We Asked Young Alumni, ‘What Class Rocked Your World?’

FREN 1010: Elementary French I

Professor: Elizabeth Groff

If you had told Class of 2020 alumna Kathryn Grant when she was a first-year student that she would graduate from UVA fluent in French, she wouldn’t have believed you.

Initially on a pre-medicine track, when course registration opened during the fall of her first year, Grant was reluctantly prepared to sign up for another semester of biology.

“I remember going to my parents and asking, ‘Do you think it would be strange if I switched to French instead?’” she said. Without prior experience with the language, Grant took Elementary French I, an entry-level course scheduled to meet every weekday.

“You get so much more immersion and opportunities to speak the language when you meet every day, which is really important when learning a new language,” said Grant, who went on to major in French and minor in sociology. “Because of that, my class got really close, and we felt so much more comfortable speaking with each other.”

By the end of the semester, Grant was hooked. During that summer, she taught herself the next course level of French and passed a placement test, granting her acceptance into FREN 2010.

Her love for the language grew when she worked as an au pair for a family in Lille, France. “I got back from my three months of being an au pair and thought, ‘That’s what I want to do,’” she said.

At UVA, Grant lived in La Maison Française, a historic student residence and center for French culture where students must speak French. Living there, Grant again found herself immersed in the language.

Today, Grant teaches private French lessons through a platform called Italki, where she meets with students from across the globe, ranging in age from 2 to 91.

“I’m just so grateful that I took introductory French, even though I wasn’t sure if it was the most reasonable thing to do at the time,” she said, “because it worked out pretty well.”

FREN 1010 will be offered in the spring with alternate professors.

ENLT 2547: Black Writers in America: U.S. Civil Rights Movement and Fiction

Professor: Deborah McDowell

Knowing she wanted to expand her knowledge of Black history, Carrington Epperson decided to major in African American studies at UVA. The 2018 graduate took Black Writers in America: U.S. Civil Movement and Fiction to fulfill her second writing requirement in the College of Arts & Sciences.

The course focused on the literature published during the Civil Rights Movement. By examining the works of Black writers, Epperson said she significantly improved her research and analysis skills.

A portion of the course was spent analyzing fictional works – a literary genre that professor Deborah McDowell, the former director of UVA’s Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies, told students often unveils the truth behind a historical era.

Epperson took the course in 2015, marking the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Epperson was able to participate in a study seminar of the American South led by the late Julian Bond, a key figure of the Civil Rights Movement and history professor emeritus at UVA.

Bond led students on a weeklong road trip of significant historical sites of the Civil Rights Movement. Epperson and the group visited where the Montgomery Bus Boycott was planned and executed, marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of “Bloody Sunday,” and met former U.S. Rep. John Lewis.

In terms of the class itself, Epperson said McDowell’s approach to the course material left her with a different perspective on the Civil Rights Movement.

“[McDowell] wasn’t there to sugarcoat things,” Epperson said. “We all had to recognize the truth because we went through the historical timeline, bit by bit, without missing any details.”

While McDowell will not teach this course in the spring, Epperson advises students to consider taking an African American studies course at UVA.

“A lot of times, schools growing up did not teach Black history,” Epperson said. “I recommend anyone to take an African American studies course because you will never understand how much you weren’t taught about it before.”