Ryan Schaller, ELTS PhD candidate in French and Francophone Studies
Schaller was selected by the UCLA Teaching & Learning Center to participate in the 2025-26 Collegium of University Teaching Fellows (CUTF) program. This program provides an opportunity for advanced graduate student instructors to design and teach courses that contribute to expanding undergraduate course offerings. Schaller’s course will be taught in spring 2026: “Old Photos, New Stories: Empire and the Afterlives of Images” (EnglishComp 98TW). The course will look closely at a number of authors and filmmakers from the French-speaking world who return to images produced during the colonial era (e.g., identity photos, postcards, propaganda posters, family photos, paintings) and reuse them in contemporary literature and cinema. The idea is to follow specific images as they move across time and media and to consider how these displacements alter meaning. Professor Lia Brozgal serves as Schaller’s mentor.