Duke’s Center for French and Francophone Studies (CFFS) is the hub for all people and things related to, and interested in, the French language in its diverse expressions. Its home is the Department of Romance Studies but it reaches out across the Duke campus. By nature, it is multidisciplinary and as international as our faculty and students. It celebrates, and interrogates, the protean nature of “Francophonie” through public events and discussions, collaborative research projects, and service-oriented initiatives.
The CFFS mobilizes intellectual energy with all departments, centers and institutes at Duke, collaborates with student organizations and extends its efforts to other research and community groups in the Triangle, the South, and abroad. It is engaged in partnerships with the local Alliance française as well as École Normale Supérieure or University Paris VII-Diderot in France. The Center hosts and co-sponsors a great variety of activities, including workshops and colloquia, a film festival, and visits by distinguished and up-and-coming artists, critics, writers, journalists, theater troupes, dancers, and researchers. Our efforts are geared toward developing exchange throughout the French-speaking world – including in the digital spaces where we work. The Center’s programming is made up of five pillars: guest talk series, events, pedagogical actions, residencies, and academic development for students in French and Francophone Studies.
The CFFS is mainly funded by Duke University. It also has a working relationship with, and receives additional funding from, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy which recognize it as one of its 22 “Centers of Excellence” in the United States.
Co-Directors’s Message
Welcome – Bienvenue!
We hope that you are enjoying your return to campus, catching up with friends, and making new connections.
As the new academic year begins, the Center is entering its next phase of collective life, building on more than two decades of engagement on campus and beyond. For the first time, the CFFS will be co-directed.
We appreciate this opportunity to work together with the many colleagues at Duke whose research, teaching, and creative activities engage them with the Francophone world. In this period of transition, we are confident that our combined efforts will engage our various publics: our students in Durham, Paris, Aix, Fort-de-France, and Dakar; our faculty, whose research spans the rich variety of Francophone cultures; and our communities across North Carolina.
Over the coming year, we look forward to drawing on the wealth of resources and relationships we are fortunate to have. As a Center of Excellence supported by the Embassy of France, we wish to nurture our existing partnerships while cultivating new ones with colleagues and institutions across the Francophone world. At Duke, we also aim to create pathways connecting students, faculty, and communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and opening new possibilities across languages, cultures, and disciplines.
We invite colleagues across Duke to join us in imagining and developing new initiatives, collaborations, and events. We look forward to working together to make the CFFS a welcoming and vibrant hub where teaching, research, and the wider community intersect, and where engagement with language and culture opens onto the intellectual, cultural, civic, and professional questions shaping our world.
Christelle Gonthier & Helen Solterer
September 4 2026