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Department of
French and Italian

Alexis Finet

Assistant Professor of the Practice of French & Italian
French Language Program Coordinator

Born and raised in the countryside of the 'old' Orleans (France), Alexis Finet has taught languages and music over the last two decades and to audiences of all ages, nationally and internationally: in France, Colombia, Japan, South Mississippi, North Florida, and Tennessee, since he has joined the Vanderbilt Department of French & Italian in the Fall of 2022. 

An award-winning language instructor and musician, the depth of his curious endeavors led his research to explore variegated domains: 

  • As a pedagogue directing the French language sequence (novice-intermediate levels), he reflects and writes on innovative language teaching methodologies and the place of cultural studies in the language curriculum such as the implementation of ludo-pedagogical contexts to optimize the cognitive engagement of language learners. He has been delving deep into the most current research and trends related to assessment, course and curriculum design and evaluation, proficiency, phonetics, and second language learning and pedagogy, and grading systems, to only cite the most pressing endeavors. His work has also extended to local, national, and international collaborations, conferences, and many additional intellectual exchanges. 

  • To best understand the current issues related to technology in language pedagogy, he is co-directing the AI and the Human seminar at Vanderbilt’s Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities during AY 2025-2026, for the second year onwards. 

  • As a scholar of Francophonie and a firm believer of the importance of understanding language everywhere it evolves, his work explores Congolese cultures, and more particularly novel, song, and film of and around the region of the Congo Basin and the European Congolese diaspora. 

  • Also a linguist by training and as a translator, he elucidates contexts of Amazonian realities working with Spanish, French, and English through a descriptivist approach, through projects such as the translations of Juan Carlos Galeano’s Cuentos de Amazonia and Aforismos, or Fernando Herrera’s Breviario de Santana from Spanish to French and Spanish to English). His joint efforts in both Spanish and music have led him to sit as an editorial member of the Colombian journal Presencias, Saberes, y Expresiones published by the Universidad de Pamplona (Colombia) since 2022. 

  • As a musician, he regularly performs on the flute, from Caribbean and South American music and songs to Celtic, but also Classical music in which he was initially trained at the Orléans Conservatoire (France) and at the University of Southern Mississippi. If you’re lucky, you may stumble upon him playing at a local sesiún! His most recent Vanderbilt project was a series of performance of Ghibli Music and other pieces by French and Japanese composers performed with international guest pianist Guillaume Masson, accompanied by ikebana and haiku written by Japanese faculty Hideko Shimizu, and students reciting haiku and French poems. 

 

Representative publications 

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Finet, Alexis (2025). “‘Indépendance Cha Cha,’ From Kabasele to Baloji: Manifest of a Rising Kongo Youth.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 29 (04): 526–39.  

 

Finet, Alexis. Translation J.C. Galeano: Aforismos for the UNESCO sponsored event in France in April 2024 translated from Spanish to French. Credits here. 

 

Finet, Alexis & Dupuis, Chanelle. Translation of selected poems from (editor) Jeremy Larochelle’s ¡Más aplausos para la lluvia! from Spanish to English (various authors). The Global South, Vol. 16, n°1, Fall 2023, pp. 81-81, 156-157, 170-171. Available here. 

 

Finet, Alexis & Dupuis, Chanelle. Translation from Spanish to French of the subtitles of Dr. J.C. Galeano’s movie El Río, selected for the 2023 15th Festival du Film Vert in Lausanne (Switzerland). 

 

Finet, Alexis. “El Agua Vive! Visions of the Real in the Peruvian Amazon as seen through J. Galeano’s work.” Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, in Commentary, Poetics for the More than Human World. April, 30, 2020. Accessible here. 

 

Finet, Alexis. “Entité(s) et Identité : le cas de la rumba congolaise.” Proceedings of the Tenth Mandé Studies Association, Conference on Intersecting Identities – Coexistence, Conflict, and Reconciliation in West Africa and Its Diasporas, August 2-6, 2017, Grand-Bassam, Ivory Coast. pp. 403-408. 

