendt, explaining that existentialist writers were having more fun away and the public is hooked.” than anyone, writing serious philosophical novels that read like This reading was part of a series of events (March 26–April 19) detective stories. The Columbia student newspaper, too, promised organized by the Maison Française of Columbia in thpartnership with in a March 26 article that Camus “appears to live happily within The Albert Camus Estate and taking place in New York on the theme of the absurd, and not to sacrifice his lucidity and contentedness at15 “Camus: A Stranger in the City” commemorating the 70 year anniversary the altar of metaphysical revelation.” Justin O’Brien, Camus’s host of Camus’s visit to the United States. GRADUATE ALUMNI NEWS,

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th SYLVIE ROMANOWSKI ’69 PhD, professor from the first, which appeared in 1985. I am course on French institutions (pretty far away emerita of French, writes: “My principal from 20 -century literature, but interesting now assisting in the production of a virtual th news is that I am retired from Northwestern volume 16. It is a work in progress, but it can nonetheless). We’ve got an apartment in University’s Department of French and Italian already be viewed here. the historic center of town (an 18 -century after 44 years. I am now emerita and looking DAVID SIPFLE ’58 PhD sent an obituary for townhouse). There’s good food, wine, theater, forward to more time for reading, research, his wife Mary Alice Slauson Sipfle, who died in cinema, concerts, friends...Why retire?” possibly some travel, and generally more November 2013. The two met when they were ELÉONORE M. ZIMMERMANN ’56 PhD freedom to set my own schedule.” both graduate students in the department. writes: “The time of research has passed ENGLISH SUZANNE TOCZYSKI for me, I feel. I still occasionally enjoy that SHOWALTER ’94 PhD is professor of French at Sonoma State of others, like an unexpected article on ’57 BA, ’64 University. Subsequent to the publication Mallarmé in the New Yorker. But the writing PhD, professor of her recent article on St. François de time now has come for memoirs. I have been emeritus of Sales in Spiritus, Suzanne’s current work going through some papers we saved from French, Rutgers examines representations of biblical women the 40s, when I was in école primaire, then in University, in the Traité de l’amour de Dieu, which she will lycée in Morocco. I am trying to find whether writes: “In present at the Salesian Scholars Seminar in anybody might be interested in what they April 2016 the October. tell us about the French education at that fifteenth and final print volume of the JONATHAN WEISS time. It was deeply grounded. Its distinct Correspondance de Madame de Graffigny was ’73 PhD writes: “I pedagogical philosophy did not change published by the Voltaire Foundation. I was haven’t yet figured out what ‘retirement’ for many years and did a lot to prepare the the general editor for this volume, and have means. I’m still at it...in Dijon...running Colby educated class for the difficult years which been some sort of editor for every volume College’s fall program there, and teaching a followed the Second World War.” In Memoriam: Graduate alumni

YVES FRANÇOIS DALVET ’68 MPhil died on November 10, to complete. This work was supported in part by three grants 2015 in Portland, Maine. He was born Yves Francois Delapierre from the National Endowment of the Humanities. Alan was in Laval, France, where his parents had a bookstore. During a talented cook and collector of fine wine who loved to World War II he went into hiding in the south of France to entertain. Also an avid gardener, he was particularly proud of avoid German work conscriptions and worked as a prefect in a cultivar of spearmint he started propagating when he was a Catholic schools under the pseudonym Ysambart Duplantier. student at Yale; several years ago Earthbound Farms accepted He later enlisted in the French army and served in the one of his mint plants for sale, dubbing it “Knight Mint.” A forces occupying Germany. After demobilizing he became highlight of Alan’s retirement years was his friendship with a Catholic priest; he was eventually posted in the United actress Joan Fontaine, who asked him to be a guest speaker States. After some years he left the priesthood, got married, at a salon she hosted shortly before her death in 2013. and then moved back to France to work as an interpreter for ROBERT MAPLES an American company. He changed his name to Dalvet as a ’65 Grd died on February 6, 2016 in symbol of a new beginning and returned to the US with his Williamsport, Pennsylvania. He taught French at the University wife and infant son. He received an MA in French from NYU, of Rochester, at the University of Michigan, and then at came to New Haven to teach at Southern, and enrolled at Lycoming College in Williamsport. He taught at Lycoming Yale. After earning an MPhil, he moved to Maine to join the for 30 years and also served as the college’s director of