Announcements

Valdman Inducted into Ordre des francophones d’Amérique in Quebec

March 2008. At a ceremony at the National Assembly of the Province of Quebec, held in the presence of the mayor of the city of Quebec and two ministers of the government of Quebec Province, Albert Valdman, Rudy Professor of French/Italian and Linguistics (emeritus) and director of the Creole Institute, was received into the Ordre des francophones d’Amérique on March 12. This honor by the Conseil supérieur de la langue française, the Quebec institution that oversees the province’s language policy, recognized the role of Professor Valdman in pioneering research on French in the Americas and leadership in the field of French language instruction. Please click here for the statement made by the President of the Haut Conseil de la langue française of Quebec.

Doctoral Student Grant-in-Aid of Research Awards

December 2007. Congratulations to French linguistics PhD candidates Bryan Donaldson and Tamara Lindner, who each received Doctoral Student Grant-in-Aid of Research awards from the Indiana University Graduate School. The funds will assist in their field research for their PhD dissertations. Donaldson is studying “Discourse competence in near-native speakers of French,” while Lindner has spent time in Louisiana researching “Attitudes and subjective orientations toward Cajun French: A survey of high school students in Acadiana.”

Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite

We are pleased to announce that John G. W. McCord, a 1976 graduate in French from our department, has been named a Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite by the French government. Jack McCord had a career in marketing, retailing and advertising and directed the MBA program at the University of Illinois-Chicago before becoming Director of the Alliance Française de Chicago four years ago. He has been a member of the AF in Chicago since the late 1970s, contributing his time and energy to spreading French language and culture. The Chevalier insignia was presented to him on Monday, November 5 by the Honorable Jean-Baptiste Main de Boissière, Consul Général of France.

American Association of Italian Studies Essay Prize

Italian major Michael P. Cancelmi (2007) has won the annual essay prize sponsored by the American Association of Italian Studies. His honors thesis, entitled “Campana fra le arti di Apollo e Dioniso: i simboli del primordiale e la metamorfosi del femminile” (‘Campana between Apollo and Dionysus: Symbols of the Primeval and Metamorphosis of the Feminine’) and directed by Professor Massimo Scalabrini, was chosen from among numerous excellent submissions from students across the United States and Canada. Michael’s award was officially announced at the annual meeting of the AATI in Washington D.C. on October 12, 2007. Congratulations, Michael!

Valdman Receives Mellon Fellowship

Professor Emeritus Albert Valdman (French & Italian and Linguistics) has received a prestigious Andrew W. Mellon Emeritus Fellowship for 2007-08. Only five other Indiana University emeriti professors have received this honor. The award recognizes Professor Valdman's continued active research profile, including his work on a dictionary of Louisiana Regional French and his sociolinguistic research on Haitian Creole, for which he was awarded an NSF grant earlier this year. For more information, please see the IU news release of October 10, 2007.

Mellon Foundation/ACLS Early Career Fellowship Recipient

French linguistics PhD student Iskra Iskrova is the recipient of an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/ACLS Early Career Fellowship Program Dissertation Completion Fellowship for 2007-08. This fellowship, co-sponsored by the Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, provides support for young scholars to complete their dissertation. Ms. Iskrova’s dissertation is entitled “Prosody and Intonation in Two French-Based Creoles: Haitian Creole and Guadeloupean Creole,” and she is working with the guidance of her co-chairs, Rudy Professor Emeritus Albert Valdman and Professor Kenneth De Jong (Linguistics). This is the second dissertation fellowship that she has earned. In 2006-07, her work was supported by an IU College of Arts and Sciences dissertation fellowship. The Department congratulates Ms. Iskrova for receiving this prestigious award.