Women in French

“Approaches to Teaching Colette” session at the AATF conference in Trois Rivières, Québec, July 15-18, 2020

Proposed by Tama Engelking, Cleveland State University

For the 2020 AATF Convention in Trois-Rivières Québec, Dr. Engelking is proposing a 65-minute panel that will bring together different approaches to teaching Colette.  Colette’s work is often anthologized and several of her short stories are regularly featured in intermediate texts and readers, yet French teachers often have difficulty knowing how to situate her work and how to approach teaching the rich diversity of the texts she produced over her long career since they do not neatly fit into many of the standard categories of literature survey courses.  Dr. Engelking is organizing this panel to showcase diverse approaches to teaching Colette’s work with the goal of providing pedagogical materials and ideas to participants so they will consider incorporating (more of) Colette’s work into the curriculum.  Approaches may be geared for any level of proficiency and can be in French or English.  A second reason for this panel is to explore interest in developing a volume on Colette for the MLA “Approaches to Teaching” series. A volume devoted to the wide variety of approaches to her work that also includes pedagogical support materials will be of interest to many scholars and teachers of French literature.   

Dr. Engelking's plan is to include 3-4 speakers in this proposed 65-minute session.  To be considered, please email the following to t.engelking@csuohio.edu  by November 15^th:

1. The title of your paper along with a description of 250-500 words
2. An abstract of 50-75 words (for the program)
3. AATF membership status.  Proposals submitted by members are given preference by the section committee

Dr. Engelking will let you know by November 21st if your paper has been selected for the proposed panel so that we can finalize the submission to the AATF by the December 1^st deadline. 

Note from Dr. Engelking: If you are not able to or interested in attending the 2020 AATF conference, but are interested in contributing to a volume on “Approaches to Teaching Colette,” I would love to hear from you.  I am starting to gather information about creating a proposal for the series.  One of the first steps is to send out a questionnaire to find out exactly how Colette is being taught.  Feel free to send me an email, and I also invite you to share course syllabi that include works by Colette.