Springfield College Photo of the Day - October 30, 2024
Dr. Lara Curtis, instructor in the Department of Literature, Journalism, and Writing, who specializes in Comparative Literature and French and Francophone Studies, is currently teaching a course on World Literature in translation from antiquity through current times. Among the works under study is a 1947 novel by French author Albert Camus entitled La Peste / The Plague, set in Francophone Algeria. Dr. Curtis initially lectured on the novel’s allegorical reflection of the political situation in Algeria during the Second World War and its illustration of the author’s existentialist thought.
On Thursday, October 24, she brought her World Literature students to the Learning Commons for a lecture via video conference on La Peste by University of Massachusetts Amherst Professor Emerita Catherine Portuges, who specializes in Comparative Literature and Film Studies and whose current research focuses on transnational European filmmakers in Hollywood. Professor Portuges, who had read the novel as an undergraduate student, discussed its importance in relation to Camus’ philosophical thought. She also shared an excerpt from a radio broadcast in which the author evokes pestilence as a collective tragedy and showed clips from film adapted from the novel.
Dr. Curtis notes that study of this novel is timely in the wake of our recently having lived through Covid-19 and on account of its literary depictions of the ravages of a pandemic. Dr. Curtis and Professor Portuges have frequently collaborated on teaching literature and film in the classroom. A very special thanks to Assistant Director for Research and Access Mackenzie Dunn and to Technical Support Analyst Elvin Quiros Isales for their ongoing support during this session as well as others.
