Rudy Professor Emeritus Albert Valdman
Announcements
Albert Valdman Fund Created
August 2008. The Department is pleased to announce the creation of the Albert Valdman Graduate Student Research and Travel Fund in honor of Rudy Professor Emeritus Albert Valdman, to foster graduate student development as Professor Valdman has throughout his career. The fund will be used to pay research and travel expenses for graduate students in the French linguistics MA and PhD programs. “As his colleagues and former students,” says Associate Professor Julie Auger, “we feel strongly that we would not be where we are in our lives today, both personally and professionally, without the benefit of Professor Valdman’s teaching and mentoring.” Valdman, still very active in research on Haitian Creole and Louisiana French, retired from the faculty of the Department of French and Italian and the Department of Linguistics in 2004, but still serves as Director of the Creole Institute. If you would like to support this fund in his name, please click GIVE NOW.
National Collegiate Honors Council Portz Scholar
August 2008. Incoming graduate student Erin Edgington has been named a National Collegiate Honors Council Portz Scholar for her honors thesis “Costume and Propriety in Madame Bovary: La 'Culture de Lin'" as a senior at the University of Nevada-Reno. Ms. Edgington will present her paper at the NCHC conference in San Antonio in October. She is starting the French literature graduate program at IUB this fall and will serve as research assistant for Professor Sonya Stephens.
Visiting Faculty Join Department for Fall 2008
August 2008. We are happy to welcome several visiting faculty members to the Department this fall. Colin Davis of the University of London-Royal Holloway will join us as a Visiting Professor in Fall 2008 to teach two courses on French cinema and society. Davis’ research focuses on 20th-century literature and culture, in particular ethical criticism and the links between philosophy, literature and film. Our students will also benefit from the fresh perspective of Devin Bryson, who is moving to Bloomington from the University of Pennsylvania to take up a one-year Visiting Assistant Professor position and will teach third-year literature, language, and cinema classes. To assist us in our basic language programs, Giuseppina De Masi (UCLA, Italian) and Olga Amarie (IU, French) will be joining us as Visiting Lecturers and language coordinators. In addition, Chris Semk (IU) will take up a Visiting Lecturer position to teach intermediate and third-year French.
