Bourses d'études doctorales, Ph.D. Program in French, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

The Ph.D. Program in French at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) offers an innovative combination of traditional training in French and Francophone Literatures with highly progressive interdisciplinary curricular options.

Each year, the Ph.D. Program in French offers four successful applicants a $25,000 fellowship for five years plus health insurance. In exchange, students teach one course per semester for three years in one of CUNY colleges.

Outside reviewers recently rated the Ph.D. Program in French at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York one of the finest and most innovative in the United States. They praised the program’s double objective: educating generalists to teach traditional courses and specialists in postcolonial and francophone studies.

Recent graduates defended theses on “Women, Castles, and Power in Early Modern France: the case of Duchess of Montpensier (1627-1693),” “The Obscene Bachelor: Humor and Horror in Guy de Maupassant’s Writings,” “Paris and Havana: A Century of Mutual Influence,” and “Inscription du passé colonial dans la littérature urbaine contemporaine.” Recent alumni have landed teaching positions at Augustana College, Saint John’s University, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and Williams College. Our older alumni work at Bennington College, Swathmore College, University of California at Irvine, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Other alumni have found successful careers outside of academia. For example, one alumna now holds a full-time position at Yale University assisting professors with digital humanities work.

Our multidisciplinary program has attracted students from Canada, France, Great Britain, Haiti, Israel, Ivory Coast, Lebanon, Singapore, and the US with varied backgrounds that range beyond narrowly defined literary interests. Among our recent successful candidates we count two art historians, two professional translators, two philosophers, a journalist, and a political scientist. These students add a different perspective to classroom discussions and make our program an intellectually vibrant place to study.

In March 2014, the program hosted an Atelier Renaissance, a joint one-day annual conference on early modern literature and culture with Sorbonne Paris IV. The next meeting of the Atelier Renaissance will take place in Paris in June 2015.

Further information about the Ph.D. Program in French, including on the activities of current student and alumni, can be found at http://www.gc.cuny.edu/french .

For details on how to apply, contact the program’s Executive Director, Julia Przybos, at jprzybos@gc.cuny.edu . Deadline for application: January 1, 2015.