Lifongo Vetinde, associate professor of French, joined the Lawrence faculty in 1996. Besides French, he also teaches one of the core courses for the ethnic studies minor.
This past summer, thanks to a curricular-development grant from Lawrence, he spent three weeks in Montréal and Toronto, Canada, working on the production of a video that he intends to be a pedagogical resource for the French department. The project, titled “La francophonie africaine en Amérique du nord,” involved interviewing and videotaping French-speaking immigrants from various African countries on an array of topics related to the challenges of immigrant life in Canada.
Along with colleagues, he also spent part of the summer redesigning the French curriculum. A scholar in francophone African literature and cinema, Vetinde has published articles on the works of writers and filmmakers such as Ousmane Sembene, Jean-Marie Adiaffi, and Amadou Seck, as well as numerous book reviews.
His review of Eugène Ebodé’s La Transmission was published in The French Review, and he delivered “Power, Desire, and Interest in Césaire’s La Tragédie du roi Christophe and Camus’ Caligula” at the 57th Annual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference.
Professor Vetinde studied in Cameroon, France, and the United States, earning an M.A. in French and a Ph.D. in romance languages with emphasis in francophone African literature from the University of Oregon. At right is Laurent Frecon, ’06.
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