Charlotte France Werbe

Assistant Professor

French

Contact

Email

cwerbe@gettysburg.edu

Phone

(717) 337 - 6871

Box

Campus Box 0411

Address

McKnight Hall
Room 16
300 North Washington St.
Gettysburg, PA 17325-1400

Website

Personal Website

Education

PhD Princeton University, 2018
MA University of Massachusetts - Amherst, 2012
Mount Holyoke College, 2010

Academic Focus

Visual Studies, Cinema, Comics, Testimony, Holocaust Literature, Yiddish, 20th + 21st c. French Literature, Translation

Working at the crossroads of media studies, literary studies, sociology, and politics, I read testimony—whether legal, religious, or artistic—as a sophisticated, audience-oriented speech act. My first book project, a manuscript titled After the Fact: Encounters in Holocaust Testimony, examines Holocaust testimonial practices in an archive of experimental graphic novels, films, and literary memoirs. I argue that these works stage the mediatic and sociohistorical conditions of their production, and in the process overturn some of the hallmark conventions of testimony—namely, coherence, consistency, and credibility. Through such innovations these works preserve the authenticity of their narratives, while also revealing the contradictory demands that are always inevitably caught up in the act of bearing witness. My study intervenes in ongoing and emerging discussions about personal and collective acts of remembrance, attending closely to the ways in which hegemonic discourse shapes the creation and transmission of knowledge. The archival holdings at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and The Institute for Visual History and Education at the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation provided the historical sources for my study of testimony.

If testimony is traditionally associated with the legal or religious spheres, today it is frequently called upon to disrupt the status quo and promote social and institutional changes. My second book project, titled Dislocating Testimony in the Age of New Media, traces how a testimonial vernacular originating in Holocaust Studies travels and is being repurposed by new media-centered approaches to bearing witness. My analysis considers how new techniques of storing and representing memory are transforming the institutional spaces and discourses of education, public activism, and academic engagement. I examine social and humanitarian movements on Twitter (#JesuisCharlie, #Balancetonporc); in cinema (Amandine Gay’s Ouvrir la voix, Raymond Depardon’s 12 jours); and in museum exhibitions and installations (Esther Shalev-Gerz’s Entre l’écoute et la paroleand Ton image me regarde). I read these initiatives, movements, and projects as forming a constellation of testimonial practices, one in which storytelling is reimagined outside of the prevailing dictates of Enlightenment reason, realist narrative, and empiricist discourses of evidence. In this way, I argue for the mutual evolution of testimony and new media as interlocking genres and practices of public discourse. To dislocate testimony, then, is to consider the network of connecting and disconnecting stories produced through the electronic dissemination of knowledge today.

My work has been published in The Journal of Holocaust Research, The Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies and the edited volume Shoah et bande dessinée: L'image au service de la mémoire. I have articles forthcoming in French Forum and a special issue of Etudes Francophones.

Courses Taught

Fundamentals of French grammar, composition and pronunciation. Emphasis on oral comprehension, verbal communication, reading and writing in the broader context of French and Francophone culture. Classroom interaction stresses oral-aural method of language learning. Enrollment limited to those with previous study of French. Successful completion of 103 is a prerequisite for entry into 104 unless a student is placed in 104 according to the Departmental Placement Examination. A student may not receive credit for both 102 and 104.
Grammar review and practice in oral French, with stress on reading and written expression in the spring. Contact with French culture is maintained throughout. Enrollment limited to those who have previously studied French and who have completed 101-102, or who are enrolled according to achievement on the Departmental Placement Examination. Successful completion of 201 is a prerequisite for entry into 202, unless student is placed there according to the placement examination.
Grammar review and practice in oral French in the fall semester, with stress on reading and written expression in the spring. Contact with French culture is maintained throughout. Enrollment limited to those who have previously studied French and who have completed 101-102, or who are enrolled according to achievement on the Departmental Placement Examination. Successful completion of 201 is a prerequisite for entry into 202, unless student is placed there according to the placement examination.
Study of critically-acclaimed contemporary French and Francophone films. The selections for “Contemporary French and Francophone Cinema,” explore how political and social issues centered around various forms of discrimination (unemployment, immigration, illness, gender and sexual identity) are conceptualized and addressed today in France. Major emphasis is placed on cinematography as students learn the vocabulary and visual grammar of film. Literature from the fields of cinema, sociology, history, and literature, as well as excerpts of foundational films, complement film screenings. Prerequisite: FREN 305 or 310.
Intensive study of a particular aspect of French literature, civilization, or culture to be determined by the instructor. Past offerings include The Art of Emile Zola, The Image of Women in French Literature: A Feminist Perspective, The Gaze and Self-Image in French Film, 1959-89 and Postcolonial Immigrations in France. Course is for seniors (in the final semester) to complete undergraduate work in French. Prerequisites: Limited to seniors, except with permission of instructor and approval of department chairperson. Offered every spring.

Article Days of Terror, An Excerpt Yiddish in Translation
Article Werbe on Oksman H-Net, Book Reviews
Chapter Un Récit à Deux Temps Shoah et bande dessinée: l’image au service de la mémoire
Article Traumatic Memory and Bodily Inscription in Georges Perec’s W ou Le souvenir d’enfance and Philippe Grimbert’s Un secret he Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies
Article Teacher's Packet: Elie Wiesel's Night The Yiddish Book Center
Article Retroactive Continuity, Holocaust Testimony, and X-Men’s Magneto The Journal of Holocaust Research
Article Communicating Difference: Charlotte Delbo and Holocaust Testimony (forthcoming) French Forum
Article Remediating the Document: Photographs and Drawn Images in Mickey au camp de Gurs (forthcoming) Etudes Francophones (special issue on comics and intermediality, eds. J. Baetens, F. Leroy, H. Frey

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