Faculty
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| Bruce T. Edmunds Bruce Edmunds specializes in French literature of the 17th Century. Dr. Edmunds teaches many courses at UA, including Honors Intermediate French, Survey of French Literature I, and 17th-Century French Literature. |
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| Douglas Lightfoot Dr. Lightfoot teaches in linguistics and provides the professional training for the graduate teaching assistants in the basic language program. This includes supervising classroom teaching, individual teaching observations, conducting pedagogical workshops, an introduction to theoretical approaches, foreign language teaching methodology, and individual mentoring. He teaches the applied linguistics practicum, historical linguistics, history of the German language, and topics in second language acquisition. His research focuses on historical changes in German, general change at the theoretical level, grammaticalization, and second language acquisition and pedagogy. He has made presentations on topics such as German words developing into suffixes at venues in the U.S., Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. Current projects deal with the parallels in language change from both historical and classroom acquisition perspectives, and the development of German compounds with synonymous parts. |
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| Carmen Mayer-Robin Dr. Mayer-Robin's field of specialization is 19th-century French literature. Her interests include: naturalism and end-of century reactions to naturalism; theories of literature in the writings and correspondence of 19th-century authors; cultural and political history during the Third Republic; literature, art and popular iconography. Dr. Mayer-Robin enjoys studying manuscripts, notes, drafts, and plans in order to better understand writing processes and the genesis of great literary works. Publications on Zola, Baudelaire, Mérimée, De Quincey, Flaubert, and Huysmans have appeared or are forthcoming in EXCAVATIO, Romance Languages Annual, Romance Notes, Nineteenth Century French Studies, Dalhousie French Studies, and in two volumes of the Society of Dix-neuviémistes: Currencies: Fiscal Fortunes and Cultural Capital in the French Nineteenth Century (Peter Lang 2005) and Birth and Death in Nineteenth-Century French Culture (Rodopi 2007). She has presented her research at various national and international conferences and colloquia. Dr. Mayer-Robin loves to teach at all levels of the curriculum. This Fall 2008 she is teaching a seminar on Zola. Recent graduate-level courses on the 19th century include "Pathologies et passions de l’expérience moderne" (Fall 2002), "L’amour au cinéma français" (Spring 2003), "Fin-de-siecle France" (Fall 2004), "Fictions féminines" (Fall 2005), "Francophone Cinema" (Spring 2006), and "Théatre et anti-théatre: le siecle des révolutions" (Fall 2007). |
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| Michael D. Picone Michael D. Picone is Professor of French and Linguistics, subjects
which he has taught at the University of Alabama since 1988. He
also organizes courses and seminars on Francophone Louisiana and
Francophone Africa. His publications and program of research encompass
an assortment of lexicological, phonological, and language-contact
topics, as well as contemporary and historical profiles of language
use in Francophone Louisiana. He is author of Anglicisms, Neologisms
and Dynamic French, a detailed study of borrowings and other
types of lexical creativity in the French of France. He co-organized
the Language Variety in the South symposium, April 14-17, 2004 (funded
principally by NSF; a volume of selected papers is in progress,
funded by NEH). During a nine-year residence in France, he earned
his doctorate at the Sorbonne. For more detailed information about
his background and his program of research, please visit his homepage. |
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| Jean Luc Robin Jean Luc Robin joined the French faculty in Fall 2007. Trained
first in classical philosophy at the Université Paul Valéry
in Montpellier, France, his special field of research in 17th-century
French studies is interdisciplinary in approach. Publications on
Molière and Descartes, as well as on Galileo, Racine, Leibniz,
and Fontenelle, have appeared or are forthcoming in several books
(Origins, 2009; L’Âge de la représentation:
L’art du spectacle au XVIIe siècle, 2007; Formes et
formations au dix-septième siècle, 2006; Relations & Relationships
in Seventeenth-Century French Literature, 2006) and journals, including
Cahiers du dix-septième, Papers on French Seventeenth Century
Literature, and Seventeenth-Century French Studies. Dr. Robin also
presents papers nationally and internationally at regular conference
venues such as the Biennale Molière de Pézenas, C17,
CIR 17, MLA, NASSCFL, and SE17, and in special meetings such as “Le
soleil au XVIIe siècle” (Versailles, 2009) and “Theatrum
Mundi, théâtre et philosophie: Formes et mutations
d’une vision du monde et du théâtre” (Paris,
2007). He is currently completing a book addressing works by Madame
de La Fayette, Molière and Descartes, and titled Drôles
d’automates. Littérature et mécanisme au XVIIe
siècle. |
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| Metka Zupancic Metka Zupancic is an Associate Professor of French/Modern Languages and a Blount Scholar. Originally from Slovenia, she holds a Doctorate in Romance Philology from the University of Zagreb (Croatia; 1988) and a Doctorat de 3e cycle from the University of Strasbourg (France; 1977), as well as the Habilitation to direct research (Poitiers, France, 2005). At the Department of Modern Languages and Classics, Metka Zupancic teaches a variety of courses. At the undergraduate level, she teaches courses in French studies, French phonetics and English-French translation, commercial French, French civilization, as well as courses in contemporary French and Francophone literature. Her graduate courses include the 20th and 21st century French and Francophone novel, Critical Theory, Feminism, Myth and Literature, and Film and Literature. At the Blount Undergraduate Initiative, she teaches the seminar "Yoga: East and West." Dr. Zupancic has published a collection of her essays, in French, titled Helene Cixous: texture mythique et alchimique (SUMMA, 2007). Dr. Zupancic has edited several volumes including Death, Language, Thought: On Gérard Bucher's L'imagination de l'origine (SUMMA, 2005) and Hermes and Aphrodite Encounters (SUMMA, 2004), the latter containing international contributions from scholars in the field of myth studies. She has authored a book on the novels of the late French Nobel Prize winner Claude Simon (GREF, 2001). She has also edited or coedited a number of collective publications on myth in contemporary French and Francophone fiction. In her essays, she explores myth and spirituality in the contemporary novel, in particular in the writing of Claude Simon, Hélène Cixous, Chantal Chawaf, and Jeanne Hyvrard. Her interest in French Canadian literature resulted in a number of articles on Quebec feminist writers, such as Madeleine Monette, Francine D'Amour, France Théoret, and Monique LaRue. ZUPANCIC AWARDED KNIGHTHOOD IN FRANCE’S
Ordre des Palmes Académiques (Order of Academic Palms)!
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