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Upcoming Events
Screening of From Abdul To Leila -- US PREMIERE
In Praise of the Universal Keynote by Souleymane Bachir Diagne
Celebrating the work of Souleymane Bachir Diagne
NEWS
Congratulations to Laurence Marie who is the recipient of the 2025 Division of Humanities Faculty Recognition Award for Academic Excellence. This award recognizes Laurence's groundbreaking research on 18th Century theater and on the theory and practice of acting, her outstanding teaching in the department of French and her many contributions to the francophone cultural life at Columbia.
Souleymane Bachir Diagne: 'Our era is marked by a generalized withdrawal into identity, universalism has died'. Read the full interview: Le Monde.
The Department of French is thrilled to welcome Mame-Fatou Niang as a Visiting Professor in Fall 2024. An artist, film director, and cultural theorist, Mame-Fatou Niang is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Carnegie Mellon University, where she is also the founder and Director of the Center for Black European Studies and the Atlantic (CBESA). Her work focuses on Blackness in Contemporary France and French Universalism. At Columbia, she is teaching a class on Alice Diop's cinema titled Alice Diop: French Cinema and Postcolonial Universalism and organizing several events at the Maison Française.
Warm congratulations go out to Nadrah Mohammed on the successful defense of her doctoral dissertation, Narrative Bonds: Female Friendship, Affect, and Politics in Novels by 20th-century Francophone Women Writers.
Welcome to the Department of French: Jihad Azahrai, Marley Fortin, Lana Gaige, Ariel Joslain, Camille Matuszyk, Adele Ottenwaelter, Samantha Raup, Mai Thuong, and Jianna Walker!
Recent Publications
To defend the place of literature in our “modern world”, Antoine Compagnon chose a shocking title, snapping like a banner, aggressive, combative, and even a little provocative.
In A Summer with Pascal, celebrated literary critic Antoine Compagnon opens our minds to a figure somehow both towering and ignored.