faculty of the University of Maine Portland-Gorham, where institutional research. he taught French and Italian and chaired the foreign language ALEXANDER ARTEM SOKALSKI ’70 PhD died on April 22, department. He was fluent in many languages and enjoyed 2016 in Regina, Saskatchewan. He was professor of French walking, sailing, art, film, and music. at the University of Saskatchewan for over 25 years. After ALAN EDGAR KNIGHT ’65 PhD died on September 27, retiring in 2007, he continued to do research and teach 2015 at his home in Berkeley, California. He was professor classes at the University of Saskatchewan and in Regina. Alex emeritus of French at Pennsylvania State University and a was instrumental in starting the Saskatoon Opera Association recognized expert on medieval French drama. His research and served on its board for many years. He was actively culminated in the editing and publishing of Les Mystères de la involved in his church and community and was a board member th Procession de Lille, a five-volume collection of 72 previously of the Mendel Art Gallery and CPF (Canadians Parents for unknown 15 -century plays, a project that took 26 years French) Saskatchewan. 16 YALE COLLEGE FRENCH MAJOR ALUMNI NEWS PETER F. MAY NICOLE FLENDER ’80 BA writes: “I am This fall, the newest book of HEATHER enjoying my work in residential real estate HENDERSHOT ’89 BA, Open to Debate: How ’87 BA writes: “I with the Corcoran Group and I would love William F. Buckley Put Liberal America on the have been working to help all alumni and friends buy, sell, or Firing Line, was published by HarperCollins. as a lawyer in the rent an apartment in New York City. I am international edu- happy to help clients en français. I just cation and devel- took an amazing safari in South Africa with opment assistance my amazing daughter, Pauline Chalamet. sector for 20 years, She currently lives in Paris and is part of serving as general the theater company Le Studio-ESCA. My counsel to World son Timothée Chalamet is also part of our Learning (formerly The Experiment in Inter- acting family. He recently won the Lucille national Living) and the American University Lortel Award for the John Patrick Shanley of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon. I have loved us- play, Prodigal Son, ing my French language skills professionally, at Manhattan especially in Beirut where French remains Theater Club. And, one of the official languages. Paris is still my I too recently did favorite city! I keep up with fellow French a short play with major and Whiffenpoof of ’87, David Code, the Greenhouse through reunions, and have been lucky VINICIUS LINDOSO ’13 BA writes: “I have Ensemble in New enough to return to campus in New Haven passed the UN Young Professionals career York, portraying a lot to visit my son, Benson, who is Class exam and am now working for UNESCO the title role of of 2017 (and a Whiff of 2017!).” as a digital communications officer for Angela in Angela Kay ocean science and policy. I’ve also recently BARTLEY SMITH GROSSERICHTER ’88 Harbanks. become a member of the Yale Club of BA writes: “After finishing my BA in 1988, I MARISA GALVEZ ’99 BA writes: “I have France’s executive committee, charged with worked in the fashion industry in NYC for been promoted to the rank of associate organizing lectures and seminar dinners with three years (Christian Dior, Bloomingdale’s professor in the Division of Literature, Yale faculty, doctoral students, and eminent Executive Training Program, and a boutique Cultures and Languages (French) at alumni passing by or living in France. We start-up subsidiary of JC Penney) before Stanford effective September 2016. My are eagerly looking to host tea and dinner moving to Paris for an MA with NYU. I book published in 2010 received a prize for lectures with doctoral students and faculty chose the French Language and Civilization th the best first book in the field of medieval coming to France, or with the ENS fellows track and lived in the Cité Universitaire for studies from the Medieval Academy. that go to Yale on exchange. a year and then in the 10 arrondisement. Starting this year, I will be co-director Having met and fallen in love with a German of the Stanford Center for Medieval and while at the Cité Universitaire (and not Early Modern Studies. I continue to teach being able to get working papers in Paris), undergraduate and graduate courses on I moved to Munich in 1993 where I have medieval lyric and culture and am currently been ever since. I worked in copyright working on a book about crusade lyric and licensing and merchandising, opening romance. I also continue to develop the a subsidiary of Studio Canal (Groupe project Performing Trobar, a digital project Vivendi/Canal+) for the German speaking that incorporates live performance and territories (Germany/Austria/Switzerland). new digital tools for the study of medieval It was a serendipitous combination of living lyric and manuscripts. Through events by and working in Munich, selling British and contemporary musicians, interdisciplinary