Summer 2016 Faculty
Christina von Koehler – Paris as Palimpsest
The recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship for Research in France on the Paris Opera, she holds an M.A. in Political Economy from Columbia University’s School of International Affairs and an M.Phil in Modern European History from the City University of New York. A former dancer and arts administrator, she has curated and written the catalogues for several exhibitions, including “La Fontaine: The Power of Fables” at the New York Public Library. She has taught history and civilization courses at Baruch College and John Jay College in New York, at the UC Paris Center program, at New York University in Paris, and at the Paris campus of D.C.’s American University. She also lectures on opera and ballet for Stanford University in Paris.
Chelsie Yount-André – Tastes of Paris
Chelsie Yount-André is a Ph.D. candidate in cultural and linguistic anthropology in the dual doctoral (cotutelle) program at Northwestern University and l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Her research examines food sharing in Senegalese households in Paris and Dakar to shed light on the role of children in the reproduction and transformation of “economic moralities,” normative expectations of material obligation and entitlement. She analyzes everyday verbal and material exchanges to shed light on the ways transnational families negotiate expectations of how one ought to earn, spend, and redistribute resources. Her dissertation illustrates how immigrants reinforce stratification among transnational populations in their attempts to demonstrate integration into French society. She is a member of the Centre Edgar Morin (IIAC) and has taught at Northwestern University and the School of the Art Institute Chicago.
Mariam Habibi - Paris Reflections
Mariam Habibi received her PhD from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po)in 2000 with a dissertation on French Diplomacy in early twentieth century Persia, published by L'Harmattan in 2004. She also holds a DEA in History from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques and an MA in History from the University of London. She is an adjunct professor and thesis director at the American Graduate School of International Relations and Diplomacy and has taught with the UC Paris Center program, the American University of Paris, Columbia Unversity at Reid Hall, and New York University in Paris. Her most recent publication, History: a Course Companion, Oxford University Press (in co-authorship), appeared in 2010.
Carole Viers-Andronico – French 10
Carole Viers-Andronico received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2008 with a dissertation applying methodologies from translation studies and philosophies of aesthetics to texts produced by members of the Parisian literary group OULIPO. She is currently Academic Coordinator for the UC Paris Center programs in French Language and Culture and French and European Studies and has taught French language and literature courses at the UC Paris Center program, Comparative Literature courses at the University of California, Los Angeles and California State University, Long Beach, as well as French and Italian language and literature courses at Tulane University. She is also a literary translator.
Adina Ruiu – French 12 AB
Adina Ruiu is completing a Ph.D. in history at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the Université de Montréal. She received an M.A. in literary studies from the Université du Québec à Montréal (2006) and an M.A. in Canadian Studies from the University of Bucharest (2000). A number of fellowships, including the doctoral fellowship of the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and research fellowships from the Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec, the Université de Montréal and the École Française de Rome, have allowed her to pursue her research in French, Italian and Canadian archives. Her fields of interest are early modern European and global history and the history of emotions, which she studies by focusing on the Jesuit missions to North America and the Ottoman Empire. She tries not to neglect her previous scholarly pursuits, such as contemporary French and Quebec literature, and to save a bit of time for personal projects of writing and photography. Parallel to her research activity, she has taught French language and civilization, and early modern European history at the University of Bucharest and the Université de Montréal.
Sabrina Petitjean – French 34 AB
Sabrina Petitjean received her M.A. in applied linguistics and phonetics from the University of Paris Sorbonne in 2004. She followed this degree with a year of specialization in didactics in languages and cultures. Since 2004, she has taught French language and civilization, as well as phonetics, in many international academic programs. She has had the opportunity to teach students from many American universities such as UC, Yale, Harvard, and Georgetown. She is also a trainer in argumentative techniques and teaches writing to advanced students, studying at French universities. Since 2006, she teaches French for specific purposes (business, diplomacy, media and culture) to international business schools such as H.E.C. In 2008 she joined the teaching staff of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Paris and is now a member of the jury's assessment of French language exams, such as TEF.
Claudia Fontu- French 45 AB
Claudia Fontu received her M.A. in French Literature and her M.A. in American Literature from the University of Paris Sorbonne III in 2006. Her PhD at the University of Paris Sorbonne III is in progress. She has taught French language and civilisation classes at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and has taught French language classes at the UC Paris Center program, at Franklin and Marshall College in Paris, at University of Florida in Paris, as well as French literature classes at the University of Southern California in Paris. Since 2010 she has also taught French language courses and is a teacher trainer at the Department of French Language Didactics at the Institute of Linguistics, Paris. A former journalist, she translated three books of Romanian poetry into French. She is also a painter.
Caroline Laurent – French 56 AB
Caroline D. Laurent received her BA from The American University of Paris and her MPhil from the University of Cambridge, Christ’s College. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Romance Languages and Literatures department at Harvard University. Her dissertation examines the representation of genocide, more specifically the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, in recent French and Francophone literature by non-witnesses. She is doing research in Paris through an exchange program with the Ecole Normale Supérieure. She has taught various language and literature classes at Harvard, as well as a history of psychiatry course.
Pierre Bras–French 60/101 and Pre-ILP Practicum
After earning a Ph.D in Law from the Université de Montpellier, Dr. Pierre Bras went to study in the United States, where he received a Ph.D in French from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He has taught French language and civilization classes at the UC Paris French and European Studies program, as well as French literature and French language classes at all undergraduate levels at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at Centre College (Kentucky), where he worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor. His dissertation, entitled Law and its Diversions in Modern and Contemporary French Literature, addresses the works of Honoré de Balzac, Marcel Proust, and Albert Cohen. Dr. Bras is also interested in the works of Simone de Beauvoir. In 2011, he edited the proceedings of the International Conference on “Simone de Beauvoir et la psychanalyse” which was held in Paris in March 2010. More recently, he has developed his passion for contemporary art by collaborating with the Spanish artist Pilar Albarracin, with whom he published a catalogue, Le Duende Volé [The Purloined Duende], in 2012.