Biography

Vesna Rodic (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2008) is the Director of The Lower Division as well as the coordinator of the second-year French language program. She serves as a Faculty Advisor at UC Berkeley's Center for Teaching and Learning. Dr. Rodic is the Faculty recipient of the Chancellor's Sustainability Award (2023) for her work in curricular innovation, teaching, and instructor training.  In 2024, she received the campus Faculty Fellows Award. 

Dr. Rodic's research and teaching interests include: language pedagogy; second language acquisition theory; writing theory and pedagogy; visual literacy; multilingualism; digital humanities; modern and contemporary literature, art, and culture; urban space migration; environmental humanities; conceptions of aesthetic autonomy and politicized art in the 20th and 21st centuries; poetic studies; literature and visual arts. 

Please reach out with any questions involving the French language program! 

RECENT RESEARCH PROJECTS AND PEDAGOGICAL ACTIVITIES INCLUDE: 

• Presidential Chair Fellow (with Richard Kern, Déborah Blocker, and Claire Tourmen), Center for Teaching and Learning, UC Berkeley, 2023-2025.
• Facuty Participant, UC Women's Initiative For Professional Development, 2023-24. 
• Faculty Fellow, Universal Design for Learning Working Group, GSI Teaching and Resources Center, UC Berkeley (Research Assistant Fellow: Amber Sweat), Spring 2023. 
• Berkeley Discovery Trailblazer (with Richard Kern, Ramona Naddaff, and Patricia Steenland), Berkeley Discover Departmental Innovation Award, 2021-2024.
• Library of Congress, Teaching With Primary Sources Grant (with Richard Kern, Ramona Naddaff and Patricia Steenland), 2018-2019.
• Fellow, Film in Foreign Language Curriculum program, Berkeley Language Center, UC Berkeley, 2021. 
• Diversity in Second-Year French Language Curriculum Grant, French Department, UC Berkeley, 2021. 
• Lecturer Teaching Fellow, Center for Teaching and Learning, UC Berkeley, 2020-21.
• Digital Pedagogy Fellow, Center for Teaching and Learning, UC Berkeley (awarded twice: in 2017 and 2019).
• Instructional Improvement Grant, Center for Teaching and Learning, UC Berkeley (awarded three times: in 2016, 2017, and 2018). 
• Instructional Improvement Grant, Division of Arts and Humanities, UC Berkeley, 2020.
• Certificate of Course Completion, "Teaching Language using VoiceThread", Spring 2020.
• Fellow, Berkeley Language Center, 2018.
• Workshop Participant, "French in Comparison: The Comparative Approach From Language Pedagogy to Historical Linguistics", funded by the France-Berkeley Fund, UC Berkeley, Spring 2018. 
• Workshop Participant, "Berkeley-Helsinki Workshop: Engagement, Désengagement et Changements d'Engagement", UC Berkeley, Spring 2014. 
• Fellow, Faculty Seminar on Teaching With GSIs, GSI Teaching and Resources Center, UC Berkeley, 2012. 
• Certificate of Course Completion, "Foundations of Effective Language Teaching", East Bay World Language Program Professional Learning Series, 2012-13.
• Invited Participant, UndocuAlly Training Pilot, Undocumented Students Program, UC Berkeley. Training completed in Spring 2013.
• Certificate of Course Completion, “Integrating 21st Century Technology: Storytelling Using Digital Tools”, East Bay World Languages Project Professional Development Course, 2012.
• Invited Participant, Digital Humanities Workshop: “Getting Started with DHCommons”, 127th MLA Convention, 2012.
• Collaborator, Diversity, Decolonization, and the French Curriculum, 2022- present. 
• Collaborator, “Literacy and the Literary” group, PLONS, University of Arizona, 2020-present. 
• Collaborator, Laboratoire Lattice, CNRS, France, 2018-2020. 
• Collaborator, UC-CSU Knowledge Action Network, 2017- present.
• Coordinator (with Michael Arrigo), "Found in Translation" working group, hosted by the Berkeley Language Center, 2013- present. 
• Diversity Facilitator, Multicultural Education Program, Division of Equity and Inclusion, UC Berkeley, 2012- present. 

Selected Publications

Books: 

The New Nationalism and the First World War, Palgrave MacMillan, 2015 (with Lawrence Rosenthal).

Book chapters: 

« Toward the Greening of the Intermediate French Curriculum » in de la Fuente, M. (ed.), Education for Sustainable Development in Foreign Language Learning, Routledge (with Richard Kern, 2022).

Introduction to The New Nationalism and the First World War  (with Lawrence Rosenthal, 2015).

«An Affair to be Remembered: Integral Nationalism Among French Men of Letters» in The New Nationalism and The First World War, Lawrence Rosenthal and Vesna Rodic, eds. Palgrave MacMillan, (2015).

«La Nouvelle Revue Française And the Challenge of History from 1909 to 1919» in Seybert, Gislinde and Thomas Stauder (eds.), Misères de l'héroïsme. La Première Guerre mondiale dans la conscience intellectuelle, littéraire et artistique des cultures européennes. London and Munich: Peter Lang (2014).

Articles: 

 "Vers une éco-poétique de l'espace dans 'Le Nénuphar blanc' de Stéphane Mallarmé", Dix-Neuf, 19.3, special issue on ecopoetics (Nov. 2015).

 "Lyricism, Aesthetic Tradition, and the Debates on Nationalism in La Nouvelle Revue Française, 1909-1914." Modern Language Notes 127.4 (2012): 806-825.

 “Visual Itineraries of a Literary Form: Dutch Baroque Printmaking, a Source for the French Prose Poem” Dutch Crossing, Journal of Low Countries Studies 35. 2 (2011).

“East As Poetry: The Bosnian Story, Seen Through the Eyes of the Interpreter,” Newsletter of the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, 21, #1, Berkeley: University of California (2004). 

“Poésie perdue, retrouvée à tâtons—le vouloir voir de Paul Valéry,” Bulletin des Études Valéryennes, 91 (Juin 2002), pp. 143-153.

“‘Are There Any Words for Painting?’ Objects and Objeux in Francis Ponge’s Poetry/ “‘Y a-t-il des mots pour la peinture?’ Objets et objeux dans la poésie de Francis Ponge.” The Berkeley McNair Research Journal, 8 (2000), pp. 23- 51.  Note: This article is the first bilingual publication in the history of The Berkeley McNair Research Journal.