Contact:	Suzanne Trimel					For immediate release
		(212) 854-6579					April 1, 1998
		smt4@columbia.edu


Novelist and Playwright Maryse CondÚ Directs
New Columbia Center for Francophone Studies


	Maryse CondÚ, the acclaimed Francophone novelist, playwright and 
professor at Columbia University, will direct a new academic center for the study 
of French-speaking cultures worldwide, including those in Europe, Africa, the 
Caribbean, Asia and North America.
	"The center is a broad impulse to study the cultures of people who speak 
French but who are not French," said Professor CondÚ, a native of Guadeloupe 
and author of epic works of historical fiction, written in French and set largely in 
Africa.  She has written six plays, nine novels and edited several anthologies of 
Francophone Caribbean and African literature.  Many of her books have been 
translated, including  ""La Migration des Coeurs" issued this month as 
"Windward Heights" by Faber and Faber in London.
	Professor CondÚ said the new Center for French and Francophone Studies 
at Columbia will focus on interdisciplinary scholarship in the humanities and 
social sciences.  A conference is planned for next November 21 on the written and 
oral traditions in French-language literature, with presentations by scholars of 
Francophone literature in Africa and the Caribbean.
	The conference will be co-sponsored by the Pan-African Studies Program at 
Barnard College and the Columbia and Barnard French Departments.
	In addition to the Department of French and Romance Philology, several 
Columbia academic departments and institutes will be represented in the new 
center's work, including art history, film studies, history, political science, 
sociology, the Institute on Western Europe and the Institute for Research on 
Women and Gender.
	The center, which will be closely associated with the French Department 
and will have its home in Maison FranÙaise, also will provide academic guidance 
to a new undergraduate major in French and Francophone Studies.   In addition, 
the center will coordinate and promote lectures and conferences at Maison 
FranÙaise on French culture and the Francophone diaspora in Canada, Belgium, 
Switzerland, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and the West Indies.
	"The center does not signal the start of a new discipline or academic 
specialty," said Pierre Force, chairman and professor of French, "but rather a 
space where scholars from various disciplines will engage in broad discussion 
about French and Francophone culture.  We are exceptionally lucky at Columbia 
to have one of the world's foremost Francophone writers to lead this effort."
	Professor Force said topics that may be addressed include language laws in 
Quebec, conceptions of citizenship and the welfare state in France, politics in 
Vietnam and the literature of the French West Indies.
	Born in Pointe-Ã-Pitre, Professor CondÚ was educated on Guadeloupe and 
in France and earned the Ph.D. from the Sorbonne.  She has lived in Africa and 
France.  Several of her novels concern Africa:  "Heremakhonon" (1978), "A Season 
in Rihata" (1981), "Segu" (1987), "The Children of Segu" (1989) and "The Last of the 
African Kings" (1997).

This document is available at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/pr/. 

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