Meet Visiting Assistant Professor of French at Colgate University, Jacob Abell
“I am currently Visiting Assistant Professor of French at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. Since graduating from Vanderbilt in June 2021, my work in the CMAP program continues to enrich my research agenda, teaching experience, and public-facing projects. In my time at CMAP, I co-founded the Ouray International Film Festival, an institute that now invites dozens of filmmakers from around the world to the Colorado Rockies each year for four days of panels, film screenings, and workshops. My own short film Speak Again (co-directed with Jared LaCroix) was recently accepted as one of ten films in the Short to Feature Lab based in Malibu; Jared and I travelled there in August 2021 to expand our short film into a feature-film script with mentorship from Sundance award-winning director Jim Cummings. I recently had a book chapter proposal accepted for an essay collection on a group of Belgian filmmakers, a project which will be inspired and enriched by my CMAP coursework. In the classroom at Colgate, I integrate discussions of media studies derived from CMAP seminars, ranging from explorations of medieval manuscripts with my senior students to discussions about digital media in my intermediate language courses. In each of these projects, I constantly draw upon the concepts, texts, and skills that I gained through the CMAP program. ”