Printemps 2024

Thursday April 4

12:45-2:00pm on Zoom

La Maison Française, in collaboration with the Franco-American Chamber of Commerce, will host a Women in Business Roundtable event.

Louise Roussel joined KeyBank’s Boston Middle Market Banking team in 2021. KeyBank, headquartered in Cleveland, OH, is one of the nation’s largest regional banks, with over $188BN in assets. Louise is focused on generating new and deepening existing client relationships with middle market businesses throughout the New England area. Louise has over 18 years of experience in Banking and Capital Markets, working in the end-to-end loan origination cycle, including structuring, underwriting, syndication and execution of loan transactions. Previously, she was a Director of Capital Markets at G2 Capital Advisors (“G2”), a Boston-based boutique investment bank and a Director in the Loan Capital Markets - Syndications Group at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (“SMBC”) in NYC. Before SMBC, Louise spent 10 years at BNP Paribas in NYC where she held various roles in the Loan Capital Markets, Corporate Investment Banking and Restructuring groups. Louise is a Board member of FACCNE and Chair of FACC’Fin, the Finance forum of the Chamber.

Karen Pevenstein is a strategic communications leader with more than 20 years of experience in public relations, brand marketing and broadcast journalism. She is also the founder of Louis Sel, the exclusive US distributor of specialty sea salt imported from Brittany, France. Her consulting practice specializes in building communications/brand strategies and thought leadership platforms for B2B and B2C clients working across organizations and closely supporting C-suite leadership. A master storyteller spanning multiple industries including financial services, tech and lifestyle, she has a proven track record of elevating brands and reputations in Fortune 100 and startup settings. Karen translated her passion for food and French culture to create her business, Louis Sel, which has been featured in the Boston Globe and Forbes. She is the 2019 winner of FACCNE’s FAB Awards for Women in Business. A Boston resident and member of FACCNE since 2018, Karen is currently co-chair of FACCNE’s Women in Business Network.

Nicole Ferry-Lacchia is a strategic and financial advisor at Winterberry Capital Advisors and a senior Capital Markets instructor at Wall Street Prep. She previously spent 10 years at Goldman Sachs in NY in Corporate Lending & Debt Capital Markets, Fixed Income Sales and Risk Management leading global cross-functional and cross-divisional teams in complex debt financing transactions for Fortune 100 and financial sponsor clients. Nicole began her career at Deloitte in NY, Paris, Geneva and Boston as an auditor and financial consultant specializing in restructuring and financial advisory services. Passionate about supporting women’s advancement in finance, Nicole served on the leadership committee for Goldman Sachs’ Women’s Network, as a board member of the Chicago Booth Women’s Network and is a member of 100 Women in Finance.

Jeudi 28 mars

Masha Belenky

« Mobilité en mouvement : l'omnibus et la culture urbaine à Paris aux XIXe siècle »

à la Maison Française 33 Dover Road, 5pm

en français

Masha Belenky est professeure de littérature française à l'Université George Washington. Ses thèmes de recherche et d'enseignement comprennent la culture populaire française du XIXe siècle, l'histoire culturelle et les études urbaines. Parmi ses publications principales, on compte deux livres, The Anxiety of Dispossession: Jealousy in Nineteenth-Century French Culture (Bucknell, 2008) et Engine of Modernity: The Omnibus and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Manchester UP, 2019), ce dernier examinant la relation entre les premiers transports en commun et la culture populaire et la manière dont ils ont contribué au concept de modernité en France. Elle a également co-édité et co-traduit une anthologie de la littérature populaire française du XIXe siècle (publiée dans la série MLA Text and Translation) et plusieurs numéros de revues.

Jeudi 7 mars

Christina Carroll

« Redefining Republic and Empire in France and Algeria after 1870-71 » 

à la Maison Française 33 Dover Road, 5pm

en anglais

Christina Carroll is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Kalamazoo College. Her work focuses on the history of nineteenth-century France and its colonial empire, especially in Algeria; she also has interests in memory, intellectual history, and political culture. Her first book, The Politics of Imperial Memory in France, 1850-1900, was published by Cornell University Press in 2022. Her current project, "Transportation, Exile, and Colonial Politics in France and Algeria, 1848-1880," looks at the intersection between transportation aimed at removing political dissidents from metropolitan France and transportation intended to control political dissent among indigenous communities in French colonial Algeria.

