 Robert Barsky's Vanderbilt Site
Journal Work
Maymester in Montreal 2009
Émile Zola
English 244
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Welcome to the DGS page, on which you’ll find current
information about graduate student activities at the Vanderbilt University Department of French and Italian.
The M.A. and PhD programs in French at Vanderbilt University are internationally-recognized for their excellence, and the research and teaching coupled with the superb facilities of the university combine to create a truly stimulating intellectual environment. Information concerning the graduate program can be obtained on this site, and inquiries should be directed to: Professor Robert Barsky, Director of Graduate Studies, Department of French and Italian, Vanderbilt University.
Events and opportunties of interest to our graduate students
1. DGS meetings 2006-2007
Wednesday, August 16th, 3PM
Monday, August 21st, 3PM
Thursday, August 24th, 3PM
Friday, October 20th, 3PM
Friday, November 3rd, 4PM
Friday, December 15th, 3PM
2. University and Department Fellowships
French Department Fellowships range from $14,500 to $21,500 per year for five years. The Vanderbilt Graduate School and the Department of French and Italian offer funding to all graduate students accepted into the program, with a range of possible "top-up" awards available to exceptional candidates:
The University Fellowship is given to the first-year student as a full scholarship involving no Departmental duties. Students who enter with the B.A. hold this award for the first year. Most students who enter with the M.A. also are awarded a UF and are not required to teach until their second year of graduate study here at Vanderbilt.
The Harold Stirling Vanderbilt Scholarship is a $3,000 topping-up award granted in addition to one of the awards mentioned above. This award is given to students entering the doctoral program and is renewable for up to five years. Its continuance is contingent upon satisfactory progress toward the degree. HSV Awards are competitive among applicants to all graduate programs in the University.
The University Graduate Fellowship is a $5,000 topping-up award granted in addition to one of the awards mentioned above. This award is given to students entering the doctoral program and is renewable for up to five years. Its continuance is contingent upon satisfactory progress toward the degree. UGF Awards are competitive among applicants to all graduate programs in the University.
The Arts and Science Select Scholar receives a $3,000 annual stipend in addition to the basic award. Applicants for the A&S Select compete with those for all graduate programs in the College.
The Provost's Graduate Fellowship is a four-year scholarship for students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds. Factors considered include racial, ethnic, socio-economic, or other considerations.
Dissertation-Year Fellowships are available for students in the fifth year of work. These fellowships are service free, may vary in number each year, and are awarded on a competitive basis. Students interested in a Dissertation-Year Fellowship must submit the proper form (obtainable from the DGS), a full curriculum vita, a copy of the Dissertation Proposal, a timetable of work for the dissertation year, and a letter of recommendation from the dissertation director. Applications and all supporting materials should be in the DGS office by April 1 of the academic year prior to the dissertation year. The Chair of the Department, in consultation with the DGS, makes the selection.
Research Assistantships Graduate students in need of extra money or who have reached their award limit may sometimes, with the authorization of the DGS, earn an hourly wage as a research assistant for a faculty member.
Summer Research Award in Arts and Sciences The College of Arts and Science Summer Research Award program is designed to help graduate students with outstanding potential to accelerate progress on their research, whether for the doctoral thesis or for other advanced projects. It is meant to help outstanding students in those departments in the College of Arts and Science in which summer support for graduate student research is rare or non-existent. There will be up to 25 awards of $4000 each.
The Graduate School Dissertation Enhancement Grant The Graduate School conducts two Dissertation Enhancement Grant competitions each year. These non-taxable awards of up to $2,000 each are intended to add depth or breadth to the student's dissertation research. Two students are nominated for each semester. A student is eligible for only one grant during his or her academic career.
The Graduate School Travel Grant Students may apply for one Graduate School Travel Grant per fiscal year (forms may be obtained in the department office). Grants are limited: up to $500 for domestic travel and up to $1,000 for foreign travel. Students must be the sole presenter of research at a major regional, national, or international conference.
Academic Job Search Support The French Department mentors and supports students who are on the academic job market through mock interviews, support for interviews at the MLA, and guidance through the Offices of the Chair and the DGS.
