Catherine Khordoc

Catherine Khordoc, Department of French, will be giving a talk on Wednesday April 3rd, as part of a series entitled Salon Double.  Salon Double organizes talks in Montreal, Ottawa and Québec City, on contemporary francophone literature and culture.

In her talk, Khordoc will discuss ‘Migrant Writing’ in Québec.  The lecture will question whether the concept of migrant writing in Quebec continues to be a relevant one. Khordoc will focus on the work of authors Kim Thuy (whose first book, Ru, was just recently translated into English) and Dany Laferrière (whose I Am a Japanese Writer is now also available in English).

The talk will be held in an informal setting: the Roast N Brew coffee shop on Rideau Street at the corner of Waller.  A lively discussion will follow the lecture.

All are invited to attend!

Roast ‘N Brew Café, 198 Rideau Street
Wednesday, April 3^rd, 2013 at 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
See poster (below) for more details

The Salon du livre de l’Outaouais is an annual book fair, bringing together authors, publishers, illustrators and readers, under one roof. This year’s event takes place from Feb 28- March 3rd at the Palais des Congrès in Gatineau (Hull). Catherine Khordoc, an associate professor in Carleton’s Department of French, will be signing copies of her recent book, Tours et détours: Le mythe de Babel dans littérature contemporaine, between 5pm and 6:30, on Thursday, February 28th, at the “Prologue” booth. In this book, which studies contemporary francophone literature and culture, Khordoc examines the use of the Tower of Babel myth in novels written by Québécois, franco-Ontarian, Guadeloupean, and franco-Spanish writers, which address various issues such as language diversity, translation, identity, multiculturalism, nation, and hybridity.

Catherine Khordoc

This is also an opportunity to discover what is being written and published in French in Canada and Québec.

The website for more information: http://www.salon-livre-outaouais.ca

When Tomasz Raubic came to Carleton University he hardly spoke a word of French.  Two short years later, now a French major, Raubic is well on his way to achieving his goal of becoming an English-French, French-English simultaneous translator.

Having already attained a degree in teaching English, and possessing an array of real world experience in teaching English as a second language, Raubic made the decision to further pursue French as a method of broadening his teaching horizons.

Currently, Raubic is a Teaching Assistant in the Department of French and is working a few hours a week in the department’s conversation practice drop-in service.  He is helping students who are learning the language get a handle on the skills needed to become functionally and/or fluently bilingual.  Raubic spends much of his time helping others, as he is teaching French in both a University setting, and off campus.

For a student to start in French as a true beginner, and then to continue on with the program to successfully become fluent in both of Canada’s official languages in such a short time period is hardly a regular occurrence.  In fact, what Raubic has accomplished is quite rare.  Though he has demonstrated a true gift for learning language – Raubic is also fluent in Polish, and functional in Spanish – he insists that his learning process is the same as anyone else’s.

“I simply apply the strategies that I employ while teaching my students a language – immersing oneself, dedicating, spending countless hours living in the ‘milieu’ – TV, radio, Internet, newspapers, even menus in a cell phone”, explains Raubic.  “Listen, imitate, go through millions of trial/error cycles and most importantly, never shy away from practicing.  Once you nail the fundamental grammar structures and manipulate the most common 800-1000 words, you’ve got it! From there, it is smooth sailing.”

Professor of French and Chair of the French Department, Catherine Khordoc, calls Raubic an “exceptional student”.  So exceptional, that the department has selected Raubic as their first ever participant in the Travel Bursary Program, which encourages students majoring in French to go on exchange in a French-speaking country.

Raubic will receive a $1000 bursary in order to help him pay for the costs associated with participating on an international exchange. He will be going to the Université de Grenoble III, as part of the Ontario-Rhone-Alpes exchange.

Raubic is hoping that his trip to France will refine his French speaking abilities.

“Essentially, the decision to go on the exchange relate to my willingness to achieve a polished, fluent, perfected, and fluid mastery of French”, says Raubic.

Upon his return to Canada, and the completion of his undergraduate degree in French, Raubic plans to pursue his Master’s in Translation and Interpretation and continuing his passion to teach.

When asked what it is he enjoys so much about possessing an intimate knowledge of French language and culture, Raubic explains that in many ways, French offers a pleasant discrepancy.