Jeudi 15 février

Anne Duprat

« Lire à contre-temps: retour sur l'anachronisme » 

à la Maison Française 33 Dover Road, 5pm

en français

Anne Duprat est professeure de littérature comparée à l'Université de Picardie-Jules Verne, spécialiste de théorie de la fiction contemporaine et des littératures européennes des XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Essayiste et traductrice, elle est l'auteur de Vraisemblances. Poétiques de la fiction en France et en Italie (Champion, 2009), de Fiction et cultures (avec F. Lavocat, 2010), Histoires et savoirs. Anecdotes scientifiques aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (avec F. Aït-Touati, Peter Land, 2012), et Romanesques Noirs 1750-1850 (avec M. Hersant et L. Ruiz, Garnier, 2019). Elle a récemment publié Histoire du captif. Un paradigme littéraire, de l'Antiquité au XVIIe siècle (Droz, 2023) ainsi qu'une traduction de Cervantès (Cervantès, Théâtre barbaresque, avec A. Teulade et F. Madelpuech, Garnier Classiques, "Littératures étrangères," 2022).

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Mardi 14 novembre

Stéphane Gerson

« Histoire des siens, histoire des autres: 

1942-1994-2024» 

à la Maison Française 33 Dover Road, 5pm

en français

Stéphane Gerson est Professeur d'histoire et d'études françaises à la New York University, dont il a dirigé l'Institut d'études françaises (Institute of French Studies) entre 2017 et 2021. Ses travaux portent sur la mémoire et l'oubli, les échelles territoriales, l'écriture de l'histoire et les histoires de famille. Il a deux livres en préparation: un collectif Scholars and Their Kin: Experiments in Historical Writing (University of Chicago Press, 2024) et Les gestes de notre guerre: 1994-1942 (Éditions La Découverte, 2026). Parmi ses autres ouvrages: Disaster Falls (Crown 2017; trad. Alma 2020); Pourquoi la France? Des historiens américains racontent leur passion pour l'Hexagone, dir. avec Laura Lee Downs (Cornell, 2006; trad. Éditions du Seuil, 2007). 

Wednesday, October 18

Roundtable with Serena Bassi and Louisa Mackenzie

Moderated by Hélène Bilis

at the French House, 33 Dover Road, 5pm

in English

Serena Bassi is assistant professor in Italian Studies at Yale University. Their current book project titled Mistranslations: Queer Marxism in Italy after 1968 is the first study to date of the 1970s Italian Gay Liberation Movement - its history, its politics, and its aesthetics. Serena's interests are in modern and contemporary Italian cultural studies, translation studies and queer studies.

Louisa Mackenzie grew up in Scotland, did graduate work in Berkeley, CA, and is Associate Professor in the Comparative History of Ideas Program at the University of Washington in Seattle. They have published and taught on early modern and contemporary French culture, ecocriticism, Animal Studies, and gender studies. Their co-edited volume Devenir non-binaire en français contemporain was published last year in Paris and is receiving positive press.

Jeudi 5 octobre

Guillemette Faure

« Raconter les transformations du quotidien» 

à la Maison Française 33 Dover Road, 5pm

en français

Guillemette Faure est journaliste et chroniqueuse pour Le Monde. Elle est l'autrice de dix livres (dont Dîners en ville, mode d'emploi, Grasset et Ça peut toujours servir, Stock et Pourquoi les enfants de profs réussissent mieux, Les Arènes) de deux documentaires (Gauche caviar, ton univers impitoyable et Les Présidents et les femmes) et de deux livres pour enfant (Consommation: le guide de l'anti-manipulation et Dys et célèbres, tous deux publiés chez Casterman). 

Tuesday, September 12

Marina Chiche

« Investigating Gender Trouble in Music: the Case of the Violin» 

at the French House, 33 Dover Road, 5pm

in English

Marina Chiche is an internationally recognized solo and chamber violinist. She has performed with many orchestras: Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de Lille, Orchestre National de Bretagne, Sinfonia Varsovia, and the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, among others. Her album Post-Scriptum (2020) was met with critical acclaim. With her book, Musiciennes de légende, her articles, and radio programs, she strives to make classical music accessible to all. Distinguished among the "100 Women of Culture" in 2022 and named an ambassador of the French Touch  movement, Marina Chiche is among the most important figures in French music today who makes culture shine beyond borders. 

Thursday April 27th 12:45-2:00

La Maison Française, in collaboration with the Franco-American Chamber of Commerce will host a panel on Women Entrepreneurs.  Virtual Event on zoom. If you missed this event, watch the recording here

Ludivine Wolczik has been the Executive Director of the French American Chamber of Commerce, New England, one of a leading chapter of the FACC Network, for close to 15 years. This chapter focuses on innovative technologies, digital economy, and Life Sciences. 

