Post-francophile: Stories from the Professional French Masters Program

Americans have studied French for centuries. Some of them become teachers. Others become professors, teaching and writing about the language and its attendant literatures and cultures. Some become translators.Thousands of French majors graduate froma American colleges and universities each year, but most of them will not become teachers, translators or academics. How many will find fulfilling ways to use their fluency in French, as professionals? How many will find those hidden geographies where French is a daily feature of the landscape? How may will simply give up, letting their French rust away into their personal past? Ritt Deitz, who directs the University of Wisconsin-Madison Professional French Masters Program, has assembled writers who tackle these questions and others, Post-Francophiles who represent that large and diverse community of adult Americans committed to using French in ways that deepen both their careers and their lives as a whole. They are well past simply loving the language. Their stories suggest that, behind the shimmering pathway to sophistication that French long seemed to represent, there lies a set of useful professional tools.