Co-presidents, Olivia Brand ’18 and Shelly Colpitts ’18 greeted inductees and guests in French and talked about the history and purpose of the honor society.

The program was then turned over to faculty advisor Sophie Adamson, associate professor of French, who introduced guest speaker Sarra Eddahiri ’19, an international student from Tunisia.

Eddahiri, a public health studies and statistics double major with a minor in philosophy, spoke in French about her experiences as a Tunisian-Moroccan adolescent living in Tunisia during the Arab Spring in 2011.

As the recipient of 黑料不打烊’s prestigious Leadership Prize, Eddahiri also talked about her current research project about the stigma around mental health and how it may be impacting college students in Tunisia where there are increased levels of stress in young adults. Her mentor Katherine Johnson, assistant professor of public health, was in attendance. Eddahiri highlighted the importance of speaking multiple languages because, through communication, one can help cultivate intercultural understandings across borders.

After Eddahiri’s talk, Brand and Colpitts led new members through the organization’s induction ritual and distributed certificates, pins, and honor cords.

 is the national French honor society for students at accredited public and private colleges and universities in the U.S. It was founded as a departmental honor society at the University of California at Berkeley in 1906, and it is now the highest academic honor in the field of French as well as the oldest academic honor society for a modern language in the U.S. 

Pi Delta Phi was nationalized in 1925, and it was endorsed by the American Association of Teachers of French in 1949 as the only collegiate national French honor society. Its purpose is to recognize outstanding scholarship in French and Francophone studies, to increase the knowledge and appreciation of Americans for the cultural contributions of the French-speaking world, and to stimulate and encourage French and Francophone cultural activities.

2018 Pi Delta Phi Inductees

Christopher Bertrand

Mae Corcoran

Jonathan Eves

Sam Gollub

Avery Jamison

Sara Machi

Grace McGuirk

Caleigh Pickett

Kate Pierson

Brandon Reynolds

April Roberts

Devon Rosenberger

Olivia Royer

Schuyler Wright

All are encouraged to drop in for more information. Grab some bread + Nutella on your way in or out!

All are warmly encouraged to visit any time for more information. Grab some bread with Nutella on your way in or out!

Adamson showed how political cartoonists for Charlie Hebdo, Le Canard Enchainé and even Le Monde, follow in the footsteps of a long history of French satirists who have faced menace and condemnation since the 18th century.  

Just four days after the attacks, the outpouring of several million people who marched together in city streets across France exposed a national, visceral attachment to the right to free speech.  Although one can find many examples of inconsistencies and abuses of that freedom, the public had never seen their French satirical press endure a massacre of this proportion. 

It is reported that the two attackers were motivated by the newspaper’s criticisms of Islam and depictions of the prophet Mohammed. The irony is that the once-obscure satirical paper that printed 60,000 copies per week, sold over 5 million of their “survivors’ edition” after the assassinations with a provocative cover featuring the prophet Mohammed shedding a tear while holding a “Je suis Charlie” sign under the words: “Tout est pardonné” (“All is forgiven”).

Caricaturists Cabu, Charb, Honoré, Tignous, and Wolinski now join a pantheon of fallen French citizens whom many are calling heroes and martyrs with a steadfast belief in free speech.

Bondurand began by explaining that the phrase “French Islam” is intrinsically different than “Islam in France.” The first suggests an essential link between being French and being Muslim, whereas the second suggests there is something foreign about being Muslim in France. 

Bondurand emphasized that Islam is part of French culture and society, and in France, Islam has taken on characteristics that make it distinctively French.

As in the United States, the French government cannot legally ask citizens about their religion on official documentation.  As a result, it is difficult to accurately determine the number of Muslims in France. Recent surveys, however, suggest that approximately 8 percent of French residents identify themselves as Muslim, in comparison to about 1 percent in the United States. 

These surveys further suggest that there is a distinguishing “French” character to the Islam they embrace.  As Bondurand explained, many French citizens identify themselves as Muslim and say they believe in the truth of the Quran and the Hadith (the sayings and acts of the prophet Muhammad), but they do not generally do the things that Islam asks its followers to do. That is, there is a separation between belief and practice that is characteristic also of French Catholics. 

Even among the most devout, only 6 percent of French Muslims say they have or will perform the pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) required by Islam.

Bondurand stated that Islamic radicalism is a problem in France as elsewhere; it is a part of French Islam. Yet statistically we can conclude that only about .075 percent of self-identified Muslims in France declare jihadist beliefs and intentions, whereas they receive 25 percent of media coverage.

In sum, French Islam is a “hybrid reality,” and hybrid identities show us that “1+1=1 and not 2.”  French Muslims are unique; they are distinctly French and definitely Muslim.  They exhibit what we see increasingly around the world: identities that are truly transnational. 

After Bondurand’s talk, Professor Brian Pennington, director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society and professor of religious studies, moderated a lively question & answer session, and the event was followed by a reception. 

The event was supported by the Department of World Languages and Cultures, the Isabella Cannon Global Education Center, the Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life, the Department of Religious Studies, the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society, the Muslim Student Association, the French Club, the Pi Delta Phi French Honor Society, the Maison Française living-learning community, and the 黑料不打烊 International Society.

​The National French Honor Society, Pi Delta Phi, inducted its new members at a special ceremony in Johnston Hall on May 8, 2014.

Invited speaker Robert Charest – a native francophone from Quebec and associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at 黑料不打烊 – spoke to students in French about growing up as a French-speaker in Montreal and offered stories and perspectives about the preservation of French in Quebec.  He also shared examples of past and current work he is undertaking related to sustainable architecture, design-build, quality affordable housing and community transformation.

Inductees (in alphabetical order) were: Brynna Bantley, Stephanie Carroll, Jackson Edwards, Allison Gloninger, Emily Hackman, Nicole Hanrahan, Lindsey Lanquist, Maggie Liston, Elena Meskhidze, Madeline Monaco, Maria Restuccio, Greg Sutton and Danielle Williams.

In addition, senior French and History major Claire Mayo was honored for receiving this year’s Ulrike Stroszeck Service Award for her outstanding commitment and service to the Department of World Languages and Cultures as the Director of the Language lab.

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The Department of World Languages & Cultures invites you to drop by the Moseley Center kitchen in the renovated lounge area for our informational event this Wednesday, March 19, anytime from 12-4 p.m.  

In preparation for pre-registration – we’ll have faculty, students, and representatives from the Global Education Center on hand to answer questions about our wide-ranging programs!

Sophie Adamson, assistant professor of French, has published a book titled Ethics, Politics and Poetics in Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Harrouda, La Réclusion solitaire and L’Ange aveugle (2009).

In the book, Adamson examines how Tahar Ben Jelloun, one of the most prominent Francophone Moroccan authors of our time, reconciles politics and poetics as he makes way for the voices of Maghrebi culture. She focuses on three works that represent a largely diversified and ambiguous geopolitical space: Harrouda (1973) and the cultural tensions between ancestral and modern Morocco; La Réclusion solitaire (1976) and the psycho-physical drama of migrant workers in multicultural France; and L’Ange aveugle (1992) and the tragic consequences of organized crime in southern Italy.

Close readings of these wide-ranging texts reveal Ben Jelloun’s profoundly ethical world view as mediated through a highly charged poetic language. Complex issues of identity, language and culture are nourished by literary expressions and an abundance of parentheses, ellipses, blanks and hyphenated text. Ethics and poetics dramatically reinforce one another, preventing simplistic politics and moralizing from taking over.

Adamson’s study, published by VDM Verlag, includes a preface by Tahar Ben Jelloun himself.