In addition to this position, she is also a member of FACCNE’s Executive Committee and a member of French Tech Boston Advisory Board. Before moving to the United States in 2007, she worked 10 years for the French Ministry of Defense as a Senior Analyst and a Political Advisor to the French Government. Ludivine holds a master’s degree in International Relations from the Institut Libre des Relations Internationales (ILERI) in Paris and a DESS in Diplomacy and International Negotiations from Faculté Jean Monnet at Paris XI.

Beatrice Thouveny is an accomplished senior international executive with 25+ years of marketing expertise and has a proven track record of results delivery. She studied international business and communication in France and New Zealand and holds an MBA from ISCID in France. She speaks 6 languages.

After starting her career in France in consumer electronics she followed her path in different companies such as ACER, NEC and Samsung where she was marketing manager for over 10 years before moving to the US in 2013, first in Chicago for 2 years, and then in Boston’s south shore. Today, she is CEO and partner of TAM TAM agency, an international web & marketing agency. She also founded Baliostar LLC, a marketing agency, and is a board member of WhatcHelp and mentor in Women in Print.

Karen Pevenstein is a strategic communications leader with more than 20 years of experience in public relations, brand marketing and broadcast journalism. She is also the founder of Louis Sel, the exclusive US distributor of specialty sea salt imported from Brittany, France.

Her consulting practice specializes in building communications/brand strategies and thought leadership platforms for B2B and B2C clients working across organizations and closely supporting C-suite leadership. A master storyteller spanning multiple industries including financial services, tech and lifestyle, she has a proven track record of elevating brands and reputations in Fortune 100 and startup settings.

Karen translated her passion for food and French culture to create her business, Louis Sel, which has been featured in the Boston Globe and Forbes. She is the 2019 winner of FACCNE’s FAB Awards for Women in Business. A Boston resident and member of FACCNE since 2018, Karen is currently co-chair of FACCNE’s Women in Business Network.

Mardi 18 avril

La Maison Française, en collaboration avec le Département de Musique de Wellesley College et le Consulat de France de Boston, a le plaisir d'accueillir 

Marina Chiche et Blaise Déjardin.  

Music Room Pendleton West 201, 6pm

Tentative Program: Haendel-Halvorsen, Ravel, Canat de Chizy, Saariaho, Kodaly, Stravinsky.


Blaise Déjardin is the Strasbourg-born principal cellist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He is also a faculty member at the New England Conservatory, where he also received a master's degree and a graduate diploma. His dedication to teaching also shines through his instructional book, Audition Day, the online music site Opus Cello, and international masterclasses. In 2019, he collaborated with cellist Kee-hyun Kim in releasing the album MOZART New Cello Duos. As a soloist, he has performed with other orchestras around the world, such as the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra and the Kuopio Symphony Orchestra. 

Marina Chiche is an internationally recognized solo and chamber violinist. She has performed with many French orchestras, such as the Orchestre de Paris, and abroad in Japan, Germany, China, South Korea, and the United States. Her 2020 Post-Scriptum album was met with critical acclaim. With her new book, Musiciennes de légende (éditions First/Radio France) and her editorial on the France Inter radio, she is committed to making classical music accessible to all.  Recently, she was named as among the 100 Femmes de Culture and shares her passion for music through international university conferences and through seminars at Sciences Po in Paris.  

Jeudi 6 avril en personne

Michèle Bacholle-Bošković

« Annie Ernaux: la vie en mots» 

à la Maison Française, 33 Dover Road, 4:00pm

en français

Michèle Bacholle est Professeure-chercheuse en Études Françaises. Sa recherche porte principalement sur les écrivaines contemporaines, en particulier Annie Ernaux et Linda Lê sur qui elle a publié maints articles et deux livres, dont Annie Ernaux de la perte au corps glorieux (Presses Universitaires de Rennes 2011). Son e-musée Annie Ernaux (2021-2022) était le premier dédié à un.e écrivain.e français.e. 

Mardi 28 février en personne

Jennifer Tamas:

« Non, je n’écoute rien. Me voilà résolue » Le refus sublime de Bérénice

à la Maison Française, 33 Dover Road, 4:00pm

en français



Si depuis 2015, on a beaucoup entendu, avec Nathalie Azoulai, que « Titus n’aimait pas Bérénice », cette rumeur court depuis la création de la pièce en 1670. Tragédie de la lâcheté, drame de l’inaction ou pièce « sur rien », l’œuvre a souvent été analysée selon le point de vue d’un souverain qui sacrifiait son devoir à sa passion. Et si Bérénice était celle qui dénouait l’action et offrait, comme le dit en son temps Louis Racine, « une magnifique leçon de grandeur d’âme » ? Cette communication entend restituer le « refus » de Bérénice pour analyser l’agentivité féminine et restituer la polyphonie des points de vue. 

