Coordinator: Dr Brigitte Weltman-Aron
E-mail: Bweltman@rll.ufl.edu
Tel: 392-2016, ext. 246
Office: 155 Dauer Hall

Back to French
Back to Grad Studies in RLL

Our graduate programs prepare M.A. and Ph.D. students in French literature, linguistics, and culture. We feature courses in linguistics, language pedagogy, critical theory, film, cultural studies, gender studies, francophone studies (especially Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean), and, of course, the core periods of French literature from the early Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century and beyond. Recent seminars and topics courses include among others:

• Rebellion - from the Middle Ages to the 20th Century
  
• The Sacred - from the Middle Ages to the 20th Century
  
• Reading Genre: Medieval and Modern Romance
  
• French Poetry: The Golden Age (1500 - 1650)
  
• Pierre Corneille
  
• The Comic in 17th and 18th Century French Literature
  
• What Was Enlightenment?
  
• Le théâtre du 20e siècle: Espèces d'espaces
  
• Lire la fiction: Comment la lecture de Proust peut changer votre vie
  
• La vie n'est pas un roman: Représentations du réel dans le roman (post) moderne
  
• Modern French Poetry: La poéticité: Entre vers, verset, poème en prose et prose poétique
  
• Hélène Cixous
  
• The Literature of Algeria
  
• Poétique de la "migritude"
  
• France et métissage
  
• Individual Difference in Second Language Acquisition
  
• Variation et changement linguistique en français
  
• Varietés du français en Amérique du Nord
  

Our faculty contains a number of award-winning, internationally known scholars. We are all committed to research. Among our areas of expertise are: medieval epic, romance, and allegory; Renaissance and baroque poetry; the eighteenth-century novel; nineteenth-century prose, poetry, and poetics; twentieth-century novel, theater, and poetry; the literatures of the francophone world; French and francophone film; the literatures in Breton and Occitan; criticism and critical theory; applied linguistics; the history of French; phonology; sociolinguistics; the structure of French; French and Haitian Creole linguistics.

Our faculty has strong interdisciplinary interests. Our research relates to literature and film, literature and the fine arts, literature and journalism, literature and landscape architecture, literature and photography, and comparative literature. A number of us have appointments or affiliations with African Studies, Film Studies, Linguistics, and Women's Studies. One of the few programs of Haitian Creole Studies in the country is housed in French. Thanks to strong links with other departments and programs across the University, French graduate studies offers students the opportunity to explore interdisciplinary issues with scholars in other fields while constructing a strong yet individualized program in their chosen field in French.

We are especially proud of having literature and linguistics tracks for both the M.A. and Ph.D. The University of Florida is one of the rare institutions in the country to offer advanced degrees in French linguistics. The French linguists work closely with the Program of Linguistics, from which our students can take additional courses.

Our French program has been recognized by the French government as a Center of Excellence through the France-Florida Research Institute. The FFRI enjoys support from the French Cultural Services, the UF Office of Research and Graduate Programs, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the International Center. It has welcomed distinguished scholars to campus, such as Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, Etienne Balibar, Gerald Prince, and others, as well as writers such as Alain Mabanckou, Marie Nimier, Kébir Ammi, Boubacar Boris Diop, and Henri Lopes. It has sponsored several film festivals, an international conference on translation, and, in 2005, hosted the international conference on Twentieth and Twenty-first Century French and Francophone Studies that brought 200 scholars to campus. In addition, through its support for speakers, the FFRI serves to integrate our program in French with other disciplines and programs, such as Political Science, Art History, Architecture, Film Studies, the Center for African Studies and the Center for European Studies.

The Paris Research Center, the University of Florida's first locale in France, serves to facilitate exchange and international research endeavors for University of Florida scholars and students campus-wide. Sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the University of Florida International Center and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, it provides a platform for innovative and wide-ranging international program development. The Paris Research Center has now welcomed over 90 UF scholars, hosted nearly 500 international scholars at UF-sponsored research events and facilitated study abroad development from all corners of the campus. The facilitation of research for developing individual and group publications and projects significantly fosters the creation of new courses for UF students. Since the 2004 initiation of our innovative course programming, we have brought well over 350 students to Paris for study and research. We have hosted a significant number of international conferences, including "Présences africaines: Contesting Images and Creating Identities," and an annual colloquium on nineteenth-century French studies.

The French faculty at the University of Florida are as committed to teaching as we are to research. We presume and expect only the best in the classroom from all of us. This means, on the one hand, that preparation of future scholars is a priority. Personal attention is afforded all graduate students, whom we aid in developing their individual research interests and enhancing their command of critical and theoretical issues.

Of no less importance, teacher training is a very important facet of our program. Most graduate students receive teaching assistantships, where they enjoy direct experience in language teaching. Our teaching assistants are closely supervised and mentored throughout their careers with us. New teaching assistants participate in initial orientation sessions, workshops, and in the fall semester they take a course in romance language teaching methods. We offer a "shadowing" course that allows graduate students to work closely with a French faculty member teaching an advanced course. Graduate students can also participate in the FLAC (Foreign Languages Across the Curriculum) program, and openings are available for teaching in the summer sessions. Our department ranks at or near the top in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences for student evaluations. We are proud of our teaching assistants, who contribute directly to our ranking and to the overall excellence of our program.

