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AROUND THE QUADS
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
AROUND THE QUADS
Elisabeth Ladenson Ph.D. ’94
GSAS is a professor of French
and comparative literature as
well as the general editor of
Columbia’s Romanic Review,
a journal devoted to the
study of Romance literatures.
Born and raised on the Upper
West Side, Ladenson earned a
B.A. from Penn in French and
comparative literature and an
M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. from
Columbia in French and
Romance philology. She
taught at Virginia from
1992–2005, after which
she returned to Columbia;
she has been chair of the
Department of French and
Romance Philology since
September. Ladenson’s books
include Proust’s Lesbianism
(1999) and Dirt for Art’s Sake:
Books on Trial from Madame
Bovary to Lolita (2007).
What did you want to be
growing up
You mean, did I dream of
being an academic when I
was a child No, no; are there
kids who dream of becoming
academics I was going to be
a writer, and I guess I have
become that in the sense that
I write books. But I thought I
was going to be a novelist or
something of that sort. Just a
writer, capital W.
What drew you to studying
French
When I went to college, I
thought that I was never
going to take French again
because I’d been forced to
take it for something like 12
years growing up. My first
name is spelled with an “S”
instead of a “Z” because part
of my mother’s family is
French and she was a Francophile.
But I quickly eliminated
several other majors
and also discovered a course
called “French Cinema and
the Novel,” in which we
watched films and read
French lit but we also read
theory, including Freud. And
shortly after that, I learned
that — even though I was
at Penn — my financial aid
package could be applied
to the Columbia program at
Reid Hall. So I went off to
France and didn’t come back
for two years, at which point
I spoke French well and had
discovered French literature
and had too many credits to
major in anything else.
What do you teach
Graduate and undergraduate
19th-century and early 20thcentury
French literature
courses. I also taught Lit
Hum for four years and
would like to get back to
it. But what I would really
like is to take a crack at CC
and then go for the trifecta,
with Art Hum. I have a great
commitment to the Core. …
In fact, when I came back
here, the first thing I said in
my interview was, “I really,
really regret not having taught
Lit Hum as a graduate student.”
I was not whistling
Dixie, as they say; I
really wanted to
do that. And it
has not been a
SPRING 2013
12
disappointment. It’s enriched
my scholarship so much.
Five Minutes with ... Elisabeth Ladenson
Shifting to your area of specialization,
what would you
say to someone who asks,
“Why should I focus on this
era in French literature”
I don’t think it’s a particularly
attractive time; it’s not
that I like the period, I like
the authors who were bothered
by the period and who
responded to it with great
novels and poetry. Pre-revolutionary
France is a much
more interesting and vibrant
culture. But it’s oppression
and awfulness that produces
great literature, often. And
the dreary 19th and early 20th
century produced incredible
literature: Baudelaire, Flaubert,
Balzac, even the crazy
Zola, Proust, Colette.
You’re working on a book
about Colette now. Tell me
about that.
The book is my attempt to
break out of a strictly academic
kind of writing. And Colette,
she’s the author of Gigi; she
published her first book in
1900 and her last book in 1949.
Her first books were published
under her husband’s name,
and they were kind of salacious.
She also had a career as
a journalist and as a music hall
dancer. …
She’s a brilliant writer but
I’m also interested in her career.
She seemed to enjoy provocation
and doing the opposite
of what people expected
of her. She bared her left
breast on stage, creating a huge
scandal. She seems to have
been bisexual; she engaged in
a protracted kiss with her female
lover dressed in drag on
the stage of the Moulin Rouge
in 1907. But she also became
the president of the Académie
Goncourt, which was and still
is France’s most prestigious
literary society. By the time she
died, she was one of the most
respected writers in France.
The analogy that I finally came
up with is it’s as though Lady
Gaga were to cap off her career
by winning the Nobel Prize.
What’s your favorite place
to be
My girlfriend and I
bought a house in Normandy
last year. … Of
course, there are lots
of places I haven’t been that
would be nice but I find that
the older I get, the less I enjoy
traveling. I like my living
room quite a lot.
What books are on your
nightstand
An Irish novel, Skippy Dies,
that’s quite good.
What would you do if you
weren’t a professor
I guess I lack imagination in
the sense that books are all
I’ve ever cared about and I
can’t really imagine caring
about anything else. In that
sense I have the best job in the
world for me, because I get to
write and read and talk about
books.