Jennifer Tamas est Associate Professor of French à l’Université de Rutgers dans le New Jersey. Elle s’est d’abord intéressée au pouvoir de la parole dans la société d’Ancien Régime avant de se consacrer à la dramaturgie du silence chez Racine (Le Silence trahi. Racine ou la déclaration tragique. Droz, 2018). De même qu’elle a analysé la déclaration d’amour en interrogeant les non-dits, elle s’attaque à la question du consentement sous l’angle du refus. Elle vient de publier un essai (Au NON des femmes. Libérer nos classiques du regard masculin, Seuil 2023) qui cherche à comprendre pourquoi le refus féminin a quelque chose d’inaudible et d’irrecevable dans les œuvres des 17 e et 18 e siècles et dans leur réception.

Le 17 Novembre: Alumnae Roundtable with Wellesley Club of France. 

French and Career Development: How French Shaped Our Professional Development

12:45-2:00pm. In English. To be recorded. 

Hear from Wellesley Alumnae!

How did French shape their experiences at Wellesley and define a path for them in the workplace? 

Wellesley's French House is partnering with the Wellesley Club of France, an organization of over 80 French-speaking Wellesley Alumnae.


Watch the recording here!

Molly Rose Freeman Cyr, Class of 2013

Molly Rose Freeman Cyr graduated from Wellesley College in 2013 with a double major in French and Peace & Justice Studies. Since graduating, Molly has worked in the field of human rights in West & Central Africa, Europe, and the Americas, and is currently working to support activists at risk to develop their capacity in physical and digital security as a consultant for organizations such as Amnesty International, Front Line Defenders, and Open Briefing. Molly recognizes the pivotal role that French has played in her career, as being bilingual in French and English has opened doors to many professional opportunities internationally.

Sena Segbedzi, Class of 2006

Sena Segbedzi graduated from Wellesley College in 2006 with an Italian Studies Major and an Economics Minor. Sena currently works at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in Paris where she is the coordinator of the OECD’s Champion Mayors Initiative for Inclusive Growth, a coalition of mayors working to advance inclusive economic growth in their cities. Her international experience includes designing an emergency management plan for the Greater Lyon municipality in France, conducting an options assessment for waste management systems with the African Institute of Urban Management in Senegal, and analyzing domestic violence advocacy programs in Ghana.

Elisa Doughty, Class of 1994

Elisa Doughty graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College in 1994 with a BA in music and French. She received her masters degree in music from Boston University in 1997. She has performed opera at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the Cirque Alexis Gruss and the Stade de France, operetta at the Opéra de Rennes and in festivals in southwestern France, musical theater at the Théâtre du Châtelet and in Dubai, and recitals throughout France. In the past few years she has developed a career as a screen actress and plays the roles of Princess Alexandra in the series Find Me In Paris and Henrietta Throckmorton in the family series Theodosia (HBO Max).

Jessica Goldman, Class of 2006

Since graduating from Wellesley in 2006, Jessica has worked for some of the world’s largest consumer goods and retail companies. After getting her MBA at Duke, she moved to France and has focused her career on digital marketing, data, and e-commerce at companies like Amazon, Unilever and Mars. Based in Paris, she currently leads data acquisition and CRM for Mars’ pet food division in Europe.

Lisa Levasseur Berlinger, Class of 1990

Lisa was a French major (with an English minor) as well as a participant in Wellesley’s Aix-en-Provence study abroad program. In addition to her Wellesley undergraduate degree, she earned a Master of Science in European Studies at the London School of Economics, a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and an MBA from a bilingual program with Groupe HEC outside of Paris. After working for a top ten law firm in New York City, UBS Zürich, and her own translating and editing business, Lisa accepted a part-time job at Bank Julius Baer, where she currently works.

Le 27 Octobre: Jennifer Yee. Baudelaire’s Melancholy Orientalism. In English. 

12:45-2:00pm. 

Jennifer Yee is Professor of Literature in French at the University of Oxford (Christ Church), and Deputy Chair of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages. She has published three monographs: Clichés de la femme exotique: un regard sur la littérature coloniale française entre 1871 et 1914 (2000); Exotic Subversions in Nineteenth-Century French Fiction (Legenda, 2008); and, most recently, The Colonial Comedy: Imperialism in the French Realist Novel (2016). She is also currently the President of the UK-based Society of Dix-Neuviémistes. 

