Randa Duvick

EDUCATION

B.A. – Luther College
M.A. – University of Chicago
Ph.D. – University of Chicago

BIOGRAPHY

Professor Duvick studied French and linguistics at Luther College and did her graduate work in French literature at the University of Chicago.  She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for a year of study at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland, where she studied dialectology and linguistics.  She received support for doctoral research in Paris with a fellowship from the French government and a grant from the Alliance Française de New York.  Professor Duvick came to Valparaiso University in 1986 after teaching at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota.

CONTRIBUTIONS

Professor Duvick’s most recent research involves the French-Canadian fur trader Joseph Bailly de Messein and the history of French traders and soldiers in Indiana in the 17th and 18th centuries. She has translated a volume of the fur-trade account books of Bailly (1774-1832) and has published on the history of the French presence in what is now the U.S. Midwest, including Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois. She has also published and presented on the fiction of Guy de Maupassant and the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud.

Professor Duvick is active in professional organizations, including serving the American Association of Teachers of French as chapter president and as regional representative on the national Executive Council.

In 2015-16, she was president of the Indiana Foreign Language Teachers Association.

She presents regularly on the teaching of French, including the use of authentic material from Francophone Africa, “flipping” the classroom, using role-play and other methods to help develop speaking skills, and the use of popular French music as a pedagogical device.  She also has frequently presented on the history of French in the Midwest, particularly the story of Joseph Bailly and the fur trade in the Great Lakes region.

On campus, Professor Duvick served as chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures for twelve years.  She also was Faculty Senate Chair for eight years.

COURSES TAUGHT

• French Texts and Society: From the Revolution to the Fifth Republic
• Contemporary France
• Francophone African Literature
• Intermediate French
• French Composition and Conversation
• French Phonetics
• Senior Seminar: French-US Relations

MEMBERSHIPS

• American Association of Teachers of French
• Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium
• American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages
• Indiana Foreign Language Teachers Association
• Modern Language Association
• Center for French Colonial Studies

RECOGNITIONS

• AATF Indiana French Teacher of the Year (Collegiate)
• Ordre des Palmes académiques, Chevalier in 2010; Officier in 2018
• Thrivent Fellow
• Phi Beta Kappa

INTERESTS

• 19th-Century French Literature
• French in North American Midwest
• French-Language Pedagogy