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On May 2, 1996 Conversations with Faculty Authors will feature Eleanor P. DeLorme, author of the forthcoming and eagerly awaited book, French Pavilions and The 18th Century Court. Her study, published separately in French and English, includes introductory comments by Jean Feray, Inspecteur Principal Honoraire des Monuments Historiques.

In her book Mrs. DeLorme records the production of architectural structures for the ornamental gardens of the French monarchy. These exquisitely crafted creations replicated temples, kiosks, grottoes, tents and tombs--many with living accommodations. While their purpose was largely aesthetic, sometimes these buildings contained an implicit message, such as the Grand Trianon of the Sun King which suggested by its splendor the intrinsic qualities of an absolute monarchy.

Other architectural structures were built for concerts, such as Marie Antoinette's 'Belvedere'; for meals, as Madame de Pompadour's salon frais; or as the central attraction of gardens, such as the Pavillon Francais in Louis XV's botanical garden. Regardless of their purpose and transitory nature, the very existence of these pavilions provided aesthetic delight and a haven from the mundane.

This book is a long overdue compilation of a subject that previously has received little attention. It emphasizes the important connection between social history, garden design, and architecture.

Eleanor P. DeLorme, CE'78, has been a member of the Art Department Faculty since 1985. She established the first course in the Art of the French Interior (Middle Ages through the 20th century). In addition, she is an Adjunct Curator at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, a member of the Faculty of the Cooper Hewitt/Smithsonian Museum, and a former lecturer at Harvard's Fogg Art Museum. She gives seminars and lectures at various museums and universities in New England and Europe.

This program, sponsored by the Wellesley Friends of the Library, will be held from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m.in the Davis Museum (Collins Cinema).

John Lanchester, Bette Bao Lord, and Honor Moore will be the featured speakers on Tuesday, April 23, 1996, at the Wellesley College Club. This spring program of the Wellesley College Alumnae of Boston will benefit the Wellesley College Library.

John Lanchester's novel, The Debt to Pleasure, tells the story of Tarquin Winot, a world-class chef and scholar. It is a very funny and "diabolically clever" book involving food and a sinister mystery. Lanchester lives in London; his first book is being published in 16 countries.

Bette Bao Lord has followed her best-selling novel Spring Moon with The Middle Heart, in which she demonstrates the emotional intensity and the exactness of historical detail that characterize her earlier work. This story focuses on the ties among two men and a woman being worked out against the historical events that created modern China. Born in Shanghai and married to an American diplomat, Lord is particularly able to bridge these two cultures.

In The White Blackbird: A Grandaughter's Life of the Painter Margaret Sargent, Honor Moore pieces together the fascinating and unexpected story of a woman struggling against alcoholism, depression and a marital breakdown. Sargent broke away from the constraints of a privileged Boston family to become an artist. After having achieved fame with her sculptures and dramatic highly colored paintings, she abruptly stopped painting at the age of 44.

Honor Moore's appearance here coincides with an exhibit of Margaret Sargent's paintings at the College Davis Museum. A docent-guided our of the Sargent exhibition will begin at 2:00 p.m. on April 23.

The Authors on Stage program begins that day at 10:00 a.m., preceded by coffee at 9:45. Admission is $12.00. Following their talk, the authors will sign their books (available on-site at a discount). As the last several programs have been sold out and some people have been turned away at the door, anyone interested in this program is urged to buy tickets in advance or make reservations ahead by calling Barbara Levings at (617) 235- 7644.

Working closely with the Education Department, the Library has begun a collection of curriculum resource materials to support students in Wellesley's teacher education programs. This collection is being developed as a direct response to the expansion of the teacher certification program at Wellesley. Until recently, the College certified teachers only at the secondary level. With approval from the Common- wealth of Massachusetts for the Education Department to extend teacher preparation to the elementary level, the number of students seeking certification has grown.

Wellesley College students are joined in these programs by MIT students who cross-register at Wellesley to earn teacher certification. The expansion of this program is matched by the explosion of publishing in the field of education: the number, quality and variety of curriculum resources available for children and young adults are increasing rapidly.

The goal of the new education curriculum collection is to provide student teachers in both elementary and secondary education with access to materials that they can use for planning lessons and take with them into the classrooms in which they teach. The collection will also be useful to students more generally interested in curriculum development.

Located on the third floor of Clapp Library, the curriculum collection houses children's literature; curriculum kits; textbooks in different subject ares; samples of publisher series of reading, science, mathematics and social sciences texts; and other educational materials. In the future the collection will also include educational software, videotapes and other teaching media.

The initial phase of building the collection has been funded by contributions from the Library, the Education Department and the President'sOffice. The Houghton Mifflin Company and Prentice Hall have generously donated texts, series and teaching titles. Friends of the Library in particular are invited to visit the collection in the Clapp Library.

The Library's video collection now contains close to 2000 titles on video cassette and laserdisk. Cultivating this collection from less than a hundred titles in 1992 to its current size has been the Library's response to faculty demand for video materials for teaching and research. Video is a very heavily used resource for instruction in a wide variety of disciplines.

Students of foreign languages view films produced in France, Italy, Germany, Japan, China, and Russia for exercise in listening comprehension. The Library has purchased a small selection of films without subtitles for this purpose. Films from other cultures, however, are also cultural artifacts; they show how those cultures differ from our own. Foreign films are primary sources for historians, sociologists, and anthropologists.

One example in a Wellesley course is French 240, "Images of Women in French Film", taught by Professor Anne Gillain. Using French films from the 30s to the present, Gillain's course studies the changing images of women in French cinema. Both the fictional construction of female characters by the director and the stars who portray women in film are analyzed. Wellesley courses with a similar approach include "Images of Africana People through Cinema" in the Africana Studies Department, and "Strong Women in Film", offered as part of the Writing Program.

In psychology and sociology, social science film is used extensively in a variety of courses both as an object of study and to instruct. Films documenting human behavior are used to study language acquisition, personality disorders, and human development. The general social psychology course this semester (Psychology 210, taught by Professor Robin Akert) incorporates several videos which document how people are manipulated by the media. Two of these films Still Killing us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women and Slim Hopes: Advertising and the Obsession with Thinness, were made by Jean Kilbourne, '64. Similar courses with a somewhat broader perspective, taught by Associate Professor Tom Cushman, Sociology, include the topics of propaganda, persuasion, and the subliminal messages of film and media.

Salem Mekuria, Assistant Professor of Art, teaches several film courses. Her courses have included "Women Film Makers: Resisting/Deflecting/Subverting the Gaze" for which theLibrary acquired many films directed by women such as Dorothy Arzner (The Bride Wore Red), Agnes Varda (Cleo from 5 to 7), Chantal Akerman (Toute une nuit) and Jane Campion (The Piano). In beginning, intermediate, and advanced video making and production, Mekuria allows students to make their own documentary and narrative films.

The demand for a comprehensive and accessible video collection at the College has been overwhelming. At this point it shows little sign of diminishing. Even though the Library now has an excellent core collection of materials, we are no longer sure that the collection size will level out within a year or two. New applications for video in instruction, as well as in future new media technologies, make this an exciting collection to watch.