Robert Penn Warren Fellowship
3. Other Funding Opportunities for our Graduate Students (updated regularly)
- The American Council of Learned Societies is now offering dissertation-year fellowships designed to help Ph.D. students in the humanities complete their dissertations. Fellowship information can be found at: http://www.acls.org/ecfguide.htm
- Holly McCammon, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies, 301 Kirkland 615-322-7360 (office); holly.mccammon@vanderbilt.edu
- Center for the Study of Religion and Culture
- Center for the Americas
- Fellowship Announcement The Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies announce the 2007 competition of the INTERNATIONAL DISSERTATION RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP (IDRF) program designed to support distinguished graduate students in the humanities and social sciences conducting dissertation research outside the United States. Fifty fellowships of approximately $20,000 will be awarded in 2007 with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.The IDRF program is committed to scholarship that advances knowledge about non-U.S. cultures and societies grounded in empirical and site-specific research (involving fieldwork, research in archival or manuscript collections, or quantitative data collection). The program promotes research that is at once located in a specific discipline and geographical region and is engaged with interdisciplinary and cross-regional perspectives. Applicants must have completed all Ph.D. requirements except on-site dissertation research by the time the fellowship begins or by December 2007, whichever comes first. Fellowships will provide support for nine to twelve months of dissertation research. The fellowship must be held for a single continuous period within the eighteen months between July 2007 and December 2008. For more detailed information on application procedures and eligibility requirements, visit the IDRF website at www.ssrc.org/programs/idrf or contact program staff at idrf@ssrc.org <mailto:idrf@ssrc.org>.
- The Center for Ethics would like to draw your attention to the following possibility for dissertation stage students in your department. We are presently accepting applications to participate in two dissertation writers groups that will convene at the beginning of spring semester. The only requirement of applicants, in addition to your agreement that they may participate, is that their dissertation topics are ethics-related. We are thinking of “ethics-related” in the broad sense of referring to topics that address issues and problems that are significant for the quality of people’s lives. Examples from this semester’s inaugural group include: a dissertation that examines the relation and tensions between liberalism and multiculturalism; another that studies the varieties among global feminist activist movements; another that focuses on the phenomena of witch-hunts on tea-plantations in India; another interested in the authorial power of narration vis a vis 17th and 18th Century cartography. The Center will sponsor two groups this coming semester, one for students in the humanities and the other for students in social sciences. We will select up to six applicants for each group. They will convene regularly during the semester to read, edit and discuss each other’s work. I will supervise all sessions. One of the aims of these groups will be for the participants to finish at least two chapters or major sections of chapters in their dissertations by semester’s end. The participants in these groups will receive the designation, Vanderbilt Center for Ethics Dissertation Fellow, receive an honorarium of $1000 for their semester’s work. We also expect to sponsor other groups in future semesters. To apply, students should send to me a short précis of their dissertation project and its ethical focus along with a brief letter of introduction and support from their respective departmental DGS. We will begin accepting applications immediately. The application period will be closed at 4:00 p.m., Dec. 2, 2006. We will notify applicants shortly thereafter.
Louis Betty <> As it currently stands, I'm a second year graduate student in French and am teaching French 101A this Fall. Over the summer, I presented a paper on Derrida and Deconstruction at the UCI-UCSB graduate student conference for French and Francophone studies. Recently, I've done quite a bit of research on the Russian philosopher/psychologist Lev Vygotsky, with the overall intention of bringing to the fore the question of his Marxist roots. Hopefully, this research will result in a publishable (and maybe even published) article. Overall, my main interest is language; I plan someday to write something of interest on this topic. Anyway, I hope you will take a look at my website.
Louis Betty's website!
Sarah Margaret Bridwell <>I am in my first year of graduate studies here at Vanderbilt. After graduating from Rhodes College with a BA in French, I lived in Paris for a year as a teaching assistant at Lycée Victor Duruy. My interests are early Renaissance and Medieval literature, particularly the roman courtois and the notions of courtly love. It is an honor to be working in the W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies.
Check out my website!
