Department News

Scott Carpenter

Scott Carpenter, Professor of French, recently published a piece of travel writing entitled “Deaf in Venice.” It appeared in the journal Silk Road. An interview with him is also included in the volume, as well as on the journal Web site.

Chérif Keïta, William H. Laird Professor of French and the Liberal Arts, was interviewed on VOX AFRICA TV (Paris) about his trilogy of documentary films on pre-Mandela South Africa. The 50-minute, in-studio conversation was aired several times on and after September 15 along with clips of his films and footage of the station’s coverage of the June Paris première of “Rememebring Nokutela.”

Cathy Yandell recently gave a lecture at the Sorbonne/Paris 4 titled “Rhétorique et cannibalisme dans L’Histoire d’un voyage en la terre du Brésil.” The paper argues that images of cannibalism in this 16th-century travel narrative function to promote comparative, heuristic, and political ends.

Major Lindsay Szper ’15 (French & Francophone Studies and Spanish) was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.  This national honorary scholastic fraternity was founded in 1776.  The Carleton chapter was established in 1913 and elects its membership from students who rank in the highest 15 percent of their graduating class and meet other prescribed criteria.

Major Ellie Durling ’17 received the Class of 1885 Prize, the Mortar Board Prize, and the Phi Beta Kappa First Year Prize.

Certificators Camille Braun ’16 (Spanish) and Courtney Lunger ’16 (Chemistry) will join Mortar Board, a national honor society that recognizes students who have combined distinguished scholarship, leadership, and service to their colleagues and the College community.

Other honors for our Certificators: for Justin Berchiolli ’15 (History), the Dana Award for Personal Achievement; for Taylor Mayhall ’15 (Environmental Studies), the Stimson Prize, and to Charlie Bloom ’15 (Environmental Studies), Honors in Music Performance.

Concentrator Sophie Buchmueller ’16 (American Studies) was awarded the Class of 1963 Fellowship. 

French Student Council member Morgan Raffray ’16 (Chemistry) received the Kolenkow Reitz Fund for Undergraduate Research.

For more information:

Phi Beta Kappa:  https://www.pbk.org/home/index.aspx

Mortar Board:  http://www.mortarboard.org/

Carleton College Fellowships and Prizes:  http://apps.carleton.edu/campus/registrar/catalog/current/funds/fellowships/

Chérif Keïta had his film “Remembering Nokutela” screened by the Africana Studies program and the Department of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.

He was featured for 30 minutes on JAZZ ON 2, a New Jersey public radio station, for a special program titled “The Making of Modern African Diaspora Jazz Music” with host Isa Blyden, speaking about traditional West African musical instruments in the context of the Medieval Empire of Mali.

He had his first two documentary films, Oberlin-Inanda: The Life and Times of John L. Dube(2005, 54 min) and Cemetery Stories: A Rebel Missionary in South Africa (2009, 57 min), screened as part of the 2015 Oberlin College Commencement/Reunion Weekend. The films highlighted the role played by two Oberlin graduates and Northfield couple that helped plant the seeds of multiracial democracy in South Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

He was the guest of “L’Epopée des musiques noires” (The Epic of Black Diaspora Music), a weekly program of Radio France Internationale (RFI), Paris. Keïta spoke about the musical legacy of Nokutela Dube (1873-1917), a forgotten heroine of the South Liberation movement.

He had his research on Nokutela Mdima Dube, the forgotten heroine of South Africa’s Liberation movement, acknowledged in a recent book, Journey Through Johannesburg’s Parks, Cemeteries and Zoo by Lucille Davie. A chapter titled “United In Death” shows the headstone Keïta helped raise for Nokutela in 2013, almost a century after her death, with an overview of her pioneering life and work in the U.S. and South Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Cathy Yandell recently gave a talk and led a discussion in the “Talking Terms” series sponsored by the Consortium for the Study of the Premodern World at the University of Minnesota. The seminar was titled “Sexuality in the ‘New World,'” focusing on Jean de Léry’s Histoire d’un voyage, which details the life and customs of the Tupinambá ethnic group in sixteenth-century Brazil.

She also presented a lecture titled “Gesturing toward Peace: Three Catholic Voices on the Eve of the French Wars of Religion,” at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The talk figured in a lecture series, “Conceiving Peace, Pacification and Conflict Resolution in the Early Modern Period.”

She has recently published a chapter, “Le corps nu. Métaphore et cognition,” in a collective volume edited by Xavier Bonnier and published by Éditions Garnier in Paris. The book is titled Le Parcours du comparant. Pour une histoire littéraire de la métaphore and includes a first chapter by the novelist Pascal Quignard.

Finally, she gave a lecture at the Université de Paris-Est, “Corporalité et et dialogisme dans l’oeuvre de Catherine des Roches.” Twenty of the twenty-five Carleton students on the 2015 Paris program also participated in the mini-conference, giving readings of the texts and engaging in discussion with both undergraduate and graduate students from Paris-Est.

Scott Carpenter has published a travel essay, “Danish as She is Spoke,” in Lowestoft Chronicle, which has nominated this piece for a Pushcart Prize. The same issue includes an interview with the author. 

He also presented a paper titled, “Être soi-même et autrui; l’altérité et Le Spleen de Paris” at a journée d’étude devoted to the work of Charles Baudelaire at the Université de Lille 3, France.