Foyer de la Comédie Française, Paris

Associate Professor of French Coordinator of the Study Abroad Program Office: Baker Memorial Chapel 123 Tel.: (410) 857-2468 Fax: (410) 857-2729 E-mail: chenriet@wmdc.edu Research and Teaching Interests  My area of interest is eighteenth-century French literature. My research revolves around Isabelle de Charrière (1740-1805), a Dutch woman of letters who wrote epistolary novels, plays, music and letters. Her correspondence occupies six of the ten volumes of her complete works. I am particularly interested in the letters she wrote to Constant d'Hermenches during her early years, and I studied how this correspondence served as a matrix for her future fictional writings. I presented papers on the writings of Isabelle de Charrière at Fordham University in New York and at the International Congress on the Enlightenment in Bristol (England) and in Münster (Germany).

In addition to teaching literature, I have recently given two presentations of pedagogical value. One of them was a workshop offered at the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in New York City in April 1998. It was directly inspired by my experience in teaching elementary French. Using material found in French in Action videodiscs, the students discovered how casual images or scenes carry a cultural value that are often overlooked because of the priority given to the teaching of the language.

At the AATF (American Association of Teachers of French) Convention which took place in Montreal in July 1998, my presentation was also based on courses taught at the intermediate level, "l'Actualité française". Using France-Amérique, a French weekly newspaper, the students studied French through the readings of current events and were introduced to contemporary French culture.

 I grew up in Madagascar where part of my family still lives. I did my schooling under the French system, majoring in French. Before coming to the United States, I taught in French "collèges" and "lycées" in Madagascar and France. My husband Joe and I now live in an old farmhouse in Mt. Airy, MD, with our cats, dogs and chickens. I am involved in my community in the local Alliance française, and in my church... et pour le reste "je cultive mon jardin."