Melinda Cro

As a digital humanist and teacher-scholar, I believe that the classroom is a location where research and learning meet and it is my goal to ensure that that meeting place is a productive and positive one. To that end, I work to facilitate opportunities for the exchange of ideas and the critical examination of literature, language and culture at all levels, from beginner language courses to graduate seminars. I see language as a way of thinking. It is a tool by which one can understand others as well as develop new insights about oneself. The study of literature and culture opens up new avenues of exploration and thought. Through a diversified approach emphasizing communication, students in my classes gain an inclusive view of the target language and cultures. In discovering the realities of the subject, I work to help students break through those stereotypes often imposed on other cultures and gain a deeper understanding of their own cultural reality in the process. 

In addition to all levels of French and Italian language at the beginning and intermediate levels, I have had the pleasure of teaching a wide range of upper-division courses in French, including:

• Imagination and Enterprise: 18th Century French Literature & Culture 
• Molière 400 (in celebration of the playwright's 400th anniversary, featuring public humanities through the Sunderland Innovation Lab at the K-State Library)
• Mapping the Francophone World in the Seventeenth-Century (*featured below)
• Encountering the Other: Notions of Alterity, Self, and Nation in 18th Century France
• Translating the ‘Freedom Papers’: Charles de Gaulle & WWII Correspondence (*featured below)
• Honoré d’Urfé and the Rise of the Pastoral in French Literature
• Teaching Literature and Culture in Second Language Acquisition Courses
• Business French
• Introduction to French Literature (Medieval to 18th C)
• French Children's Literature
• The French Revolution 
• French Composition and Conversation through Film