Eva Dessein <> This is my first year of graduate studies here at Vanderbilt University. I am currently teaching one of the Accelerated Elementary French sections. In 2002, I finished my masters’ degree in American Literature at the Université de Lettres in Aix-en-Provence, France. Undecided about what field I wanted to work in, but strongly interested in both cultural exchanges and in foreign languages, I decided to complete another masters’ degree in International Negotiation with a focus on Brazil. I obtained my degree in June 2005, but realized that working in the classic corporate field was not for me... Parallel to my studies, I worked for over three years for the Vanderbilt-in-France program in Aix-en-Provence. Having moved to France from the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium at the age of 16, I have faced the same challenges of cultural and linguistic adaptation as my students. This experience triggered off my interest in Second Language Acquisition which I am looking to combine with French Studies here at Vanderbilt. It has also made me a strong believer in study abroad programs and SA experiences, and I consider them as being essential to L2 acquisition. I am currently one of two graduate research assistants for Professor Virginia Scott, with whom we are conducting a neurolinguistic study exploring brain functioning during lexical processing of adult monolingual L2 learners. For this fascinating project we are working with a wonderful team at the Vanderbilt Medical Centre with whom we conduct the fMRI study. Another project on which I am working as an RA is one in which we investigate to what extent talking about the Standards in the classroom motivates L2 students.
Eva Dessein's website!
Olivia Grenvicz<> I am a fourth year PhD candidate in French in the department. I am currently working on my dissertation, "Redefining the Supplement in 18th century French Travel Literature". Please visit my website!
Jessica Hinds <> I am a PhD candidate with the French Department here at Vanderbilt. I am from Nashville , I have my Bachelor's Degree from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville (Go Vols!), and my Master's from New York University . My interests lean toward the cultural/civilization side of the Francophone spectrum; I also adore literature from all parts of the world, Francophone, American, and everything in between. I enjoy writing and music in my spare time.
Rachel Nisselson <> I am in my second year of studies at Vanderbilt as a PhD candidate.
Before graduating Magna Cum Laude from Amherst College with a BA in French, I spent the fall semester of my junior year in Paris, studying at the Sorbonne, Paris X. The year after graduation took me to Dijon, where I worked as a teaching assistant in the English department at the Université de Bourgogne à Dijon. I have spent the last four years teaching French and Spanish to lower, middle, and upper school students in two high schools in New York. My research interests are post-colonial French and Spanish literature of the Americas. Last spring I presented my paper entitled "Self Identification in Assia Djebar’s Les Nuits de Strasbourg and Hédi Bouraoui’s Bangkok Blues" at the FIGSA Conference at Ohio State University. Click on the link below to read this paper or to learn more about me.
My personal website!
Degree Requirements for the M.A.
36 hours of course work. All courses may be taken in the Department of French & Italian. Courses may be taken outside the Department and a minor may be completed with the consent of the Director of Graduate Studies. Of the 36 hours of course work, 6 hours are required: French 300 (Introduction to Research) and French 310 (Foreign Language Teaching: Theory and Practice).
Diagnostic Language Examination. A diagnostic language examination will be given to all incoming graduate students. This exam, coordinated by the Department Chair and the Director of Graduate Studies, includes a 30-minute "free-write" and a 15-minute oral interview. The results of this test will serve to plan the student's program of study and will not be part of the permanent file.
Comprehensive Examination. The examination is based on an approved reading list. It must be taken no later than the second week of the student's fourth semester, normally in January of the second year. The format will be an overnight, take-home, open-book examination to test the student's ability to read and interpret specific textual passages and to teach literature though thinking about works in a global fashion.
M.A. READING LIST
The examination will be evaluated by a standing M.A. committee according to two separate criteria: (1) quality of argument, creative use of background knowledge, and analytic skills; and (2) linguistic competence, eloquence.
The graduate faculty of the Department must approve the evaluation by the standing M.A. committee before notifying the student of the outcome of the examination. Should the examination result be unsatisfactory, the student may retake it once before the end of the fourth semester.
Comprehensive Final Review. If a student has successfuly completed the M.A. examination and wishes to enter the Ph.D. program, the standing M.A. committee will make a comprehensive review of the individual's academic work, based on the following evidence: examination results and a dossier of seminar papers completed during the M.A. program. The graduate faculty will review the evaluation of the committee and make a decision regarding the student's admission to the Ph.D. program.
Please note that Nicole Brossard's text l'Amèr is out of print, but is available in the library and
here.
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For more information, please contact Robert F. Barsky.
copyright Robert F. Barsky, 2006
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