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The Department of French & Italian
Alumni Newsletter - December 2019
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 | Miami students on the Florence: Writing, Media, and Culture study abroad trip
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| Donations to the Department of French & Italian have been used for student scholarships and travel support, to bring important guests to campus, and more.
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Dear Alumni, Students, and Friends:
As the end of the year approaches, the students and faculty in the Department of French & Italian want to reach out to our community of alumni, friends – and each other.
The letters that follow remind us of the different paths that our students and alumni take. Some of our graduates speak about the careers they have chosen and help give ideas about what a degree in French can open up. Current students describe their experiences abroad, and how those encounters changed their view of the world.
We invite you to stay in touch – visit our website, contact each other, and send us a note telling us what you’ve been up to. Your stories are part of who we are.
Best wishes for the holidays, and we hope to hear from you soon!
Jonathan Strauss
Professor and Chair
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 | L to R: Geoffrey Combe, co-driver (co-pilote), Laurent Pellier, driver (pilote), a Peugeot official team signing posters for fans, and Abigail Carr at a rally in Liepaja, Latvia |
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Abigail Carr: An Alumna Reports
Ever since I was little, the roar of an engine made me turn my head. The vibrations, the sounds, the crowds, the technologies and the teams in their sharp suits and helmets have always attracted me to motorsport. I knew that this was the industry I needed to work in. However, I was also acutely aware of how hard getting your foot in the door can be. Though there are dozens of types of racing such as Formula 1 through Formula 4, rally and rally cross, Moto GP, NASCAR, GT classes, and classics, the motorsport world is small and restricted.
After I graduated from Miami University and started the Professional French Masters Program at the University of Wisconsin, I needed to find an internship to complete the program. I was told that finding an internship in motorsport was highly unlikely and to search for an internship elsewhere. However, a friend of mine happened to race in Europe and told me about a team named Saintéloc Racing. He explained that they were professional on the track, and so I decided to send an email to the team manager. Within two days of sending the email, my internship with the team was set.
I am now starting my fifth month in my Communications, Media and Marketing internship with Saintéloc Racing in St. Etienne, France. I have travelled to five different countries and multiple regions of France essentially to document the team. I take photos, organize all social media activity, prize giveaways and client relations. I am the first American intern and the first communications intern, which has meant having to be inventive. The team partakes in rally, circuit, and ice driving, presenting a unique communications challenge to make sure all racing types are accurately represented. Every day I use my French and English and every day I have to adapt myself to new challenges and tasks.
I am incredibly thankful for my experiences in the Miami French and Italian Department which helped to form important skills such as learning how to analyze a problem and suggest solutions. My experiences from Miami will always be with me and will continue to influence the way I work.
Love and Honor.
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Theo Mesnick, Dijon: The Quotidian and the Past
My favorite field trip of the Dijon summer program had to be when we went to an old monastery at Fontenay and it was from the Middle Ages. It was so beautiful and so well kept. It felt like stepping back in time when we were visiting it.
There was an old prayer room that was big and open and had a dirt floor, and no glass in the windows because it was from the middle ages, and it was dark and damp but so calming and soothing. There were all these stone carvings and it was really beautiful.
But I think my favorite days, the ones that I’ll always remember, were just the days where I got to explore Dijon. There was one in particular when I went to class downtown and then I had to mail a letter and go to the store or something — they were was mundane errands but I just had this moment of doing stuff around Dijon when I realized that I was in France and, you know, I could get around on my own, I understood the trams, and I had such an empowering sense of independence in a foreign country. Plus I ate all the cheese and bread I wanted!
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Marta Fioretti, Dijon: Le Cinéma Eldorado
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 | Marta and friends McKenna Hardy and Charlotte Beasley on their last night in Dijon after enjoying a lovely meal at a local restaurant
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| My favorite place in Dijon was the Cinéma Eldorado, an independent cinema not far from our dorms. The theater was surprisingly cozy and had an artsy, homey feel. In the entrance, there were tables and an area full of fliers, where I got two free postcards from movies by my favorite director (Nanni Moretti).
Every week I got the schedule of the movies they were showing and went as often as possible. I think I ended up going at least six times. After the first few times that I had gone there to see movies, the ticket sellers recognized me, and we had short conversations about cinema in French.
I had the pleasure of seeing the movie Parasite, by Bong Joon-ho, there (which won the Palme d'or at Cannes this year) twice last summer, and it was only recently released in the U.S. I was also able to see many other interesting movies, like Le Jeune Ahmed by the Dardenne brothers, and La Messa è Finita by Nanni Moretti.
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 | Marc Papa in downtown Lyon with other language assistants from Germany and Costa Rica.
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| Alumnus Report: Teaching English in Lyon
By Marc Papa
After graduating from Miami in 2018 with degrees in French and French Education, I was accepted into the 2019-20 cohort of the TAPIF (Teaching Assistant Program in French). I actually was placed in my top-choice region of l’Académie de Lyon at a lycée (high school) in Villefranche-sur-Saône and a collège (middle school) in Beaujeu. Overall, I’ve had a wonderful experience thus far after about two months of work. My time is split between the lycée and the collège, meaning I see about 300 students overall. The students are between the ages of 13 and 18, so they are extremely diverse, but they also provide me an intimate look into French life and culture. I’ve been lucky insofar as I have pretty much total liberty as to what I teach; nevertheless, I still try to anchor my lessons about America in what is relevant to my students' lives in France and their future goals.
