Bonjour à tous!!!
Time to brag about some of our grad students. During the weekend of January 30-31st two of our brilliant graduate students--Greg Jackson and Regina O'Shea--traveled over half way across the country to Louisiana State University (LSU) to present papers they had recently written. The conference was LSU's "French Studies Department's 3rd Annual Graduate Student Conference," and attracted doctoral and masters students from all over the country and Canada (That's New Orleans on the left, taken by Regina during a little down time in the French Quarter; for the record, our BYU students were not corrupted by it). Both of their papers were term papers from last semester's course on the French Renaissance taught by Dr. Robert Hudson, so here is a big THANK YOU to him as well, for his suport and input that helped both Greg and Reg
ina write such fine essays.Greg's essay examined The Heptameron, a collect of 72 short stories, by a female French author (Marguerite de Navarre) from the 16th-century to see what this work said in between the lines about misogny. Regina went the art route and analyzed George de la Tour's Penitent Magdalene, looking at how the woman in the painting may represent the more traditional role of women during an era of much stronger patriarchal influence, and yet, at the same time the greater liberties afforded to women by the Renaissance. Here is one of the de la Tour paintings Regina used on the right. You will also be pleased to know, that while I was looking for the image online I went to Wikipedia and learned that this is the same painting that Ariel in Disney's The Little Mermaid looks at during her song "Part of Your World." All I can say to that is, Disney--that's classy. Way to give a shout out to the francophone viewers.
And I look forward to hearing someone deliver a paper one day that analyzes why Disney chose that specific painting... your thoughts? Post 'em!
Cheers!
