Why Study Abroad?
- register students in courses taught in French alongside French students;
- expand cultural experience through life with a host family, internships, and cultural events; and
- provide academic and logistical support, such has applying for the carte de séjour, facilitating the opening of a bank account, and enrolling in courses.
Affiliated Programs
Christian Destremau Scholarship Fund
Christian Destremau is one of the most loyal supporters of Bard’s French Studies Program. His generosity has enabled us to send our most motivated students to study in France. A number of these students are now pursuing graduate work in the best French departments around the country. Destremau is a freelance French historian. His coauthored Louis Massignon: Le Cheikh Admirable (written in 2005 with Jean Moncelon) won the Grand Prix de la biographie de l'Académie française. The book documents the life of one of Lawrence of Arabia’s great rivals, a legendary professor at the Collège de France whose writings about Islam remain essential today. His most recent book is Ce que savaient les Alliés (What the Allies Knew), the gripping account of the thousands of secret messages—unearthed by Destremau in the British Library—written by the German and Japanese during World War II. Destremau’s discoveries and daring interpretations are creating a sensation in France; they are already forcing us to reassess what world leaders and politicians really knew. Destremau has been very active with human rights and has volunteered in Pakistan and Afghanistan.