Dr. Kate M. Bonin, assistant professor of Modern Languages and Cultures, attended the 2017 Women in French Conference in Leeds, England from May 19 to 21. This year’s theme, “Women Behaving Badly (?): Women’s Pleasures and Their Discontents in French and Francophone Cultures and Societies,” encompassed topics ranging from sexuality to feminism, language to literature.

Dr. Bonin, whose research interests include French and contemporary Francophone literature, presented “Growing up Camille: The pleasures of the liminal, the hybrid, and the transgressive in Mireille Best’s Camille en octobre (1988).” The paper examines Best’s use of symbolic language and stylistic experimentation to explore same-sex attraction, alienation, and coming-of-age in a working-class community in northern France following World War II.