Congratulations to Professor Daniel Maroun, our Director of Undergraduate Studies and Undergraduate Advisor for French, for winning this year's Lawrence R. Schehr Memorial Award. In his essay, “Do Black Lives Matter in France? Agency, Culpability and Police Brutality,” he offers a compelling analysis of the linguistic structuring of police brutality as depicted in French newspapers, contending that the discourse and language uses by these media entities shift agency away from police forces. He has been invited to publish an expanded version of the winning essay, after further peer review, in a forthcoming issue of Contemporary French Civilization.

The Annual Lawrence R. Schehr Memorial Award honors the best conference paper submitted to the journal by a junior colleague in the field of contemporary French and Francophone civilization and cultural studies. This year has marked the 10th anniversary of this award, enacted in remembrance of our former colleague, Professor Larry Schehr, a scholar of international stature in the field of nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature and gay, queer, and gender studies who passed away in Urbana, Illinois, in June 30, 2011.