My name is Daniel Hodges and I am a senior specializing in Francophone Studies and International Relations at the College of William and Mary. Born in Lafayette, Louisiana, I started learning French at an early age and continued this passion throughout college, first by studying abroad at the Sorbonne in Paris and then by conducting Francophone-based research at Aid Data.
In Junior year, I was awarded the McCormack-Reboussin Scholarship and subsequently conducted documentary-based research in Belgium and France for a senior honors thesis. My project concerns French involvement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and specifically, it focuses on key events in Congolese history to argue that France always had an interest in the country even though it was colonized by King Leopold of Belgium. I examine how French interest has changed over the centuries and focus on recent developments spearheaded by France’s Ministry of Cooperation in order to better understand this de facto metropole-colony relationship.
After graduation from William and Mary, I plan on teaching English in French Guyana and taking law courses at the Université des Antilles et de la Guyane in Cayenne. I will then attend a law school with a joint-degree program and obtain both my French and American law degrees in order to pursue a career in Franco-American intellectual property law.