photographiste

"I fell in love with the French language when I was 8 years old. I took an after-school French course for one hour a week. I loved the sounds of the language and I started dreaming of traveling to France. I studied French again in high school, and then in college, where I double-majored in English and French. I went to France for the first time after my junior year of college. When I began graduate studies at the University of Iowa, I was asked to teach a beginning French course, and I discovered that I loved teaching French. So I fell in love with the language all over again in 1998 and I’ve been teaching it ever since. Currently, I am researching author Marcel Aymé, and in particular his thoughts and representations of World War II.

After studying French fabliaux from the Middle Ages as a Master’s student, I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in French culture and civilization. I specialized in 20th-century history and culture and wrote my dissertation on France’s book towns. For me, being a professor also means being a lifelong student. I was in graduate school when I started to really understand the importance of Women’s studies. I really began thinking about the status of women in the world, and in universities. I became much more attentive to images of women in the media and to the ways in which women are represented in literature. I strive to show my students how enriching it is to learn another language and study other cultures. Several of my students have worked on co-translations with me of articles from the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert. They were pleased to be able to translate articles on scientific subjects about which they are passionate."

Audra Merfeld-Langston,
associate professor of French, arts, languages and philosophy department, Missouri S&T

next