French and Italian

Engaged French and Italian

Engaged French and Italian takes what you’re learning in your courses and puts it into practice through internships, research, study away, winter term, career exploration, and beyond.

Here’s a sampling of recent projects, field experiences, and post-graduate destinations for French majors.

RISE at Oberlin
Research. Internships. Study Away. Experiential Learning.

Ways French Majors Rise

Research

  • Funded research assistantships with faculty members
  • “Penetrating Gazes: Colonizing the Body, Imagining the Harem”
  • “Medical Discourse in Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola”
  • “Twelve Syllables and Counting: Translating Racine’s Andromaque (1667) in Alexandrines”
  • Classical References in the Révolutions de Paris and the Rise of Republicanism”
  • “Translation with an Introduction of Vercoquin et le plankton (1945)”
  • “The Myth of Satan in French 19th-Century Literature”
  • “In Search of Lost Women,” a digital humanities research project that results in student co-authorship

Internships

  • TAPIF Teaching English in France Program
  • CUPA-Paris internships while studying at the Université de Paris
  • Globally oriented internships sponsored by Handshake: Oberlin Career Center
  • Development intern, Other Minds, San Francisco
  • Production assistant, Cedille Records, Chicago
  • Production intern, Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, NYC
  • Stage manager at HB Studio, NYC
  • Intern, Oberlin Police Department

Study Away

  • Center for University Programs Abroad (CUPA), Paris
  • CIEE Language & Culture, Dakar, Senegal
  • CIEE Language and Culture, Rabat, Morocco

Experiential Learning

  • La Maison Francophone residence hall directed and staffed by French native speakers
  • Winter Term projects in France, Quebec, and Martinique
  • La Table Française, daily French conversation hour in Stevenson Hall”

First Destinations of Recent French Majors

  • Positions:
    • General surgery resident, Harvard Medical School
    • Professor of French, Harvard University
    • Professor of English, NYU
    • Colorado state public defender
    • Section viola, Lyric Opera Chicago
    • Archivist, Institut national, Paris
    • Senior project manager, MediaLocate Translation Services, NYC
    • Family nurse practitioner, Roxbury, Mass.
    • Research coordinator, Columbia University
    • Concert organist, Boston
    • Shansi Fellow at Shanxi Agricultural University, China
    • Operations analyst for France, North Africa, and French West Indies, CarRentals.com
    • Fourth grade teacher, Md.
    • Business analyst, NEOS, Conn.
    • Acquisitions editor, Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, NYC
    • Associate, Jones Day (law), Cleveland
    • Legal associate, Lohf Shaiman Jacobs Hyman, Denver
  • Graduate Schools:
    • Medical school, Duke University
    • School of Engineering, University of Washington
    • Master of Arts in translation, Middlebury Institute of International Studies
    • PhD in comparative literature, NYU
    • PhD in French, Duke University
    • PhD in economics, University of Illinois
    • PhD, Ecoles des hautes études, Paris JD, Harvard
    • MA in art history, Emory University
    • PhD in civil engineering, University of Washington
    • MA in security policy studies, George Washington University
    • Master of Public Policy, University of Maryland