QUICK LINKS
NEWS
Congratulations to Elsa Stéphan on the release of her book, Sommes-nous toutes hystériques ?, released October 21, 2026.
An interview with Department Chair Madeleine Dobie was published in Columbia News. Dobie's plans include helping her colleagues flourish and encouraging undergrads to broaden their thinking about French. Read the full interview here. October 20, 2026.
Harantxa Jean, PhD candidate, has been awarded with a Youth Award in Canada (the Top 100 Black Women to Watch in Canada Award in their Youth Category from Quebec). Congratulations, Harantxa!
The Department of French seeks to appoint an Assistant Professor in the field of Caribbean and/or African Francophone literature and culture. Please see page for further information. Applications should be submitted via Interfolio.
The Department celebrated Emmanuelle Saada's new book, Histoires et colonisations: Des récits de la conquête aux héritages post-coloniaux (Gallimard, 2026), at the Maison Francaise on September 9, 2026.
Thomas Dodman's new book Les volontaires: Roman familial de la Révolution française (Seuil, 2025) has been shortlisted for the Grand Prix des Rendez-vous de l'histoire de Blois.
Congratulations to Eric Matheis (Senior Lecturer in French), who has been awarded a Provost’s Teaching and Learning Innovation Grant for his project, AI Agents for French Oral Skills Practice.
Warm congratulations to Eleanor Lee Grabowski on the successful defense of her dissertation, "Metissage," War, and Memory in 20th- and 21st-Century Algerian and Vietnamese Literature.
Congratulations to Madeleine Dobie, the recipient of the 2026 Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Faculty Mentoring Award. This honor recognizes Madeleine’s unwavering dedication to our graduate students—both M.A.s and Ph.Ds.
We congratulate our colleagues, Joanna Stalnaker, the recipient of the 2026 Division of Humanities in Arts and Sciences Award for Academic Excellence, and Nicole Meily, Director of Academic Administration and Finance in French and Philosophy. Nicole has been selected for the 2026 Division of Humanities in Arts and Sciences Award for Community Building and Engagement.
Joanna Stalnaker’s new book, The Rest Is Silence, has just been reviewed in the Wall Street Journal by Ruth Scurr, who calls it “fascinating” and an “original and beautifully written book.” (CU students, faculty, and staff have access to this content through the Libraries.)
Warm congratulations to Laetitia Ndiaye on the successful defense of her dissertation, Writing and Seeing the World: language, movement and identity in Francophone literature and cinema.
Recent Publications
What's the male equivalent of a "greluche"? A "bimbo"? A "maid"? Elsa Stéphan humorously compiles a dictionary of these insults that apply only to women.
From "hysterical" to "flirtatious," this abundant vocabulary reflects the numerous criticisms and the contradictory expectations society places on them: too beautiful or too ugly, too young or too old, too maternal or too animalistic… One thing is certain: they never win.
While the author explores the origins and uses of these terms, she also situates them within the broader history of the representation of women. As the entries unfold, a sharp—yet often ironic—critique emerges of a language that reveals a society still deeply patriarchal.
At a time when narratives of colonization and debates about their legacies have become increasingly prominent, Emmanuelle Saada's Histoires et colonisations contributes to current discussions about the meaning, scope, and impact of colonization. It examines how historians have described, analyzed, and explained colonialism over the past two centuries, with particular attention to developments since the early 1990s.
Antoine Compagnon reconstructs the cultural, intellectual as well as political and social history of the "wondrous year 1966" and demonstrates brilliantly that it was a true rupture between two eras of French history.
How did the Enlightenment end? In The Rest Is Silence, Joanna Stalnaker paints an intimate, moving portrait of the Enlightenment philosophers as they faced the end of their lives and their historical moment.