I studied abroad in Montpellier, France for a semester during my sophomore year, but I have learned as much, if not more, from my experience already as a language assistant than I think I did in my entire semester abroad. It may be because I’m older and less nervous or because TAPIF has also offered me the opportunity to interact with not only French students but also my French colleagues, who have had me over for dinner, taken me to play badminton, and helped me explore the city of Lyon during the weekends. Lyon is, after all, only a 25-minute train ride from my city thanks to France’s wonderful public transportation.
I would highly recommend this experience to anyone who wants to expand their knowledge of French language and culture, gain experience teaching English, or even take a break from life in America to gain a new perspective. I’m planning on reapplying for the program next year, which will allow me to continue working with my same colleagues if I so choose, or I could request an entirely new region for another seven months.
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 | The Garnier Opera House with ceiling mural paintings by Marc Chagall.
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| Paris: Cultural Capital
By Dania Puente Davila, CAS student associate
When Kevin Pirt started the Paris study-abroad workshop, he was in his last semester as a Finance major with a French minor, but after the program, he decided to stay at Miami an extra semester to add a French major. It was a bold move, but he knew this would benefit him in his career.
“Through the major and my experience in Paris I think I’m a little bit more confident to speak the language,” said Pirt. He emphasized that speaking French in an academic setting is different from outside the classroom. “It’s a different world, ordering coffee, food, talking to people,” he said. “Having those experiences was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed it.”
During his three weeks living in Paris, Pirt also discovered some of the cultural differences between French and Americans. “The way they do food and dining setups,” he said. "Their dinners are pushed a lot further back in terms of the time of the day, and lunch is a lot more important.”
Pirt’s graduation is approaching and he is currently looking for opportunities in bilingual companies where he can apply both of his majors and bridge the gap between cultures. “The dream would be to have a job that would let me speak French while doing finance,” Pirt said.
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Dr. Wasser’s progress on “‘A Word to the Wise’: Spinoza and the Claims of Meaning.”
By Dania Puente Davila, CAS student associate
On Wednesday, October 24, 2018, Dr. Audrey Wasser of the Department of French & Italian gave a lecture titled “‘A Word to the Wise’: Spinoza and the Claims of Meaning.
Her talk was based on an article version of the first chapter of her book On Literary Judgement. The article focuses on the work of the seventeenth-century Jewish-Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s, specifically his masterpiece the Ethics.
For Wasser, the purpose of this talk was to share a draft of the article she’s been thinking about for a long time. Ideally, she wanted to get feedback from attendees as she doesn’t know if she’s succeeded in communicating the link between the two major sections of her argument.
“What does it mean to read? And what is reading for Spinoza?” asked Wasser. She has turned to Spinoza for a theory of reading itself, noting that he was referred to as “the first man to ever have posed the problem of reading.”
In the end, professors and students alike asked questions and shared their thoughts on Wasser’s work.
“I want to look at reading as a phenomenon in modernity,” Wasser said, and “why is reading a problem in modernity?” She wants to use Spinoza in her first chapter as a way of opening up the question.
Wasser hopes that after this reading’s feedback and editing she publish the first chapter of On Literary Judgement as an article.
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 | The Louvre at sunset.
Photo credit: Elisabeth Hodges
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| The French Theater Club
By Dania Puente Davila, CAS student associate
In April, 2019, the French Theater Club performed La Farce de Maître Pathelin, a modernized version of a fifteenth-century medieval farce. It was an ambitious undertaking to reconstruct the life, theater, and humor of a distant age – not to mention doing it all in a foreign language. So what is the group like that pulled it off?
Visiting French professor Jeremie Korta has been the director of the club for over six semesters now. Korta explained that this club is designed not only to help students improve their French fluency but also to help them build confidence.
“When I speak to people, they say ‘your accent is so Parisian it sounds really good.’ It's because of this club,” said senior Collin Gurtner, a French minor who has been a club member for three semesters. Gurtner was an athlete all through high school and had never acted before joining this club. “This is nice to get out of your comfort zone,” he said.
“You’re getting out of your ordinary routine,” senior Johnny X. Barrow echoed. “You get to interact with people in a way you normally wouldn’t. It’s a breath of fresh air for me every week."
Something that junior Franklin Dargo enjoys about this club is “acting and using French at the same time. You can read a play in class,” he said, “but you’re not really getting to put the scenes together.”
Professor Korta encourages students to improvise and considers physical theater an essential element for the club. He comments on the students’ performance after each act, and he truly gives his individual attention to all club members.
Korta always tries to find room for every student, but the higher their language level the more likely a student will be to get a bigger role. Still, it also depends on how much time someone wants to invest. In fact, Gurtner joined the club when he was a 200-level French student. “If you are willing to invest the time and you want to learn from it,” he said, “you don’t have to be at a 300/400 level, you don’t have to be fluent by any means.”
The French Theater club is currently looking for opportunities to perform in other universities. “Ball State has already expressed interest in having us come and perform for them,” Korta said.
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Copyright ©2019 Miami University
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