Ronnie Scharfman, Ph.D.

Office: Hum. 2013
Tel: (914) 251-6561
Fax: (914) 251-6559
Email: Ronnie.Scharfman@purchase.edu

Dr. Ronnie Scharfman wrote her doctoral thesis at Yale on the great Martinican poet of Negritude, Aimé Césaire. Since then, she has been interested in the literary response to colonialism, in the literary imagination of place, and in the themes of exile and nomadism in what are now referred to as postcolonial and diasporic literatures. Her work has taken her to the Caribbean and North Africa as well as France, literally and figuratively, thanks to her mastery of the French language, which is an essential tool for her research. Bilingualism as an issue in literary texts is a vital topic in our age of global migration, and with it, issues of memory, belonging, transmission of identity and culture. Recently, these interests have brought Professor Scharfman to examine Jewish texts written in French, and other diasporas. She enjoys exploring these themes as they evolve with her Purchase students, opening new worlds to them.

Education

• A.B., cum laude, Bryn Mawr College, 1967
• Licence-ès-Lettres, Maîtrise-es-Lettres, University of Aix-en Provence, France, 1970,1971
• M.Phil., Ph.D., Yale University, 1976, 1979

Positions

• Professor of French and Francophone and Comparative Literatures, Purchase College, 1979-present
• Visiting Professor, Yale University, New York University, CUNY - Graduate Center, Institut d'Etudes françaises d'Avignon of Bryn Mawr College.

Areas of Expertise
French language, postcolonial literatures from the French speaking world, particularly the Caribbean and North Africa, comparative postcolonial and diaspora literatures, including Jewish literature, 19th and 20th century French poetry, including Surrealsim; Aimé Césaire.

Honors and Awards
Fulbright Fellow; Woodrow Wilson Fellow; Yale University Fellow; numerous travel grants from U.U.P., A.C.L.S., President's Travel Fund, Humanities Division - Jim Greenwood fund. Gilbert Chinard Literary Prize for book on Aimé Césaire

Courses Taught
French Language, all levels; Exile and Nomadism; Classics of French Literature on Film; Caribbean Lit.; Caribbean Women Writers; Mediterranean Lit.; Jewish Texts, Global Contexts; Francophone Literature; Postcolonial Literature of the Maghreb; Surrealism;

Research interest:
All diasporic literatures, from ancient Hebrew texts to Beur writing in France; history and memory in literature; issues in postcolonial literatures such as bilingualism, biculturalism, national identity.

Publications

Books:
Engagement and the Language of the Subject in the Poetry of Aimé Césaire (Florida, 1987)
Post/Colonial Conditions, ed., with Françoise Lionnet, 2 volumes of Yale French Studies (Yale University, 1993)
Ecritures de femmes: nouvelles cartographies, ed.,with Caws, Green and Hirsch (Yale University, 1995).

Articles:
Forthcoming in 2001: "Nomadism and Transcultural Writing in the Works of Abdelwahab Meddeb;" "Regards du sujet, sujets du regard: Vaste est la Prison d'Assia Djebar;" "Nubile in Morocco;" "Of Heroines Peripatetic and Unsympathetic in Maryse Condé." Dozens of articles on Francophone writers such as Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, André and Simone Schwarz-Bart, Khatibi, El Maleh, Meddeb, Jabès, Valensi, Maximin, Sembène, Confiant, Chauvet, Soupault, etc.