The organizers have been busy with planning as the conference approaches. Part of the process involves the task of reaching out to faculty members about participating in a round table discussion with our keynote speaker, Dr. Sachs. We are pleased to announce that the following people have accepted our invitation, and we look forward to hearing from them:

• Sara Melzer from UCLA's Department of French & Francophone Studies - her teaching and research interests include French colonialism in the classical age
• Minayo Nasiali from UCLA's Department of History - she has published on the socio-political aspects of late-modern Marseille and the French welfare state
• Christine Chism from UCLA's Department of English - her research interests include medieval intercultural encounter as well as theories of history, culture, and performance

We have decided to extend the deadline for abstract submissions to July 14th. Please submit abstracts to uclafrenchgradconf2017@gmail.com. Those who submit an abstract will be notified of our final decision by late July. 

We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Leon Sachs will deliver the conference keynote address! Dr. Sachs is an associate professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Kentucky. His book, The Pedagogical Imagination: The Republican Legacy in Twenty-First-Century French Literature and Film (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), examines artistic form as a reflection of republican educational ideology.  He writes in general about the history and culture of French education and has recently published essays on Jacques Rancière’s educational thought and laïcité.
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​“Sachs weaves together disciplines that have traditionally been distinct (literature, literary theory, reading pedagogy, film studies, history), and he does so in a way that is strikingly original and provocative.” —Mortimer Martin Guiney, author of Teaching the Cult of Literature in the French Third Republic

We are so pleased to have the website up and running! Please stay tuned for our future posts and updates as we gear up for the conference.