Violaine White, Ph.D.

Dr. Violaine White is Associate Teaching Professor of French and serves as the French Program Coordinator. She is also the co-director of the Study-Abroad Program in Strasbourg. 

Dr. White received her Ph.D. in French Studies from Washington University in St. Louis with a Graduate Certificate in Language Instruction in December 2012. Before coming to the United States, she completed a Maîtrise de Langues, Littératures et Civilisations Étrangères at the Université Catholique de l’Ouest in Angers, France, with a one-year study abroad experience at the University of Missouri - St. Louis. 

Dr. White’s research focuses on modern and contemporary French literature. Her dissertation titled La Poésie du maquis : Le lieu dans Fureur et Mystère de René Char designates insubordination as a key element in the interpretation of the literal and symbolic position of Char’s World War II poetic discourse. Dr. White’s latest research and her seminars have furthered her reflection on the notion of maquis toward a wider inquiry on the poetics of landscape and radical discourses emerging from rural and marginal spaces across time and space.

At UMSL, Dr. White serves as French Program Coordinator. She teaches French language, literature, and culture classes at all levels of acquisition and in all delivery modes. The courses she has created systematize diversity and inclusion thanks to the endorsement of Oana Panaïté’s dialogical approach which tackles essential questions through at least two cultural lenses and combats ethnocentrism. She has adopted this approach in all her courses, from her intermediate-level reading class, to her Introduction to Academic Communication and upper-level and graduate seminars on topics such as care studies, disobedience, immigration, memories of slavery, tourism, and war. Dr. White regularly presents her curriculum development efforts at regional and national conferences. 

Dr. White is a strong advocate for language learning and educators’ professional development. Since 2013, she has served on the executive board of the Greater St. Louis Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF), for which she now acts as President. In 2020-2021, she was Conference Chair for the Foreign Language Association of Missouri (FLAM). At UMSL, she has served on the Faculty Senate and multiple committees such as the University Committee on Recruitment, Admissions, Retention, and Student Financial Aid and the Senate Committee on Academic Advisory and Assessment. She was the founding Faculty Liaison for Lingua, UMSL’s language student organization. She is also an Advanced Credit Program Liaison for high school French teachers in the St. Louis region.

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