On Thursday, April 29^th UConn Early College Experience and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for French, Florence Marsal (Associate Professor in Residence) met with certified French Instructors for their annual professional development workshop. Instructors received a copy of L’art de perdre by Alice Zeniter and participated in a discussion about the novel.

After the book discussion, the group listened to parts of the music album “Pili pili sur un croissant au beurre”, by Gaël Faye. Which reference exile, nostalgia, and dual identity.

Prof, Marsal shared that both the novel and the music album can help us teach history (wars in Algeria and Rwanda, France’s military actions there) with a more personal and human approach, thanks to the young narrators. But these two resources can also start discussions with our students about childhood and youth, about family origins and one’s sense of identity, and about writing one’s own story to make sense of it.

After a short break the group reconvened to hear from Adrienne Eldredge, (French Adjunct Faculty, UConn) about “The Italianization of les passions in 17th-century France.” Adrienne Eldregde’s talk focused on emotions in Italian theater, through the lens of French and Italian philosophy, theater treatises, and plays.

At the end of the meeting UConn’s French 3250 and 3251 were discussed by Elisabeth Buzay, (Visiting Assistant Professor, UConn). Elisabeth Buzay spoke about the two recent culture and conversation courses she taught in a hybrid format: her 3251 syllabus focused on the “10 arts of the 21st century”, and the final project was to create a digital story. In her 3250 course, she implemented a crowd-sourced syllabus, and students created a final project in one of the following formats: a TV newscast, a radio show, or a podcast.

UConn French Courses offered through ECE.