In addition to teaching assistantships, University fellowships are available for outstanding students. Prestigious three-year fellowships can be awarded, as well as supplemental funding. Funds are available to send graduate students presenting a paper to scholarly conferences, and to send graduate students to a French-speaking country for summer research. Our Paris Research Center can offer assistantships to students doing research in France. In addition, one student is chosen to the assistant of our graduate research professor.

We have diverse, international graduate students. In recent years our students have been originally from Algeria, Belgium, Bénin, Burkina Faso, China, Congo (RDC), France, Germany, Haiti, India, Italy, Mauritius, Morocco, and Romania as well as from the United States.

Here are some recent Ph.D.'s and the title of their dissertations:

• Pamela Fries Paine, "Christiane Rochefort and the Dialogic: Voices of Tension and Intention" (Director: Carol Murphy)
  
• Carol Kearns, "Influence of the Trojan Myth on National identity as Shaped in the Frankish and British Trojan-origin Myths and the Roman de Brut and the Roman de Troie" (Directors: George Diller and William Calin)
  
• Keith lindley, "Language Policies in Transnational Haiti" (Director: Jean Casagrande)
  
• Danièle Buchler, "Le bouffon et le carnavalesque dans le théâtre français d'Adam de la Halle à Samuel Beckett" (Director: William Calin)
  
• Giovanna Summerfield, "Credere aude: Mystifying Enlightenment" (Director: William Calin)
  
• Dana Martin, "A Translation into English of Amadou Koné's Traites, sous le pouvoir des Blakaros" (Director: Bernadette Cailler)
  
• Hongli Fan, "The Acquisiton of Tense-Aspect morphology by English Learners of Chinese and French" (Director: Theresa Antes)
  
• Cynthia C. Lees, "Border Spaces and La Survivance: The Evolution of the Franco-American Novel of New England" (Director: Carol Murphy)
  
• Barbara Petrosky, "L'activité imageante chez Pierre Loti er Emile Zola: Deux écrivains photographes" (Directors: Carol Murphy and Gayle Zachmann)
  
• Sophie Ganachaud, "De Pygmalion à Pinocchio: Le corps et la statuaire dans le cinéma français et italién" (Director: Sylvie Blum)
  

Although we do not require a thesis for the M.A. degree, a number of our students choose to write one. Here are some recent M.A.'s and the title of their theses:

• Lauren Oken, "Masculinity in Crisis: The Buddy Films of Bertrand Blier" (Director: Sylvie Blum)
  
• Heather Howell, "The Role of Mental Translation as a Strategy for Second
  Language Learners: A Study Involving Three Levels of French Students"
  (Director: Theresa Antes)
  
• Kathryn Moody, "A Twice-Told Gothic Romance: The Structural Differences
  in Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly's L'Ensorcelée and Emily Brontë's Wuthering
  Heights" (Director: William Calin)
  
• Jamie O'Dell, "Transgressive Narratives: Gender and Revolt in Two Québécois
  Novels by Ying Chen" (Director: Sylvie Blum)
  
• Cyrille Guillo, "Comparing the Language of Intermediate Learners of French in
  Asynchronous Electonic Communication vs. Face to Face Communication"
  (Director: Theresa Antes)
  
• Camelia Baluta, "A Linguistic Analysis of the Feminization of Titles of
  Professions in the French Language as Evidenced in the Press from France,
  Canada, and Belgium" (Director: Theresa Antes)
  
• Lakhdar Choudar, "Poétique du désert: Parcours narratifs dans l'oeuvre de
  Malika Mokkeddem et Jean-Marie Le Clezio" (Director: William Calin)
  
• Kristin Hodge, "The Morpho-Syntax of Latin and Old French: The Loss of
  a Case System" (Director: William Calin)
  
• Alison Clifton, "Examining the Effect of Instruction of English Metalinguistic
  Terminology on Grammar Performance in Beginning French" (Director:
  Hélène Blondeau)
  

All of our Ph.D.'s who sought an academic position have landed one. Our graduate students have been placed at, for example, Arizona State University, Auburn University, Columbia College (South Carolina), University of Delaware, Georgia Southwestern University, University of Miami, State University of New York at Cortland, University of North Alabama, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, and Ramapo College (New Jersey).

The University of Florida Libraries contain some 4,000,000 volumes in their general collections and strong research holdings in French, developed over several generations. The University itself is generally recognized to be the flagship institution in the state university system. It ranks consistently thirteenth to seventeenth among public research universities nationally. The graduate French program is the only one in the state to be recognized in the National Research Council surveys. Gainesville, called the Tree City of Florida, is a relatively inexpensive place to live; it ranks consistently among the top ten most livable places in America.

• France-Florida Research Institute (FFRI)
• UF Graduate School (including presentation of G'ville as a place to live. See document of Grad School).

Back to top

Back to French

Back to Grad Studies in RLL