Charles Baudelaire’s exoticism is mediated by his passion for the visual arts. His admiration for the colourist, painterly style of Eugène Delacroix was deep and long-lasting, and he was particularly fascinated by the monumental Death of Sardanapalus and the two versions of Women of Algiers in their Apartment. Baudelaire’s response to Delacroix thus provides a key to understanding the Orientalism that underlies his exotic writings more widely. Among the many things that make us uneasy in Baudelaire’s works are his treatment of slavery, his ‘othering’ of the East and of women, and his fascination with cruelty and violence. But we should also not lose sight of the fact that his writing aims deliberately to unsettle and confront the ‘hypocrite lecteur’ (hypocritical reader): we too are the cruel Oriental Despot. This paper explores the melancholy nature of Baudelaire’s poetic Orientalism, which simultaneously invokes the fantasy of exotic wish-fulfillment and reveals it to be impossible. Situating this Orientalism in the specific context of nineteenth-century France – when the geopolitical background of the ‘Question d’Orient’ overlaps with anxieties about the place of the individual in emerging capitalist, bourgeois modernity – may give us a key to understanding the ‘secret douloureux’ (the painful secret) of ‘La Vie antérieure.’  

Find the recorded lecture here!

Le 6 Octobre: Why Academic Freedom Matters

The Politics of Anti-Intellectualism. 

12:45-2:00pm. 

Éric Fassin is a professor of sociology at Paris 8 University with a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science and the Department of Gender Studies affiliated with the first research center in gender studies in France, created in 2015, LEGS (CNRS/Paris-8/Paris- Nanterre). He is also a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. His research focuses on contemporary sexual and racial politics with a comparative, transnational perspective. Public interventions related to his scholarly work have long been part of his political work as a “sociologue engagé”. He is currently finishing a book (with Caroline Ibos) that starts from the attacks against academia to raise questions about epistemology, politics, and academic freedom: La savante et le politique (Flammarion).

Academic freedom is under attack, in overtly illiberal regimes as well as in ostensibly liberal ones – not only from Hungary to Turkey, but also from France to the United States. The usual targets range from the (so-called) “ideology of gender” to Critical Race Studies – that is, critical thought. Paradoxically, these attacks are often launched in the name of freedom of expression, echoing the polemic against so-called “cancel culture”. This battle is about the status of truth in democratic societies. Truth is not just a matter of opinion, since opinion is about values. But the search for truth is the intellectual value that defines academic work.

Academic freedom means that in the University we can say everything – but not anything.  This professional defense of truth explains why academics are under threat in an era of fake news and alternative facts. Anti-intellectualism thus plays a crucial role in anti-democratic politics.

Find a recording of the lecture here!

Le 28 Avril: French American Commerce Club Round Table with Monique Verrier-Mulkern, Gigi Shafai, and Johanne Gianuzzi. En anglais. 12:45-2:00pm

Monique Verrier-Mulkern, Gigi Shafai, and Johanne Gianuzzi, three accomplished businesswomen, will discuss how knowing and speaking French has shaped their executive careers. During this roundtable discussion, we will discuss:
What fields are French companies active in New England? What are the top fields? Where do French companies excel?  How has French shaped and impacted the speakers' careers?
The discussion will be moderated by Ludivine Wolczik, Executive Director of the French-American Chamber of Commerce, New England, FACCNE.

If you missed this event, find the recording here.
Monique Verrier-Mulkern, Head of Global Launch Excellence at Alexion Pharmaceuticals/AstraZeneca Rare Disease
Gigi Shafai, Head of Medical Communications and Interim Head of Medical Affairs at Pear Therapeutics
Johanne Gianuzzi, CRHA 2nd degree connection 2nd Director Human Resources Canada & Corporate at Veolia North America

Le 13 Avril: Estelle Zhong Mengual  Apprendre à voir, Le point du vivant"

Sciences Po, Paris - Academia.edu. En français

Estelle Zhong Mengual est historienne de l'art. Normalienne et docteure, elle enseigne dans le Master en Arts politiques (SPEAP) à Sciences Po Paris. Elle est également titulaire de la chaire "Habiter le paysage. L'art à la rencontre du vivant" aux Beaux-Arts de Paris. Elle est l'auteure de L'art en commun (Les Presses du Réel, 2019), et co-auteure de Esthétique de la rencontre (Seuil, 2018). Son dernier livre, Apprendre à voir. Le point de vue du vivant, est paru en juin 2021 (Actes Sud). Un nouvel ouvrage, intitulé Peindre au-corps-à-corps. Les fleurs et Georgia O'Keeffe, est à paraître en avril 2021 aux Editions Actes Sud. 

