alexandra.place@conncoll.edu
Education
D.E.A (diplôme d’études approfondies), Maîtrise, Licence, D.E.U.G (diplôme d’études universitaires Générales)
Université Paris VII.
Charles V Institut du Monde Anglophone de Paris, France.
Baccalauréat, Lycée Condorcet, Paris, France.
"But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to take a human being and change her into a quite different human being by creating a new speech for her. It's filling up the deepest gulf that separates class from class and soul from soul." - From George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion"
Instructor of French
Joined Connecticut College: 2002
Specialization:
- French/American political, social and economic relations in the 20th& 21st Century
- Frontier Women in 19th Century America French/English translations
- Sociolinguistics
Alexandra Place co- teaches French 101 and 102 with James Austin, teaches Lower and Intermediate French 103, 113, 114 and periodically French 326, Civilization through Conversation and French 324, Words in Translation.
In January 2007, she was asked to be one of the panelists in a local conference dealing with "What to do with a mother tongue?" about the importance of bilingual language acquisition at a very early age. Organized by Michele Snitkin, a former director at the Solomon Schecter Academy in New London and now head of the language program at Pine Point School in Stonington, CT, the panel discussion dealt with what it means to be bilingual, how it affects language(s) acquisition as a whole and the pros and cons of raising bilingual children in America today.
Place is currently seeking certification through ATIA: The American Translator and Interpreter Association as a Connecticut Court interpreter for French/English. She regularly translates adoption "dossier" for American families adopting from Francophone countries (Haiti, Vietnam, and others) and helps assist them in all the cultural and language barriers they are faced with when the child arrives in the US.
A recent work was a translation of three pamphlets for the French and foreign food industry summarizing an international conference dealing with genetically modified organisms.
Her teaching career includes a previous position as a lecturer of French at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York and at East Lyme High School in East Lyme, CT.
Her interests are focused on French & American cinema (Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick, Orson Welles, et alia) and acting & singing.
When not teaching, translating, reading or studying for her Ph.D. she travels back to her hometown of Paris and throughout Europe and the US. Also, Place is training intensively for a half marathon in the Fall of 2007 and regularly participates in 5K and 10K road races. She has a 6-year-old son and a 2-year-old daughter.
View the French department Web site.