This area’s higher educational institutions play an important role in the rich array of cultural and artistic events that characterize “season.” In particular, New College of Florida has offered many programs, often in collaboration with other organizations, honoring the history and heritage of multiple cultures. These include the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies in January, Black History Month in February, New College New Music concerts, and an exciting and very diverse array of Mellon projects in the arts and humanities.

One of the most interesting and unusual is Le Projet Colette Sarasota, a community-wide celebration spanning virtually all the arts, and two languages, of the provocative and prolific French writer Colette and the centennial of her 1920 novel Chéri.

New College faculty and staff partnered with Ringling College of Art and Design, Alliance Française de Sarasota, Selby Public Library, Florida Studio Theatre, Marine Selby Botanical Gardens, and C’est la Vie restaurant to present a series of speakers, book club discussions, movie screenings, theatrical performances, archival displays and a Burgundy-themed dinner.

Colette, who lived from 1873 to 1954, was a novelist, journalist, actress, and a liberated woman in a changing France. She influenced – and was influenced by – literary greats such as Edith
Wharton and Gertrude Stein. Her novels ranged from the semi-autobiographical Claudine series to the 1920 publication of Chéri to perhaps her most famous work, Gigi, which was published in 1944 and turned into an Oscar-winning movie in 1958.

The writer’s brilliance still resonates with modern audiences and literary scholars. We have been fortunate to welcome professors from across the country to New College to speak about the many interesting facets of Colette’s life and writing career. They included MIT Professor Emerita Isabelle de Courtivron, Arizona State University Professor Frédéric Canovas, Université de Rennes 2 Professor Marie-Françoise Berthu-Courtivron, and our own Associate Professor of Music Maribeth Clark. We were also honored to welcome the Florida Studio Theatre Artists to campus to perform Colette’s whimsical 1905 play, Barks & Purrs, in our Black Box Theatre.

While the coronavirus has many of us avoiding large gatherings and live performances, we can still enjoy the pleasure of reading a good book. As Collette herself once said, “Books, books, books. It was not that I read so much. I read and re-read the same ones. But all of them were necessary to me.”

Dr. Donal O’Shea is president of New College of Florida.