Graduate French

The Department of French at the University of Virginia recognizes open-minded dialogue with other cultures and mastery of other languages as among the most powerful forms of resistance against bigotry. As students, scholars and citizens, we are more committed than ever to working toward a more just world.  

Interdisciplinary, global, transhistoric, and transdisciplinary thinking define our department: We offer diversity of voices with courses spanning geographically and historically from the Francophone Global South to French-speaking Europe, from Medieval through Contemporary France. Department members participate in the Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures; the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities; Caribbean Studies; Medieval Studies; Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; and European Studies. We also work across several departments of the College of Art and Sciences as well as with institutions abroad, in particular the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, l’École Normale Supérieure (Ulm), the Université de Lyon 2 and the Université Paris-Est Créteil.  

Graduate research reflects our intellectual reach: Current and recent topics of graduate research include perceptions of assimilation in early Francophone literature; urbanism and affect in contemporary French literature; Francophone sub-Saharan African filmmaking; ecofeminism; environmental humanities; humanities in the time of climate crisis; the play between religiosity and secularism in late Medieval literature; Mediterranean studies; French and Amazigh literature and culture; colonial trauma in Algeria; the XVIIIth century libertine novel; dystopic fictions; performance, theater, and medieval manuscripts; intersections between Haitian painting and literature.