If you were unable to attend this lecture, you can watch a recording here.
Nous héritons culturellement d’un style d’attention très particulier au vivant. Dans les œuvres de la tradition artistique occidentale, qu’elle soit picturale ou littéraire, le vivant, s’il est bien présent, est majoritairement présent pour autre chose que lui-même. Il est avant tout là comme signifiant d’un signifié humain : comme symbole ou comme miroir de nos émotions. C’est une certaine manière de voir le monde vivant, mais c’est surtout une manière de ne pas le voir : car ce qui est manqué, c’est l’altérité des autres formes de vie que la nôtre. Comment apprendre à voir le vivant autrement, en faisant de la place à ses significations autochtones, à son histoire, à ses comportements et ses relations ? Comment entrer dans un autre style d’attention pour la myriade d’êtres vivants non-humains qui habitent et fabriquent notre monde commun ? 

Le 10 mars Elizabeth Andrews Bond. Mapping the Media Landscape in Old Regime France. Ohio State University. En anglais

Elizabeth Andrews Bond is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the Ohio State University. Her research brings together the history of print, the history of the Enlightenment and French Revolution, and the digital humanities to examine how people participated in shaping the ideas of their day. She is the author of The Writing Public:  Participatory Knowledge Production in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France (Cornell University Press, 2021).
The Writing Public, Digital Humanities, and Enlightenment Studies.In this talk, I discuss the major findings and digital humanities approaches in my book, The Writing Public. The first systematic study of the letters to the editor published in France's local newspapers, my work spans the two decades prior to and the first three years of the Revolution. As a work of digital humanities, The Writing Public is an investigation of the network of relationships from which new ideas emerged. Such letters were a form of early social media that fostered lively and ongoing conversations. This talk offers a fascinating glimpse into who participated in public discourse, what they most wanted to discuss, and how they shaped the formation of public opinion on the eve of the Revolution. The Writing Public prompts us to consider how Enlightenment studies is transformed by bringing a more capacious group of voices to the fore.  It is an investigation of how newspapers had the potential to transform people’s reflections about their intellectual and social worlds, and in doing so, to modify the very nature of the conversation.
If you were unable to attend this lecture, you can watch a recording here.

Le 17 février, Mame-Fatou Niang "Rethinking Universalism in 21st Century France" Carnegie Mellon University. En Anglais

Mame-Fatou Niang is Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the author of Identités Françaises (2019), and the co-author with Julien Suaudeau of Universalisme (2022). Her recent research examines universalism "à la française", as well as the development of Afro-French identities. Dr. Niang is also a photographer and the author of a photo series on Black French Islam. In 2015, she co-directed “Mariannes Noires: Mosaïques Afropéennes”, a film in which seven Afro-French women investigate the pieces of their mosaic identities, and unravel what it means to be Black and French, Black in France. Dr. Niang is currently working on a manuscript tentatively titled Mosaica Nigra: Blackness in 21st-century France. 

