Department of French and Italian

Our faculty members are collectively committed to working across disciplinary and national boundaries. As a department, we emphasize the global resonance of French and Italian Studies in addition to the impact of literature and film on cultural, political, social, and environmental contexts. French and Italian’s faculty bring Francophone and French writers, critics, scholars, artists, and filmmakers to USC for the enrichment of their courses. Through support from the French and Francophone Resource Center, and through faculty initiatives sponsored by programs including the College Commons, Visions and Voices, the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute and the Shoah Foundation Institute, we regularly reach out to students and colleagues throughout the university, and to the wider Southern Californian community. The department’s commitment to Italian language, literature and culture leverages its relationships to the Italian and Italian American community to provide our students of Italian with an entry into Italian and Italian-American business and cultural opportunities via the Italy-American Chamber of Commerce-West, the IAMLA and the Istituto di Cultura de Los Angeles.

In cultivating flourishing undergraduate programs, we provide USC’s undergraduate majors and minors with a wide variety of opportunities to work closely with our faculty in exploring the richness and diversity of French and Italian language, literature, history, and culture. The Department has a long-running Summer Program in Dijon for French Language, and our new Italian study abroad program in Rome made its debut in the summer of 2013. With the direct leadership of the faculty of this department, several French and Italian courses are offered overseas as Maymesters (Spring) or Julymesters (Fall). Overseas French and Italian learning experiences are also available to USC students via the USC Office of Overseas Studies’ semester-long programs in Paris and Florence.

Our graduate program in French and Francophone studies is part of the new CSLC Doctoral Program. The French Track of this program is among the most innovative in the country. Our graduate curriculum takes advantage of the eclectic interests of our faculty, even as it allows students to move beyond the bounds of narrow forms of periodization and encourages them to ask transhistorical, transnational, and transdisciplinary questions. In our teaching, advising, and mentoring, we prepare students to pursue doctoral research that reunites the study of literature with that of philosophy, of film, of sound, and of the work of representation more generally.

It is truly a great pleasure and an honor to be a part of this vibrant and diverse community. I invite you to explore our website, and to contact us with any questions.

Lydie Esther Moudileno,

Chair, Department of French and Italian