“I love translation and interpretation…switching between the rigid, organized structure of the Germanic language – English – into the soft, silky domain of the Latin one – French, in my view, creates that nice contrast of melodies. All in all, it’s the rhythm, ‘music’ and flow that I adore in the French language.”

Khordoc hopes Raubic’s experience in French will be inspirational to other students who have an interest in French.

“What I hope other students learn from Tom is that you can learn a language, and reach a very high level of fluency, but you cannot do that just by going to class for 3 hours a week.  Learning a language, and its cultures, takes a lot of time and you have to work on it, everyday, in a much focused manner.  You actually have to spend time listening, reading, speaking, memorizing vocabulary, grammar structures, analyzing what you read and hear, so that you can imitate it. Learning French, or any other language, requires a great deal of effort and concentration, but I hope that when students hear Tom, they will feel inspired, and they will feel that all the effort is worthwhile.  Hopefully, others will also be interested in participating in exchanges in coming years.”

By Hannah Yakobi

It’s a collaboration unlike any other – three talented researchers who are bringing together specialists from varied sectors and fields of study, uniting them all in transnational cultural analysis.

It all began in 2005, when Sarah Casteel, Ming Tiampo and Catherine Khordoc decided to form the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis at Carleton. The trios were all assistant professors at the time and had diverse backgrounds: Casteel was a professor in the Department of English, Khordoc in the Department of French and Tiampo in the Department of Art History.

“It emerged out of our friendship when we all arrived at Carleton in 2003,” says Tiampo. “We discovered that we had really important overlaps in our research interests and also very similar concerns about our own disciplines.”

Since then, the Centre has flourished. Its main focus is to organize conferences and seminars and build networks for researchers.

“We enable communication between projects and let others know what their colleagues are working on, because it’s not always obvious even in your own institution whose research is potentially in dialogue with your own,” says Tiampo. “We also try to reach out to researchers in other parts of the world – for example, we have a relationship with the Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry and the Université de Pau et des pays de l’Adour, in the south of France.”

“The Centre brings attention to the ways in which transnationalism and globalization are not just economic or political phenomena, or related to questions of policy, but also involve culture in very fundamental ways,” adds Casteel. “Our Centre highlights how in a globalized, transnational context, people construct their identities through a variety of forms of cultural expression, including literature, music, art and religion.”

Casteel, Tiampo and Khordoc are also able to contribute to the Centre in a unique way because of their varied personal interests and research: Casteel’s first book, published with the University of Virginia Press, was about landscape in the literatures of the Americas, and her second book is about Jewishness in Caribbean literature. Tiampo has just published a book on the Gutai group of Japan with the University of Chicago Press and is working on an exhibition with the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Khordoc’s book on the Tower of Babel myth in contemporary francophone literature will be published this spring by the University of Ottawa Press.

The team also works with a Cultural Mediations PhD student, Matthew Rushton, who is helping them run the Centre.

Some of the Centre’s projects so far include keynote lectures, a conference on multiculturalism and Canadian art, and a workshop on Sephardic Jewish studies. The Centre is funded by the Office of the Vice-President (Research and International), the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and ICI Berlin.

“The conferences we organize generate a lot of interest and are well-attended by students and professors,” says Khordoc. “For the last couple of years, we have also organized seminar series, in conjunction with the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture. We often co-sponsor events with other organizations at Carleton as well.”

“For example, we co-sponsored the workshop Sephardic Literary Studies and Comparative Methodologies in Iberia and the Americas,” adds Casteel. “It took place at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City in November 2011 and brought together a really exciting group of scholars from across the U.S. It was a great chance to bring exposure for our Centre and for Carleton.”

Over the years, the Centre has evolved from a small “organized research unit”, housed within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, to a Carleton University Research Centre. Its network of research associates has grown as well, as has its national and international exposure.

“By changing things on the level of research, we change the way we teach, the way people think about disciplines, and the way they approach their own projects – outside of university and after they graduate,” explains Tiampo. “The Centre provides an intellectual home to people working on transnational issues throughout campus, across the country and around the world, and gives us all a space for dialogue. It’s a wonderful and productive meeting of minds.”

Wajdi Mouawad will be discussing the city of Ottawa as a stage to perform and create in French. In March 2008, he was appointed as artistic director of French theater at the National Arts Centre for a five year term. With the term coming to an end, he will be speaking at Carleton to address the following questions: how difficult is it to present theater in French in Ottawa? How is theater a tool to teach outside of the classroom? An interpreter will be on site for the question and answer portion of the lecture, as the talk will be given primarily in French.