But what does alarm me
a little bit is that they are affected
by digital technology.
Yes, e-readers are wonderful
innovations but I love books
as physical objects. I don’t
want to read something that
can run out of battery power
or break. I can carry a book
around and if it gets wet, it’s
still readable. Yes, they’re
heavy, but I can write in them,
I can dog ear the pages. The
demise of bookstores alarms
me because browsing in
bookstores has been one of
the great pleasures of my life.
I shudder to imagine a world
in which one can’t do that.
Interview: Alexis Tonti ’11 Arts
Photo: Isabelle Chagnon
CAMPUS NEWS
n GLOBAL CENTER: On January 14
Columbia opened its eighth Global
Center, in Nairobi, Kenya — the first
Global Center in Africa. Global Centers
are designed to promote and facilitate
international collaborations, research
projects, academic programming and
study abroad. In addition to Nairobi,
Columbia’s network of centers that have
opened or have been announced includes
Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Mumbai,
Paris, Santiago and Rio de Janeiro.
Classes
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n ZUCKERMAN GIFT: Mortimer
Zuckerman, the Canadian-born cofounder
and chairman of Boston Properties,
chairman and editor-in-chief of
U.S. News & World Report and publisher
of the New York Daily News, has pledged
$200 million to endow a Mind Brain Behavior
Institute to support interdisciplinary
neuroscience research and discovery
by scholars across the University. President
Lee C. Bollinger announced the gift
on December 17.
The Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind
Brain Behavior Institute will be located
within the 450,000-sq.-ft. Jerome L. Greene
Science Center, currently under construction
on the new Manhattanville campus. It
will become the hub of cross-campus research
on brain science, bringing together
researchers from the Medical Center and
Arts and Sciences as well as from Engineering
and other schools to collaborate on
pioneering research in the neural sciences
and an array of academic fields involving
human behavior.
n CURRIMBHOY GIFT: Delhi-based
entrepreneur Sharik Currimbhoy ’02 has
pledged $12.12 million to Columbia in
C O L U M B I A C O L L E G E
ALUMNI REUNION WEEKEND
Make plans now to return to New
York City and the Columbia campus
for Alumni Reunion Weekend 2013.
The weekend will feature:
President Lee C. Bollinger greets Mwai Kibaki, president
of Kenya, at the dedication of the Columbia
Global Center in Nairobi.
Class-specific activities, cocktail receptions and dinners
planned by each class’s Reunion Committee;
“Back on Campus” sessions featuring Mini-Core Courses,
Public Intellectual Lectures and more as part of Dean’s
Day on Saturday;
New York City entertainment options including an art
gallery crawl, Broadway shows and other cultural activities;
All-class programs including the Wine Tasting and the
Starlight Reception, with dancing, champagne and sweets
on Low Plaza; and
Camp Columbia, ages 3–17.
a gift that will span multiple schools
at the University and will support
research and fellowships with a focus
on India and emerging markets. The
announcement of the gift was timed to
coincide with 12:12 p.m. on December
12, 2012 — 12:12 on 12-12-12. It is the
largest gift from an alumnus in India to
Columbia.
Currimbhoy, who studied economics
at the College, is the founder of Element
Capital, an investment company with a
focus on private equity and real estate.
n APPLICATIONS RISE: Columbia
received 33,460 applications for the
College and Engineering Classes of
2017, an increase of 5 percent from a year
ago and the second-highest total in school
history. The Class of 2015, the first that
had the option of using the Common Application,
received nearly 35,000 applications,
a record 33.4 percent increase from
the previous year. It’s not unusual for
applications to spike in the first year of
the Common App but after last year’s dip
of 9 percent, the number of applications
for the Class of 2017 continues an upward
trend that goes back to the 1990s.
In an effort to reduce costs and be environmentally friendly,
Columbia College Alumni Affairs and your class’s Reunion
Committee will communicate with you via email as much
as possible.
Register today! For more information or to
register visit reunion.college.columbia.edu.
If you register before Wednesday, May 1,
you’ll receive a 10 percent discount on
all events, excluding Broadway shows,
New York City Ballet and New York
Philharmonic tickets.
Questions Please contact Jane Bond,
alumni affairs: jb3556@columbia.edu
or 212-851-7834.
COLLEGE
COLLEGE
COLUMBIA ALUMNI REUNION
WEEKEND
SAVE THE DATE THURSDAY, MAY 30–- SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 2013