18 February 2005

Longwood to hold first Joan of Arc Week

Two programs on Joan of Arc, Longwood University's patron saint, on Thursday, March 3, will highlight the university's first Joan of Arc Week.

Dr. Nadia Margolis, an independent scholar and renowned specialist in Joan of Arc and Christine de Pizan studies (15 th-century women), will speak at 12:30 p.m. at the Longwood Center for the Visual Arts on Joan of Arc as Big-Screen Heroine: Her History on Film through Select Excerpts, 1898-1999. Her talk, part of the LCVA's Brown Bag lunch series, will include film clips.

Dr. Margolis will give a slide lecture at 4 p.m. that day in Wygal Auditorium on Joan of Arc inHistory - Trial by Passion, followed by a reception in the nearby Haga Room. In both programs, Dr. James S. Noblitt, a professor of Romance languages at the University of North Carolina, will add comments and moderate the question & answer session.

Dr. Margolis currently teaches graduate courses at the University of Massachusetts and is the author of Joan of Arc in History, Literature, and Film: A Select, Annotated Bibliography. Also as part of Joan of Arc Week, which is being sponsored by the president's office, she will speak to anthropology, history and French classes. In addition, Greenwood Library will display scholarly books by Dr. Margolis as well as publications and memorabilia from the library's collections on Joan of Arc.

"The medieval Joan of Arc offers moderns a powerful model of behavior," said Dr. Raymond Cormier, visiting professor of French, who is coordinating Joan of Arc Week. "Her self-sacrifice, patriotism, and persistence are especially relevant to those of us at Longwood who espouse the vision of 'Citizen Leaders.' She is the original femme engagée."

Joan of Arc Week is related to the university's Founders Day, which is March 5.