French Department students hosted two very special guests this week: soprano Amina Edris and her husband, tenor Pene Pati. The internationally acclaimed couple is here in the Bay Area starring opposite each other in Jules Massenet's Manon at San Francisco Opera, and when they heard that over 50 of our students were studying the opera this semester, they agreed to come pay us a visit!
Charlotte Lee Peterson, class of '26 B.A. in Global Studies and B.S. in Society & Environment was awarded the prestigious Dufrenoy Scholarship to complete her graduate work in France. Charlotte began learning French at Berkeley her freshman year and went on to complete a semester in Geneva, Switzerland; she continued her learning through various upper division French courses. Through the Bourse Jean and Marie-Louise Dufrenoy, Charlotte will pursue a masters in science and technology of agriculture at Institut Agro Montpellier.
The conference, titled Mutations, will be held at the University of California, Berkeley on February 12–13, 2026, with our prestigious Keynote Speaker Prof. Christy Wampole from Princeton University. You’ll find the conference abstract and further details below.
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Magidow in the kitchen during a friends and family dinner on Aug. 28. Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle |
From using smartphone data to predict mental health relapses to leading French Club, Asher Cohen found community — and opportunities to serve others — in a myriad of corners of campus.
We are pleased to announce that Erin Dunbar has been awarded an Edward E. Hildebrand Research Fellowship for Summer 2025.
The department is thrilled to share that our very first French Job and Internship Fair, held last week on April 17th, was a great success!
Berkeley, CA — UC Berkeley’s Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry (CICI) and the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP) have been awarded $2.6 million to support a groundbreaking multi-year initiative titled “A Counter-Imaginary in Authoritarian Times.” Through collaborative workshops, conferences, performances, publications, and a dynamic, open-ended digital platform, this project brings together academics, artists, activists, and other community members to develop concrete strategies, tools, and proposals to create a counter-imaginary
Liesl Yamaguchi, Assistant Professor in the Department of French at UC Berkeley, is a scholar and translator whose work bridges 19th-century French literature, poetics, linguistics, literary theory, and translation. In this interview, Professor Yamaguchi reflects on her path to academia, the interdisciplinary nature of her research, and the creative challenges of translation. She offers a preview of her forthcoming book, On the Colors of Vowels: Thinking Through Synesthesia, which examines the convergence of literary and scientific discourses on synesthesia in the 19th century.
Kévin Drif is a third-year PhD student in the Department of French, with a designated emphasis in Film and Media Studies. His research largely focuses on cultural representations of children of immigrants in French media, as he explores the ways in which the idea of a French republican identity is confronted to children of immigrants’ cultural hybridity. Kévin received a BA and MA from the University of Tours in English literature, before receiving an MA in French and Francophone literature from CU Boulder.
Warm congratulations to Liesl Yamaguchi on the publication of her book On the Colors of Vowels: Thinking through Synesthesia!
Please see the release information on the Fordham University Press website for a full description. Here are some excerpts of reviews:
On November 19, over 40 (fabulously dressed!) undergraduates, faculty, and grad students from the French Department joined Nick Paige, Rachel Shuh, Daniel Hoffmann at the SF Opera for its production of Carmen for an evening of exquisite music and delight.
French PhD candidate Kévin Drif recorded a podcast on French Banlieue cinema! You can find it on The French History Podcast and on Spotify
On December 6, 2023, the Modern Language Association of America announced it is awarding its thirty-first annual Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies to Michael Lucey, the Sidney and Margaret Ancker Professor of French and Comparative Literature for his book What Proust Heard: Novels and the Ethnography of Talk, published by the University of Chicago Press.
On November 30, 2023, the Académie Française awarded Professor Déborah Blocker the PRIX MONSEIGNEUR MARCEL (in the Prix d’Histoire category) for her book, Le Principe de plaisir. Esthétique, savoirs et politique dans la Florence des Médicis (XVIe-XVIIe siècles). The prize, « destiné à l'auteur d'un ouvrage consacré à l'histoire philosophique, littéraire ou artistique de la Renaissance », was awarded at the Institut de France. In his Discours sur les prix littéraires, Presider Michel Zink said this:
We had the pleasure of discussing French politics on campus with Jonah Levy, Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley, who gave a talk in French to the Berkeley French Department and the Berkeley Center of Excellence in French and Francophone Studies. The talk was entitled, “Pourquoi la France est-elle si difficile à réformer ? » (« Why is France so hard to reform? »).
We are very sad to learn that our colleague and friend Len Johnson died on September 26. Len was a specialist in Late Medieval and 16th-century literature. Below is an obituary prepared by Len's close friend, the Rev. Thaddeus Bennett, followed by remembrances from Berkeley colleagues.
Leonard Wilkie Johnson
September 1, 1931 – September 26, 2023
We are sad to report that Professor Emeritus Basil Guy died on June 11, 2023 in Albany, California at the age of 97.