Rethinking Universalism in 21st Century France

This talk seeks to define universalism à la française, to think about its futures and forms in the 21st century. Based on cross-readings of Identités Françaises (Niang, Brill, 2019) and Universalisme (Niang/Suaudeau, Anamosa, 2022), the conversation will focus on key questions: Can one sketch a critique of universalism without awakening the demons of particularism and fascist passions? Without falling into the trap of identity as the basis of all and any legitimacy? What do the current upheavals in the articulation of race, class, gender and citizenship tell us about France? How have French authorities and intellectuals come to see critique and analysis from the margins as attacks on universalism? What understanding of the term, its purpose and its impact do such attitudes imply? Can 21st-century antiracism and universalism be reconciled in France? 
If you were unable to attend this lecture, you can watch a recording here.
Philip Nord  Le Mémorial du Martyr Juif Inconnu and Jewish Memories of Deportation November 18th, 12:45-2:10 pm
A memorial to the six million murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated in Paris in 1956.  It is now known as the Mémorial de la Shoah but then it was called the Tombeau du Martyr Juif inconnu.  This memorial was one of the very first of its kind anywhere in the world, and its construction was completed in the mid-1950s when, according to received wisdom, a general silence about the fate of European Jewry in the Second World War was said to prevail.  How and why was this memorial erected; how is it to be interpreted; and why was the memorial built in France? Philip Nord is Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History Emeritus at Princeton University where he taught from 1981 to 2021.  He is the author of several books on the history of modern France, including most recently France 1940: Defending the Republic (2015) and After the Deportation: Memory Battles in Postwar France (2020).If you were not able to attend this event, you can find a recording here.
Alison James Factual Writing and the Photographic ParadigmOctober 21st, 12:45-2:10 pm
Bringing together narrative theory and examples from modernist and avant-garde French literature, this talk considers how the naturalist novelists' notion of the “human document” is reoriented in the twentieth century by the model of photography, which comes to dominate conceptions of the documentary mode even outside visual media. This analysis also reveals, however, the limitations of this photographic paradigm for our understanding of the relationship between fact and fiction in literature. 
Alison James is Professor of French at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Constraining Chance: Georges Perec and the Oulipo (Northwestern UP, 2009) and The Documentary Imagination in Twentieth-Century French Literature: Writing with Facts (Oxford UP, 2020). She has also edited volumes and journal issues on literary formalism, fieldwork literatures, and nonfiction across media.
If you were not able to attend this event, you can find a recording here.
Alyssa Sepinwall Memory Failures: Slavery and the Haitian Revolution in Modern FranceSeptember 23rd, 12:45-2:10 pm
The Haitian Revolution (1791 – 1804), long forgotten outside of Haiti, was one of the major events of modern world history. Taking place in what was then a French colony called Saint-Domingue, the Revolution was the first uprising of enslaved Africans in the New World to succeed in creating an independent state. This event sent shockwaves throughout the Atlantic world. For enslavers in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America, it conjured up a terrifying alternative universe in which whites could lose their property and even their lives. For enslaved peoples, in contrast, the Haitian Revolution served as a beacon of hope. Despite its importance, Haiti’s Revolution is little discussed in contemporary France. This talk will examine how the Haitian Revolution is remembered – or forgotten – in modern French culture, focusing on film, video games, and historiography.  Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall (PhD, Stanford University) is Professor of History at California State University – San Marcos and past winner of the university’s Brakebill Distinguished Professor Award.  She is the author of The Abbé Grégoire and the Making of Modern Universalism (California), Haitian History: New Perspectives (Routledge), and many articles on French, French colonial, and Haitian history.  Her most recent book is entitled Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games (Mississippi). If you were not able to attend this event, you can find a recording here.
Sara Kippur Not just a Manuel de grammaire: Selling French Literature to American StudentsMay 6th at 2:30pm EST
“Not Just a Manuel de grammaire: Selling French Literature to American Students”: This talk focuses on three discrete moments, in the 1940s, 1960s, and 1980s, when we see, through the textbooks that were used in French-language classrooms, how college students of French in the US had a tangible effect on how French literature was created, imagined, and produced. The textbooks we will examine include La République du silence, by the New Yorker writer A.J. Liebling, which sought to counter American ideas of French collaboration in the Vichy period; the playwright Eugène Ionesco’s Mise en train, which aimed to defamiliarize the experience of language-learning; and the experimental Le Rendez-vous by the famed New Novelist, Alain Robbe-Grillet, which became his most commercially successful novel of all time, when it was later published in France. All three projects exemplify a spirit of collaboration between writers and French university professors, and they demonstrate, as this talk will argue, the ways in which French-language students in the US have been a critical market for supporting and sustaining the production of French literature. Sara Kippur is Associate Professor of French at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, where she also serves as Chair of the Department of Language & Culture Studies. This year, she is a Faculty Fellow at Wellesley’s Newhouse Center. Her research is at the intersection of 20th-21st century French and Francophone literature, translation studies, cultural studies, and book history. She has published a scholarly monograph on modern and contemporary self-translators, titled Writing It Twice: Self-translation and the Making of a World Literature in French (Northwestern, 2015), and she is co-editor of the volume Being Contemporary: French Literature, Culture, and Politics Today (Liverpool, 2016), which examines current, pressing issues in the field of French Studies. She is currently at work on a new book called Transatlantic Pacts: America and the Production of Postwar French Literature.