In his writing and in his directing, Wajdi Mouawad explores the tension between individual freedom and the renunciation of the self, quoting Kafka on the subject: “In the struggle between yourself and the world, back the world.” The general public will have heard of Incendies, translated by Linda Gaboriau as Scorched, which premiered in France in 2003.  In 2010, it was adapted as a film and was directed by Denis Villeneuve.  The film was subsequently nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film.

The Wajdi Mouawad lecture will occur on Wednesday February 8th at 3:00pm in Dunton Tower 2017.  A wine and cheese will follow the lecture. This event was organized with the generous support of Wajdi Mouawad, the French Department, the School of Canadian Studies and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Welcome to all, but seating is limited. Information: anne_trepanier@carleton.ca

The magazine was founded in 2007 by grad student Natalie Mezey and undergrad Morgan Faulkner, both in the Department of French. With support from the department, it began as a sister publication to In/Words, a literary journal produced by students in Carleton’s English Department. Mot Dit was a showcase for young francophone and francophile poets, writers and artists at Carleton.

Faulkner (MA French, 2010) and Merzey (MA French, 2008) have long since graduated but still edit Mot Dit along with Matt Rushton, another French department alumnus, (2010), who joined the magazine in 2008 to help produce the magazine’s third issue.

Now in its sixth issue, Mot Dit has grown to include writers, scholars, artists and photographers from across North America, Europe and Africa.

“It’s become more sophisticated,” says Rushton, now the production editor. “We’ve come to include more critical essays and literary reviews and the writing, in general, has matured.”

Rushton points out, however, that one of his favorite pieces—a short horror tale from Mot Dit 5 titled Le chien fantôme — was written by an eight-year-old second-grader from Montreal. “We initially thought it was submitted by a professor under a pseudonym,” Rushton says, “and I praised its clear writing and economy of words. I still do! It’s great little ghost story.”

Contributions vary with each issue. Mot Dit 4, for example, proudly featured poems by Ottawa poet Angèle Bassolé-Ouédraogo and by poet and Carleton University President Roseanne O’Reilly Runte.

“Mot Dit thrives because its founders and editors are students. Faculty act as advisers and proofreaders, but this is a student initiative. It is also encouraging that editors’ and supporters’ interests lie not only in creative writing, but in literary criticism and literary production,” says Catherine Khordoc, chair of the Department of French. “These interests are part of the specialization of our department and expertise of our researchers.”

Mot Dit 6, which launches November 28 at an event at Ottawa’s Raw Sugar Café, features contributors from Amsterdam (NL), Antigonish, Bournemouth (UK), Calgary, Gatineau, Iasi (RO), Lyon (FR), Manchester (UK), Moncton, Montpellier (FR), Montreal, Ottawa, Providence (US), Toronto, Trois-Rivières, Winnipeg and Waterloo. Carleton continues to be represented, as well. The issue features photography by architecture student Rotem Yaniv, literary non-fiction by French student Tan Nhat Ngo, and poetry by French Instructor Francine Benny.

For more information about Mot Dit and the upcoming launch event, contact the Carleton University Department of French (carleton.ca/french). You can also visit Mot Dit’s facebook page (facebook.com/la.revue.motdit) or find it on Twitter (@motditottawa).

If you ask any student who their favourite professor is, chances are they’ll choose a prof with a good sense of humour. All the world loves a clown, as they say. But how does laughter affect the learning process? Carleton University French professor Chantal Dion explores this issue in her doctoral thesis, which she successfully defended in December 2006. Her thesis is an expansive study of humour and laughter in the classroom, which draws upon Dion’s own experiences in teaching students a second language.

Although for some students, laughter greatly facilitates the learning process, for others it is a source of discomfort and embarrassment. This unpredictability makes it hard to say whether laughter is a useful teaching tool or not. Dion combines education study, psychology, sociology, linguistics, cognitive studies and any number of other disciplines in her thesis, which asks many key questions about the nature of education itself.

Dion concludes that although laughter can be a very valuable tool, it must be used carefully and deliberately, in controlled doses- too much humour can hurt the learning process. “Education is the most important thing,” she says, and it must be treated seriously and responsibly. She hopes that her work can help future educators better understand how best to teach.

