French

04/05/2026

*Registration is open to members of the Duke community but anyone can donate to the cause!*

Join us for the inaugural “Run For Your L…anguage” 5k walk/run on Saturday, April 11, 2026 from 10am-12pm on Duke’s East Campus Lawn. Sponsored by the Trinity Language Council and Duke Service-Learning, the event aims to increase visibility for all languages spoken at Duke and collect donations to support the Durham Literacy Center.

All proceeds will go to the DLC, but donors can select the language they want to support from the list of languages offered at Duke.

This isn’t your typical 5k. It’s an interactive, multilingual jaunt around the world! At registration, participants receive a Multilingual Duke global passport. Along the route, you'll stop at themed stations each representing a different language, where you’ll complete a quick language-based challenge to earn a stamp. The journey concludes with a catered reception celebrating the reach and impact of multiliteracy and intercultural communication.

The Run For Your L...anguage! is on Saturday April 11, 2026.

09/12/2025

Free screening! Sunday at 6pm
Social Sciences 136
Take a Sunday study break with some pizza and bid farewell to summer with François Ozon’s Été 85 (2020). Shot on 16mm, the film recaptures a vintage feel and is more attune to the main characters’ fluctuating emotions. As cinematographer Hichame Alaouié reflects, “It was exhilarating to come back to shooting on film. It’s a kind of magic. Because nobody can see the results immediately on set, just the video tap, everyone has to think more artfully and carefully about what they are doing than you would on a digital shoot.”
RSVP to give us a more accurate headcount for food

11/14/2024

Ce soir! le 14 novembre à 19h

11/14/2024

DukeAfrica is excited to welcome Fyras Mawazini to campus in collaboration with the Provost Initiative on the Middle East, the Department of Romance Studies, the Africa Initiative, and Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. Mr. Mawazini serves as the director of the Marseille division of S.O.S. Mediterranee.

The event will feature a screening of the short film Mothership, which highlights the vital rescue work carried out by S.O.S. Mediterranee, followed by a panel discussion with Mr. Mawazini while attendees enjoy a meal.

S.O.S. Mediterranee is an international non-profit organization operating in Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland. Since its launch in 2016, the organization has been dedicated to rescuing migrants in distress in the Mediterranean Sea, conducting lifesaving operations aboard its vessel, the Ocean Viking. Recognized by the UNHCR and other intergovernmental bodies, S.O.S. Mediterranee has rescued over 20,000 people to date, averaging around 3,000 lives saved per year. Their unwavering commitment to addressing this humanitarian crisis has provided countless individuals with the opportunity for a safer and more hopeful future.

09/29/2023

https://dukearts.org/events/never-twenty-one/

Get your tickets now for Smaïl Kanouté's dance performance Never Twenty One on October 5 at 7:30pm.

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement’s hashtag, Kanouté's choreography is a powerful tribute to young people who have lost their lives to gun violence all over the world before reaching the age of 21.

“Smaïl Kanouté’s dance production is a lament, a tribute and a protest. In its reference to individual lives, Never Twenty One has a heartbreaking specificity; as a political act, it has a global reach.” – The Dance Centre – Vancouver Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement’s ...

08/28/2023

La table française commence cette semaine ! Join us on Wednesdays this semester from 5:30-6:30pm for informal French conversation, card/board games, and whatever else we think up along the way! Open to all members of the Duke community who'd like to practice their French. This Wednesday (30th), we'll be meeting at the Perk Café!!

08/18/2023

Not sure what level of French to sign up for? Curious about our other language offerings? Or maybe you just want to stop by and say "bonjour"! Drop by the Romance Studies Languages Open House on Saturday, Aug. 26 from 2:30-4:30 on East. Especially useful for incoming students!

03/02/2023

PERFORMANCE: Happening
A collective reading in the Night of Ideas
Live-streaming March 3rd from 8:30 PM–11:30 PM: https://www.youtube.com/.Albertine

For the 2023 Night of Ideas, Columbia University’s Maison Française and Department of French are teaming up with Villa Albertine to host a collective public reading of Happening by Annie Ernaux, French author and winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature. Happening recounts the abortion Ernaux had at age 23, in 1963, at a time when the procedure was still illegal in France. Her story, told with unsparing honesty, resonates strongly in post-Roe America, where the right to a safe and legal abortion has been curtailed in many states. Happening will be read in English in its entirety, with brief passages performed by more than 30 diverse voices—writers, artists, doctors, teachers, students, activists—in a collective expression of appreciation for Annie Ernaux’s bold work and solidarity for reproductive rights.

"I have finished putting into words what I consider to be an extreme human experience, bearing on life and death, time, law, ethics, and taboo–an experience that sweeps through the body… Among all the social and psychological reasons that may account for my past, of one I am certain: these things happened to me so that I might recount them.” Annie Ernaux

03/01/2023

Thursday, March 2, 3:30-5pm
Breedlove Conference Room (Rubenstein Library 349)
Sun Spirals: Early Haitian Poetry, Solar Cosmologies & Abolition Ecology
Dr. Monique Allewaert (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

This talk explores Haiti's relation to a long history of climate colonialism via an engagement with several early Haitian poems, including Hérard Dumesle’s —“A travers les sillons par la foudre tracés” from Voyage dans le Nord d’Haiti, ou, Révélation des lieux et des monuments historique (Les Cayes: Imprimerie du Gouvernement, 1824). By working with, and against, the climatological imaginary of Western poetic forms, this early Haitian literary archive offers glimmers of Kongo, Yoruba, and Amerindian solar and celestial regimes. Allewaert argues that these Afro-diasporic and Amerindian solar imaginaries generate conceptions of nature that undercut the models of time and geography that sustain plantation colonialism. The talk concludes with a brief consideration of how this Haitian solar poetics intersects with Aimé Césaire’s defiant solar imaginary.

02/22/2023

Un petit souvenir de ce weekend à Durham Central Park 🎺🎷🎼

01/31/2023

The annual French film series is on now through Feb. 10th. Don't miss out on the opportunity to see these highly acclaimed films for free! All films are subtitled in English and all showings start at 7pm in the Rubenstein Arts Center Theater.

Join the Center for French and Francophone Studies and Screen/Society in celebrating the annual French Film Festival. All films will be shown in person at the Rubenstein Arts Center Theatre. All films will be introduced in English and followed by a Q&A.

09/28/2022

Une belle opportunité ! Come meet the cast of Liberté before the play. This Friday at 1pm (rsvp for lunch beforehand at 12:30).