Si vous n'avez pas pu y assister: Sara Kippur: Not Just a Manuel de grammaire - Zoom
Cléo Arnod Soriano Fellow   Au travers des yeux des femmes. Femmes photographes de la collection du Davis Museum.April 21st at 11:00am EST
The French House kindly invites you to join us on Wednesday, April 21st at 11:00 a.m. EST for our upcoming event Au travers des yeux des femmes. Femmes photographes de la collection du Davis Museum. This event is being held in partnership with the Davis Museum and will be presented by this year's Soriano Fellow, Cléo Arnod. The Soriano Fellowship program allows one student from the École du Louvre to study at the Davis museum for a semester. Ordinarily, the Soriano Fellow would live in the French House and be involved with on-campus activities within the department. Cléo is studying virtually this year due to COVID, but she has graciously agreed to join us for a virtual visit of the French House and the Davis Museum.Si vous n'avez pas pu y assister: Soriano Fellow Virtual Visit
Jennifer McWeeny Why Beauvoir’s "The Second Sex" Is Not about Gender: Phenomenology, Sexual Difference, and the (Mis)translation of Se faire femmeApril 14th at 2:30pm EST
Popular readers and scholarly commentators alike interpret Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex in terms of the concepts of ‘gender’ and ‘social construction.’ In this lecture, Prof. McWeeny challenges those readings that would see womanhood as a matter of receiving or performing cultural meanings, and instead argues that, for Beauvoir, womanhood is a matter of mind. Beauvoir’s conception of womanhood locates sexual difference in the plastic structures of consciousness in the ways that a person actively relates to her/his/their own body in the flow of self-experience. Prof. McWeeny’s phenomenological interpretation of Beauvoir’s magnum opus opens new lines of engagement between Beauvoir’s oeuvre and critical social theories, including critical race theory, transgender studies, disability studies, and decolonial studies.Jennifer McWeeny is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a recipient of the Fulbright U.S. Scholar National Research Award (France, 2019-2020). Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of philosophy of mind, French philosophy, phenomenology, existentialism, feminism, and decolonial theory. McWeeny has published more than twenty-five articles and book chapters that have appeared in Hypatia, Continental Philosophy Review, and Chiasmi International, among other venues. She has also edited two books on cross-cultural philosophy: Speaking Face to Face: The Visionary Philosophy of María Lugones (2019), co-edited with Pedro DiPietro and Shireen Roshanravan, and Asian and Feminist Philosophies in Dialogue: Liberating Traditions (2014), co-edited with Ashby Butnor. She recently published a popular piece in EuropeNow (www.europenowjournal.org) titled “A New Existentialism for Infectious Times” about the contemporary relevance of existentialist philosophy. McWeeny is Editor in Chief of Simone de Beauvoir Studies (www.brill.com/sdbs). 
Heidi Holst-Knudsen  Can French be Inclusive? Considerations of a Contentious Linguistic Project.March 17th at 2:30pm EST
Derided as a linguistic fad and qualified by the Académie Française as a  "mortal peril,” why is inclusive language met with such resistance and hostility? A project conceived to combat the linguistic erasure of women, inclusive language is meant to work against the political implications of “the masculine prevailing over the feminine” in French syntax. This talk will present theories of how the French language was deliberately masculinized and how linguistic revisionists seek to address questions of equality and representation through a rethinking of lexicon and grammar.Heidi Holst-Knudsen is a senior lecturer in the Department of French at Columbia University, where she received her PhD in 2001, specializing in the 19th century with a focus on Romanticism and the work of Gerard de Nerval. She teaches all levels of language as well as a course on French language, society, and culture through film. She presents frequently on pedagogical practices, focusing primarily on the use of visual supports (bande-dessinées, political cartoons) and film in the language classroom. Her research is currently focused on political cinema and she has given talks and published articles on the films of Mathieu Kassovitz, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, Aki Kaurismäki, Robert Bresson, Jacques Tati, and Agnès Varda, among others. She is managing editor of Romanic Review, a scholarly journal devoted to the study of Romance literatures, published by Columbia University’s French department.
Si vous n'y avez pas pu d'assister: Heidi Holst-Knudsen: Can French be Inclusive? - Zoom
Hollis Clayson  Outsider Nocturnes: American Visions of the City of Light by Night February 24th at 2:30pm EST
Hollis Clayson (B.A., Wellesley College; Ph.D., UCLA) is Professor Emerita of Art History and Bergen Evans Professor Emerita in the Humanities at Northwestern University. She has published widely on Paris-based art practices, including the French capital’s large population of artists from elsewhere. Her books include Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era, 1991; Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life Under Siege (1870-71), 2002; co-edited with André Dombrowski, Is Paris Still the Capital of the Nineteenth Century? Essays on Art and Modernity, 1850-1900, 2016; and Paris Illuminated: Essays on Art and Lighting in the Belle Époque, 2019. Her current book project considers the visibility and reception of the Eiffel Tower.
Si vous n'avez pas pu y assister: Hollis Clayson: Outsider Noctures - Zoom 
LIFE SCIENCES PANORAMA: FROM CRISIS TO OPPORTUNITY, THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA FOR INNOVATION IN BIOPHARMAHosted by the French American Biotechnology Springboard and the French American Chamber of CommerceOctober 6th-7th, 2021
LA MODE: A Fashion Primer by Jay Calderin, Founder of Boston Fashion WeekThursday, October 7 at 7:30 PMWe are excited to announce that Jay Calderin’s first book, The Fashion Design Reference & Specification Book, has just been translated into French (La Mode: Un Guide Pratique De Référence)!
In celebration of the French launch of his book, we have the pleasure of welcoming Jay Calderin for a virtual book discussion. During his presentation, Jay will guide you through the fashion design process and connect the dots between many contemporary practices in the fashion industry and their French origins. He will also tell us about Boston Fashion Week, a highlight of Boston's fashion industry that he founded in 1995.
Online Event in English