Béatrice Mousli Bennett, Director
A yearly intern, shared with the SCAC and paid by the MAEE / linguistic and FLE specialist / M1 – M2 level.
The center was created in partnership with the USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the USC Libraries and the French Embassy. The Center is directly under the authority of the Dean of the College, and is serving College Community.
The director’s appointment is split between the center 1/3 and teaching in the French Department 2/3.
The subsidy from the MAE is fully dedicated to projects organized under the center’s umbrella, while the College pays for the director’s salary and the Libraries provide the Center’s office as well as facilities for events.
The intern’s appointment is split fifty – fifty between the Center and the Cultural services in California (the intern works not only with the Los Angeles office but also with the San Francisco one.
Mission statement : The Francophone Research and Resource Center (FRC) develops and conducts programs, workshops, conferences, seminars and other activities for a wide range of audiences, Francophiles and Francophones, members of the University of Southern California community, French teachers at all levels, and students learning French, French literature and French culture.
Housed by USC’s Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, with the support of USC libraries and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy to the United States of America, the USC Francophone Research and Resource Center serves as a hub for a diverse set of multidisciplinary activities involving distinguished Francophone writers, scholars, filmmakers, journalists, and scientists. Its main goal is to create new interdisciplinary bridges between local and Francophone institutions.
Profile: The center has the double mission of being a resource center as well as a research center. As a research unit, we organize conferences and lectures, favoring encounters between Francophone and American scholars and artists. Most of our events bring together French and Americans in order to have some crossed perspectives on very diverse issues ranging from the sciences to literature, as well as sociology, history, urban planning, postcolonial questions, etc. As resource center we serve the community of teachers of French from elementary to university level, promoting the teaching of the language to all through training programs as well as cultural ones.
Since its inception we’ve been working in partnership with local institutions such as the Los Angeles Central Library, the Huntington Library, the Clarke Library, the LA Cultural Affairs, the Getty, and other universities such as UCLA, Otis College of Art & Design, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, San Diego State, UC San Diego, etc. And in France, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris XII- Marne la Vallée, the Musée Carnavalet, Paris III- Sorbonne Nouvelle, etc.
Our vocation is to help all of our partners in the College, with projects in sciences, humanities, social sciences
Our research themes have been very diverse, and hopefully will continue. Recently we’ve hosted conferences on Women’s rights and history, on the Banlieues and the postcolonial issue, on the city of Los Angeles and the city of Paris, and welcomed scholars in economy, philosophy, literature, sociology, law, social studies, etc. We are eager to keep our pluri-disciplinarity, believing in the fact that French language and culture can be found in every discipline and should be defended as such.
Among our on-going projects, the “Future of Francophone Studies”, the “Banlieue” one (our last event was this Fall, a one-day symposium for the 50th anniversary of October 17th, 1961, in partnership with the CRASC in Oran and American speakers from International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies).
Among our projects:
This section defines the research priorities of the center.
http://dornsife.usc.edu/francophone-center/
Frc@usc.edu
Francophone Research and Resource Center
USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Leavey Library, 302
651 West 35th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0033
