URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Fall_2019_Melissa-McCarthy

“That is the beauty of having students from diverse areas of study and backgrounds.”

- Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp

Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp embodies the University of Rhode Island’s (URI) mission to cultivate ideas that transform the way we understand our world, each other and our differences. “What we see represented on screen shapes our thoughts and our mentalities about others,” she says. Her research interests are interdisciplinary, focusing on contemporary French cinema and television primarily in terms of representations of immigrants and minority-ethnic populations in France. Through her research, the associate professor of French has explored how the narratives,

experiences, and identities of North African women in France are communicated through French cinema. Her book on the subject, Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France (Liverpool University Press, 2015), examines cinematic representations of Muslim women from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia in documentaries, short films, made-for-television films, and feature films. Many of the films have not been the subject of any other research. “This book brought together my interests in film, immigration, and identity in France” she says.

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