Sébastien Côté is tackling one century at a time as he explores French literature spanning the first half of the 20th century and the four centuries that precede the modern era. Côté has recently joined the Department of French as an assistant professor.

While completing his doctoral studies at the Université de Montréal, in the Department of Comparative Literature, which he credits as being “located at the crossroads of French and North American criticism and thought,” he developed an interest in postcolonial studies. With this perspective, he decided to take a new look at contemporary French and German literature. Côté examined two major avant-garde writers of the 20th century – Michel Leiris and the lesser-known Carl Einstein, and was inspired by the theoretical perspectives put forward in James Clifford’s The Predicament of Culture. Côté analysed the literary representations put forward by intellectuals living in France, of the inhabitants and peoples of its African colonies.

Through his research, Côté hopes to gain a better understanding of the factors that contribute to the multiple representations of “otherness” in French literary history. As an example, Côté questions why many “French writers contributed first to invent the literary figure of the “noble savage” in the 16th century, and then to reinvent it unceasingly following every European territorial “discovery”?”

He is now beginning to work his way back through a plethora of tomes written over the course of four centuries. Due to the international influence of French literature, he will also pursue works written in German, Italian and English. Still, he laments the constraints of his multilingualism.

“My research would become even more interesting if I had a better knowledge of both Spanish and Portuguese.”

Côté’s work is not bound by language alone, to contextual the multi-national works he also needs to cross into other disciplines, among these, history, anthropology, art history and ethnography.

Prior to joining Carleton, Côté completed his PhD in Comparative Literature at the Université de Montréal , and spent a year researching at the Universität des Saarlandes, in Saarbrücken, Germany.

Alvina Ruprecht will be investigating the nature of multiculturalism in France, as defined not by music or film or media or dance, but by the many forms of theatre that are produced by France’s overseas departments and by the way new hybrid forms of theatre are emerging in European France through the interaction of stage artists of African, European and other origins.

French society, although very much entrenched in Jacobean principes of poltical, administsrative and cultural centralization, has become a post colonial space where people from the Caribbean, from Polynesia, from the Indian Ocean and the whole African continent, are emerging as important artists of the stage: playwrights, actors, directors and critics. The theatre establishment in France, traditionally very closed, is just beginning to recognize the existence of these artists but no in-depth study exists of their creative process and the way these creations feed off multiple influences to produce new forms of performance. What is the nature of this new theatre that has become a site of artistic multiculturalism, a space of fusion where traditions of afro-caribbean, classical Greek, polynesian, Indian, West and Subsaharan African, Latin American and North African converge?

Her research will take her not only to France but to all the French overseas departments where she will document performances and interview over 300 artists.

Fear of the unknown often prevents students from exploring differences in language and culture.

Christiane Thérien, an instructor with the Department of French has set up a virtual learning community that is part classroom, part role-play and part time machine.

Using sound Thérien has developed two courses that teach students new ways to accept and interpret new information.

Her first course, Evolution of Quebec Through Song takes students on an audio tour of Quebec’s history. The cultivation of French language, culture and values unfolds as the students are transported through the centuries by songs originated in France and brought over by colonists to New France. This lyrical history captures the evolution of Quebec as a separate entity from France. Without even being aware, students absorb the fluidity of language within a historical and cultural context.

The student response to the course provided Thérien with a solution to the challenge of assessing individual oral skills without relying only on written evaluations.

The Advanced Oral Course introduced this past September for third-year students requires that each participant create their own oral record and provide a peer critique of another student’s work.

“The students love the dynamic exchange of ideas. They review and criticize with respect,” said Thérien. “This hands-on approach is more motivating and keeps them learning.”

Students listen to a Radio-Canada broadcast for specific elements, then record their own summary of content using the same verbs and connect words presented in the original. The reports are posted on the class website and reviewed for specific components by a pre-assigned partner. A one-on-one peer review takes place back in the classroom.

Thérien too provides a direct oral critique as well.

“Once her evaluation of my assignment was done, I would listen to her suggestions, take note of my mistakes, and go back to my original recording to hear them myself,” said Dorna Rahmanian, a fourth-year law and political science student. “With this back and forth listening, I became very conscious of my mistakes and was able to actively look out for them each time I spoke in French.”