Julia Osman (’04) will be returning to campus in November to meet with the students currently enrolled in Prof. Pacini’s senior seminar. In addition to speaking on Laclos’ novel Les Liaisons dangereuses (on this year’s syllabus for French 450), Osman will talk about her research and writing methods, and in particular about how she transformed an undergraduate term paper into a publishable article. Her essay, entitled “Laclos’s Novel Approach to Military Crisis and Reform,” is forthcoming in the Spring 2010 edition of the international journal Eighteenth-Century Fiction.
Julia Osman is currently a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is completing her dissertation, “The Citizen Army of Old Regime France,” under the direction of Professor Jay M. Smith. This work examines the transformation of France’s aristocratic army into a citizen army as an Old Regime, rather than a Revolutionary, phenomenon.