Kara M. Rabbitt
“Celui qui regarde du dehors à travers une fenêtre ouverte ne voit jamais autant de choses que celui qui regarde une fenêtre fermée. Il n'est pas d'objet plus profond, plus mystérieux, plus fécond, plus ténébreux, plus éblouissant… ” —Charles Baudelaire, “Les Fenêtres” Associate Professor, Department of Languages and CulturesDirector of French k Francophone Studies Program
Ph.D./M.A. French Literature and Linguistics, Cornell University B.A. Comparative Literature and Language Studies, University of California at Santa Cruz
Welcome, students.
To describe briefly my interests I will begin by saying that I study language and literature through a cultural lens: How do our interpretations of texts reflect our cultural understandings? How do texts (stories, essays, films, plays, poems, …) embed themselves in cultural contexts, with all of their political, linguistic, and historical challenges? My current research lies mainly in the area of Francophone Studies—the use of the French language to create texts outside of, though often in relation to, French national culture. I am working on two books—one a critical study, one a scholarly edition and translation—that explore how Caribbean writers of the 1930s and 1940s used French as they wrote toward a new literature. My background also includes work in linguistics and in nineteenth-century French literature, topics I continue to investigate in my writing and teaching. I believe passionately that the study of languages and literatures opens up new ways of seeing and teaches us ways to critically engage with all different areas of the world, even those we thought we already knew.
French and Francophone Studies may thus lead you to many different paths. Good writing skills, the ability to analyze texts critically, strong communication skills, understandings of cultural differences, a second language—all of these you will gain in the program and all will serve you well in just about any field you pursue. But it is a passion for reading and exploring culture that will bring you pleasure as you learn, and this will be our starting point.
A special note to future World Language teachers: I enjoy mentoring our undergraduate or post-bac certification students. Please contact me if you have any questions about the certification process.
For questions about the French k Francophone Studies Program:Address—William Paterson University of New Jersey, Wayne, NJ 07470Phone & voice mail—(973) 720-2621 Fax—(973) 720-3084 E-mail—rabbittk@wpunj.edu office hours, Fall 2004—Mondays 2:30-3:30; Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:00-12:00; and by appointment.
WPU courses I teach: French 110 and French 111: Basic I and Basic II French 210 and French 211: Intermediate I and Intermediate II French 200: Introduction to French and Francophone Cultures and Literatures French 222: Stylistics and Advanced Composition French 331: The Modern Novel in French French 336: French Poetry French 337: Topics in Francophone Literatures French 380: Topics in Parisian Culture French 480: Senior Seminar Humanities Honors 300: Twentieth-Century and Its Discontents TBED 540: Social and Psychological Processes of the Multicultural Experience
Selected Publications: “The Welder’s Blue Flame: Suzanne Césaire and the Forging of a New Caribbean Literature.” The French Review, 79.3 (February 2006): 538-48. “ “L’Enfant libertine: Pouvoir discursif et volonté narrative dans Lamiel de Stendhal.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 31.1-2 (Fall-Winter 2002-2003): 66-83. “Cultural Genealogies and Pre-Negritude Africanicity in Légitime défense.” SORAC Journal of African Studies 2 (Nov. 2002): 1-16. “Prose Poem, Anti-poème, Political Force: The Critical Function of Genre in Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal.” Romance Notes, 39.1 (1998): 35-46. “C.L.R. James’s Figuring of Toussaint Louverture: The Black Jacobins and the Literary Hero.” In C.L.R. James: His Intellectual Legacies. Ed. Selwyn Cudjoe and William Cain. “Identity and Geography in Suzanne Césaire’s ‘Le Grand Camouflage’” Research in African Literatures (accepted). Introduction to and translation of Suzanne Césaire’s “Le Grand Camouflage.” Mango Season, guest editors Sarah Barbour and Gerise Herndon (forthcoming). “Strategies of Cultural Defense in an Age of Assimilation: The Case of and for Légitime défense.” Forthcoming in Diaspora Cultures, Daniel Mengara, ed.
Additional links: Please note that I do not maintain this page very actively; some of these links may end up out-of-date.
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