Rebonjour d'Angers!
Spring is beautiful here in Angers; the trees are in full bloom, as are daffodils, camelias, and azaleas. The students and faculty have been hard at work on our studies, however, which explains the delay from our last bulletin. Now that our spring break is finally on the horizon, we would like to pass along the latest highlights.
In early March, we took an excursion to Chinon, a town one and a half hours east of Angers on the river Vienne. There we visited the 12th-century château, where Joan of Arc had her fateful meeting with Charles VII, before heading off to a guided tour of "La Devinière" birthplace of the great Renaissance writer, Rabelais. lThe tour provided a fascinating background to the study of Rabelais's works and enriched our understanding of everyday life in 16th-century France.
The weekend of March 8-10, we welcomed Notre Dame's Fr. John Jenkins, C.S.C., to Angers for a retreat at the Ile Béhuard and its sanctuary, which is literally perched atop a rock on an island in the Loire. There we enjoyed mass, celebrated by Fr. Jenkins in Béhuard's tiny 15th-century chapel, had a picnic on the grounds, and a student-led retreat session. The next day we attended mass at the Cathedral of Angers and held a wrap-up session.
On Monday March 18, the SUNDEF welcomed another distinguished guest, Professor Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson (Sociology Dept., Columbia University). Prof. Ferguson's lecture, "Cuisiner en France: Textes et traditions," addressed the issue of France's national culinary superiority as seen by chefs from Carême to Pierre Troisgros. Although designed for students of Prof. Douthwaite & M. Viglione's course on Literature and Cuisine, the lecture drew a large audience of colleagues and students from the Université Catholique de l'Ouest, as well.
After spring vacation, the group will head up to Brussels for a visit to the European Parliament. Thanks to our contacts on the Parliament staff, students will meet staff interpreters and learn about their profession, and sit in on meetings of various European Commission committees. This visit will dovetail with the course on the European Political System taught this semester by Prof. Xavier Jardin, who will accompany us to Brussels. Our next visitor to Angers will be Professor Frédéric Viesner (Université de Bordeaux III), who will present a workshop on "Anthropologie en France aujourd'hui." Professor Viesner will teach a course on Cultural Anthropology for the SUNDEF next fall.
May promises to be a busy month, with visits to Angers by Notre Dame's Prof. James McAdams (Dept. of Political Science), Mme Françoise Buisson (Breton ethnologist and cookbook writer), and SUNDEF alums Paul and Kathleen Kimball. Since the academic calendar is now winding down on the South Bend campus, this will be our last Bulletin of the year. We look forward to sending along more news from Angers in Fall 2002.
Bien amicalement,
Julia Douthwaite Director,
Stage Université Notre Dame en France
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