 

Representative conference presentations 

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March 2025. NeMLA panel: AI in Second Language Education: Promises, Perils, Paradigms, and Perspectives. Title of paper: “The French interpersonal writing competence with chatbots, an hallucination? Students’ perceptions and ethical considerations.” Presenter and panel co-director. 

  

January 2025. MLA New Orleans. Gamifying Generation Z’s Language Learning: Why, When, How? Online. 

  

December, 12th 2024. ASA Chicago. The letter “C” or the letter “K”?: Reading Tchicaya U Tam’si’s poetry & Kolinga’s Kongo Through Sony Labou Tansi’s Postcolonial Thought. 

  

June 16th, 2024. Association des Professeurs de Français des Universités et Collèges Canadiens colloquium.  Montréal, Québec. Title of paper: « ChatGPT, as-tu une conscience ? – Comprendre les limites de ChatGPT pour l’écriture. » 

  

March 7-10th, 2024. NeMLA. Boston, MA. Roundtable organized: Rethinking the Modern Language Curriculum: SLA, Technology, and Culture. Title of paper: Rethinking Grading Systems. 

  

February 21-25th, 2024. 20th-21st century French & Francophone Studies Colloquium. Philadelphia, PA. “Indépendance Cha Cha”, From Grand Kalle to Baloji: Manifest of a Rising Kongo Youth. 

  

December 2nd, 2023. 66th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association (ASA). Presentation with Congo Research Network. Presentation of forthcoming publication. San Francisco, CA. Title of paper: Seeing Central African Renaissance in Baloji’s Peau de Chagrin/Bleu de Nuit. 

  

May 2023. 48th Annual Meeting of the African Literature Association (ALA). Knoxville, TN. Title of Paper: Kolinga’s “Kongo” as transnationalist discourse. 

  

April 2023. Winthrop-King Conference: Writing the first peoples of the Americas: Quebec, Florida, Amazonia, the Caribbean. Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL. Title of Paper: Are Amazonian realities translatable in text? 

  

March 2023. NeMLA’s 54th Annual Convention. Niagara Falls, NY. Title of paper: What’s in a grade?  The fight against Eff Gradus: A gamified approach to teach lower-level French. 

  

November 2022. 65th annual meeting of the African Studies Association. Philadelphia, PA. Title of paper: Congo in the Caribbean: Examining the Polysemy of Congo Through the Lens of Cross-Atlantic thinking. 

  

March 2022. Northeastern Modern Language Association 53rd annual convention. Baltimore, MD. Co-Organized panel: Citizenship, Identity, and Belonging in the Francophone World. Title of paper: One, two, three Congos? Sound and Liquid to de-colonialize Congo. 

  

February 2022. 25th Annual Conference of the Americas. Discussion panel on J.C. Galeano’s movie El Río. Online conference. 

  

July 2021. Central African Studies 2021 International Conference. Theme: Central Africa’s Renaissance, 1960-2020. Title of paper: Baloji’s and Kongo Renaissance through an Analysis of Peau de Chagrin/Bleu de Nuit. Online conference. 

  

March 2021. Northeastern Modern Language Association 52nd annual and first virtual convention. Online conference. Co-organized panel: Aquatic Tropes in Francophone Postcolonial Cultures. Title of paper: Seeing /kongo/ through Baloji’s Peau de Chagrin/Bleu de Nuit. 

  

November 2018. 30th annual conference of the Haitian Studies Association. Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Organized panel : La voix et la présence de la femme traumatisée : L’entendre chez Danticat, Orcel et Miano ? Title of paper: Deux regards sur le mutisme et la figure de la prostituée – Les immortelles de M. Orcel et Memorias de mis putas tristes de G. García Marquez. 

  

May 2018. 12th Conference of the Hungarian Association for American Studies. Budapest, Hungary. Title of paper: Rethinking Postcolonialism through A. Waberi’s realitopia Aux Etats-Unis d’Afrique. 

  

August 2017. Tenth International Conference of the Mande Studies Association. Grand Bassam, Ivory Coast. Title of paper: Entité et identité(s): le cas de la rumba congolaise.