American rights to German companies, colloquia, and a multimedia website while travelling to Paris for budget and integrated with my courses on medieval BENJAMIN MAPPIN-KASIRER ’14 BA strategy meetings on a regular basis. After lyric both at Stanford and in France (Bing just completed a Master’s thesis in Modern the birth of my second daughter in 2003 Overseas Studies), the project aims to Languages at Magdalen College, Oxford. I changed course and have been a stay-at- expose students to the rich aural and He wrote about asthma and art in À la home mom, doing volunteer work at the verbal texture of the medieval world and recherche du temps perdu, with a particular schools and the occasional translation and/ to address the interpretation, performance, focus on the long and surprising tradition of or strategy paper for former colleagues. I and adaptation of medieval lyric both in am lucky to use my French regularly as we Please send news to: physicians writing about Proust in medical academia and the contemporary world.” dissertations and scientific journals, from have bought a vacation home in Cap Ferret [email protected] the 1920s until today. He will stay in Oxford at the Bassin d’Arcachon where I spend CONTINUED ON PAGE 18 next year to study in the University’s medical as much time as possible! As I write this, division before returning to medical school preparations are in full swing for the rentrée litéraire festival at the local bookstore next in Canada. He writes:17 “Please let me know if ever you are in Oxford!” UNDERGRADUATE ALUMNI NEWS,

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week… I am also in the early, early stages Among other things, I’ve had to hire local — working and living in a francophone of putting together an exchange possibility Ivorians to form a team, communicate to African country — is unparalleled and has for Yale students in Germany that I hope to members of various ministries, present on allowed me to hone a fluency, of which be able to write more about in upcoming our product countless times to various the original foundation was formed in newsletters!” actors, and I’ve often had to translate the Yale French Department. Abidjan is documents of various types (related to a colorful and vibrant city that is rising ELSIE SOWAH ’13 BA writes: “I am our product, administrative documents like a phoenix from the ashes of decades working as the country manager in Côte for Ivorian government/regulatory bodies, of civil war and political unrest. It is the d’Ivoire for mPharma, a health technology portions of business contracts, etc.), for business hub of francophone Africa and start-up founded in 2013. I’ve been which I directly applied skills learned in thus an attractive location for young based in Abidjan since June 2015, when I my translation course at Yale. Having francophone professionals as well as arrived with the task of launching our spent six months abroad in Nice during my other expats working for international activity in mPharma’s first francophone sophomore year at Yale (2011), I had a organizations and multinationals. There’s market. Many personal and professional good foundation of conversational French no place I’d rather be at this age and time challenges later, I feel at home in Abidjan before moving to Abidjan. However, the in my life, and there’s no way I’d be here and have managed to function (work experience of full and total immersion without the experience I had at Yale (and and live) more or less 100% in French. without professors like Constance Sherak and Christopher Miller, who imbued in me the love for the French language and francophone African history/culture!).” NOTE FROM AN UG MAJOR LAURA CASSIDY TAYLOE, ’86 BA writes: Recently, I listened to a guy on the beach explain his tattoo to a friend of mine. “I have switched from teaching law to “It means, ‘So far, so good,’ in French,” he said succinctly. I looked: “ Jusqu’ici, working in the Department of Justice’s Civil tout va bien.” So far, so good; sure. But it meant something more, too: it’s the Rights Division, Educational Opportunities last line of “La Haine,” Mathieu Kassovitz’s wrenching day-in-the-life movie about section. The Section works to eliminate three young men from the Paris banlieue. any kind of discrimination in educational That’s how it is with French. Speaking it is like seeing another color; it settings, whether based on race, gender, spikes the world with depth and contrast. In my work, it plays a more practical religion, disability, or English learner status. role, too. I write about architecture, urbanism, and public space, a field in which My husband and I live in Arlington, VA, the francophone world is always good for a comparison, a model, or a warning. and we will be hosting our third French I always get the same curious looks when I report from abroad. In Algeria, exchange student through my children’s high school in October. Two of my children when I was working on my senior essay, the police couldn’t believe I was are still in high school (sophomore and photographing cornices and doorways in the service of an American university. senior) and I have two in college (freshman City planners in Saint-Denis were surprised I’d come all the way there to hear at Penn and sophomore at Davidson). My about the new train station they were planning. And Serge Barto, an artist in husband and I spoke German when the Pantin who welcomed me to his studio last fall, was puzzled to find I’d ventured children were small and we didn’t want out there on the Journées du patrimoine instead of visiting the Hôtel Matignon them to understand; now, between the or the Elysée Palace. children, there are two French speakers, In part, stories like those are driven by my own interests as a reporter. But two Spanish speakers, one Arabic speaker, before I write them, I have to sell them to American editors. And when I publish and one who, as I have, will study American them, if all goes well, I get to see them passed around in real time, on Twitter, Sign Language!” by my compatriots who retain admiration and sympathy for France’s successes IKE WILSON ’11 BA has served as the and failures as it struggles, as we do here, with director of content and marketing at a the impacts of immigration, globalization, and New York-based education startup called terrorism. The country feels at once distant Brainscape since graduation. He recently enough from the U.S. to fascinate—“No email oversaw the completion of the company’s on weekends? The French sure know how to new comprehensive French app, which relies on an adaptive flashcard algorithm live!”—and, in other ways, close enough to raise that patterns the order of study on the the hair on your arms. user’s strengths and weaknesses. The product can be found online or on the HENRY GRABAR Apple App Store. ’12 BA (French and American Studies) is a staff writer at Slate magazine. You can find his work on his website, henrygrabar.com

18 WE’RE MOVING! Twenty-six years ago, as many of you will remember with more effectively to teaching and research in those departments. The final than a twinge of regret, the Department of French moved from its result of those deliberations, I believe, will be a very comfortable, ancient and storied home on the third floor of William L. Harkness congenial space more conducive to good work than any the French Hall (WLH) to a cleaner but decidedly less distinctive home on Department has known. Renovations promised by the architects will the second floor of a renovated building unimaginatively but transform the gloomy hallways of HGS into open, well-lit spaces appropriately named “82–90 Wall Street.” Soon we will be moving where we will all be happy to teach, learn, and linger. Graduate again, back to a space with far more character and a much better seminars will take place in our own designated seminar room near location, in the building well known to us all as the Hall of Graduate our own offices. A large lecture hall with projection equipment built Studies. The occasion for this move is a major renovation and to the standards and the specifications of Yale’s Film and Media “repurposing” of HGS announced in January 2015 by Provost Ben Studies Program will be conveniently located below the central Polak. The plan was and remains to “transform HGS into a central court yard. The Whitney Humanities Center will have its home and home for the humanities at Yale.” The offices of the Graduate hold its events in our own building. We will live in close proximity School would be moved elsewhere and graduate student residents to many of the humanities departments with which we have the would move to new apartments on Elm Street to make room for greatest shared interests. And a new York Street entrance to Sterling offices, classrooms, and meeting spaces for a large, compatible Memorial Library will beckon from right across the street. group of academic departments in the Humanities. The administrative offices of the Graduate School have Having served in 2015 on the “HGS Humanities Exploratory already moved to other quarters and construction has already Committee” and again in 2016 on the “320 York Street Planning begun on new residences for graduate students. Renovation of Committee” (HGS having already ceased to be “HGS” in fact), I the yet-to-be-named complex formerly known as HGS will begin saw first-hand how much research and careful, creative thought as soon as graduate student residents are comfortably settled went into crucial decisions, like which departments should and into a new home, in 2017 if all goes according to plan. Projected could form the core of the new humanities complex, what kinds of move-in date is fall 2020 — exactly three decades after our last office and meeting spaces would be necessary and most desirable move. We are all looking forward with great optimism to a new to those departments, what sizes and configurations of seminar life in our new home! rooms, lecture halls, and screening spaces would contribute most NED DUVAL

19 The courtyard of the current HGS, our future backyard