Letter from the President

Dear Colleagues,

I want to begin by thanking those members of the WIF Board of Directors who have recently cycled off the Board for their service.  First and foremost, I thank Arline Cravens, our Past President.  Arline was a pleasure to work with over the past four years as she led our organization through challenging times.  Our WIF conference that she co-organized with Michèle Schaal was virtual due to the pandemic.  Throughout her term, Arline demonstrated grace and exceptional collegiality.  A debt of gratitude is also owed to Mary Anne Garnett, a past WIF President, who stepped up as Interim Treasurer to help the organization as we sought our new Treasurer, Amina Seydou.  The work of Treasurer is challenging and detail oriented.  We greatly appreciate Mary Anne’s efforts to keep our accounts in order over the past year and a half.  Finally, I want to recognize the good work of Jennifer Howell, the Regional Representative for the Midwest MLA, Anna Rocca, the Regional Representative for New England MLA, and Theresa Varney Kennedy the Regional Representative for South Central MLA who have all cycled off the Board.  Their work organizing sessions at the regional MLA conferences offered our members the opportunity to present their work, to collaborate, and to maintain professional connections.  For all this, we are grateful.  I offer special thanks to Adrienne Angelo our newly elected Vice President.  In addition to the many duties of that role, Adrienne has graciously agreed to finish her term as the Regional Representative for the South Atlantic MLA. 

I am honored to have been elected as President of WIF.  This organization is the one in which I found my intellectual and professional “home”.  I have always felt welcomed by board members, conference hosts, and panel organizers.  I have found mentors and colleagues in this organization that have made my career what it is today.  My first article was published in Women in French Studies.  WIF has provided me with colleagues and friends who have provided enormous support for me in my position as a one-woman French program.

This organization has such an impressive history of bringing together and supporting scholars who work on women in French and Francophone literature.  There are so many things the organization does well from our excellent journal and the dissemination of research even further through Project Muse, our fantastic conferences as well as the sessions we organize at MLA and regional MLA conferences, our mentoring program, the One Book, One WIF program; the prizes we offer to recognize scholarship by undergraduate and graduate students; the financial support we offer to graduate students and early career faculty; our website and all the resources we offer members including annotated bibliographies; a blog; up to the minute information via social media and our listserv on CFPs, job postings, opportunities for collaboration and professional development. 

I’m pleased to report that WIF finances are extremely strong.  At the end of 2023, our accounts held over $170,000.  Our largest source of income each year are payments from Project Muse which makes Women in French Studies available digitally to their subscribers.  Our 2024 payment from Project Muse is $19,458.68 (the largest ever!).  We all owe a heartfelt thanks to Catherine Montfort who established this relationship with Project Muse and continues to administer our connection with that organization based at Johns Hopkins University.

There is so much going well, that I feel my first challenge is to keep all this going well during my time as president.  I know that the organization is valued by all of you, whether you are new to the organization or have been a member for years.  My goal during my presidency is to work with all of you to conduct an overview of what we do well; what we’ve done in the past that we’ve stopped doing and might want to revisit; and new ideas for the organization as we move forward.  We started with this at our first Board meeting in January during the MLA conference.  We continued this at the WIF 2024 Conference in Tuscaloosa, AL. We will conclude the input gathering with a survey of our members soon.

My goal is to be ready to pass the baton to our next president in 2 years.  I know that traditionally Presidents have served for 2 terms, but I am retiring from higher education this year.  I feel confident that if we work together (and I’m asking for your help with this) that the organization will be on firm footing to elect the next President two years from now.

I am pleased to announce that in 2026 our conference will be hosted by Amina Seydou, our current WIF Treasurer, and her colleagues at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.  While Amina is only in her second year at JMU, she has one book published and a second under contract.  In addition, having arrived at JMU after years of teaching at the secondary and post-secondary level, Amina is not your typical Assistant Professor.  We have great confidence in her ability to take on this challenge.  We look forward to sharing the theme for the conference next May at the WIF UK/Ireland conference.  I encourage all of you to consider submitting proposals for that conference asap.  It’s a wonderful collegial event in a cozy setting in Leeds, England.    (One of my all-time favorite venues for scholarly conferences.)

I want to thank our WIF 2024 conference hosts and organizers, Gina Stamm and Cheryl Toman.  This was an excellent conference marked by the sharing of ideas, the collegial exchange of professional insight, the forging of new collaborations, and the rekindling of old friendships.  Gina and Cheryl put together a program full of insightful presentations, exceptional keynote addresses, and ample opportunities for us to build connections as professionals.  We thank their home institution, the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, for giving us such wonderful support and such lovely venues for our meeting.  Organizing a conference of this scale is an enormous undertaking and we are all so grateful for their investment of time, energy and expertise in this endeavor. 

Next, I would like to recognize three graduate student attendees who received WIF Travel Grants to support their presentations and participation in this conference. First, we have Frédérique Collette, a graduate student at the University of Toronto in Canada, who presented a paper titled “Sonder les corps précaires".  Second, Sarah Djos-Raph, who is a PhD candidate at the University of Louisiana-Lafayatte and is the WIF Graduate Student representative to the WIF Board.  She presented a paper titled “ Collective Texts Written by the Same Ex: Perspectives on the Precarious Lives of Beninese Women.”  And last but not least, Joslyn Gardner, a third year PhD student in the Dept of French and Italian at Emory University in Atlanta, GA who presented a paper titled “Jeanne Duval by Jeanne Duval: Maud Sulter’s Imag(in)ings”. 

Finally, it is with great pleasure that I presented the Women in French Early Career Conference Paper Award to Eric Disbro.  Eric is a Visiting Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies in the Department of Romance Languages at Williams College in Massachusetts.  His paper, “Sadhana; or Wonderous (Dis)Belief: On Hijra Magic in Ananda Devi’s Le rire des déesses was selected by a subcommittee of the WIF Board as this year’s winner. 

Amitiés,

Stephanie
Spring 2024