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Bloomington French Table
The Bloomington French Table (a.k.a. Table française de Bloomington; registered with IU as The Francophone Club) is a weekly conversation club, welcoming French-speakers of all levels. It meets at the Runcible Spoon between 7pm and 9pm every Tuesday night (year-round). Conversation is not structured but people from diverse backgrounds always find things to talk about.
History
The current French Table descends from number of French conversation groups that existed in Bloomington in recent history:
- The French Conversation Club (FCC), an International Student group at Indiana University's Leo R. Dowling International Center, was founded by Michel circa 2000 (largely for the benefit of numerous SPEA students on exchange from The University of Paris XI).
- The French Appreciation Club (la FAC), an IU Student Organization, sponsored by three professors from IU's Department of French and Italian (Rebecca Wilkin, Rosemary Lloyd and Kevin Rottet).
- La Veri-Table, founded by Daniel J. Petrie.
The French Appreciation Club originally met at Soma but by 2004 were holding joint sessions with Veri-Table at The Runcible Spoon (Thursdays at 6:30 p.m.). In 2005 Alaa Abi-Haidar moved FCC from the International Center to The Runcible Spoon, where the three groups were unified under the name Hebdofrancofolie (and the meeting time was changed to Tuesdays 8-10 p.m.).
In May 2009 Nicolas-Guillaume Best became the group's secrétaire perpetuel then in October 2010, the group re-established its status as an IU student organization under the name the Francophone Club (sponsored by Leandra Lederman, Oliver Professor of Taxation Law at IU's Maurer School of Law). In the 2010s the group's weekly mailing list had over 200 subscribers.
Film Series
The group has also shown francophone films, usually in Swain Hall East 105 and always free. Unlike The Ryder and IU Cinema, whose foreign-language films are shown with English subtitles, Bloomington French Table presents films in French with French subtitles to aid comprehension without the distraction of English text.
Links
Google group page (used for mailing list)
