Armine Mortimer may have retired Dec. 31, 2009, but her work is far from over.
The professor emeritus of French literature and criticism continues to write, speak at conferences and serve on committees for doctoral dissertations. She’s published a translation of “Mysterious Mozart,” by Philippe Sollers, and is working on another.
Mortimer’s book, “For Love or For Money: Balzac’s Rhetorical Realism” is now in production.
She now has time for another lifelong passion: music. She’s played violin since age 10, and has played for the Champaign-
Urbana Symphony since 1979.
Her years of practice and performance paid off in a new way recently, when she was accepted into the elite Tuesday Morning Music Club, a 98-year-old association of female musicians. Members periodically perform as soloists or in small ensembles.
Mortimer also enjoys the classical music series at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts and loves to see films at the Art Theatre.
Originally from Weston, Mass., Mortimer found what would become her life’s work in French culture and language early on.
“I was the exchange student from my high school to Rombas in eastern France. We had an affiliation that had started in 1950, and each year a senior went in each direction and spent the school year in the other country. I loved my time there and learned to speak French like a native, especially since I had an excellent high school French teacher, Mrs. (Theresa) Zamprogno, who had taught us all the grammar in two years,” Mortimer said.
Her visit to Rombas would pave the way for her future studies.
She attended Radcliffe College and majored in French.
“I was very good at learning languages. In college, I took two years of German language courses, beginning and intermediate, then two advanced German literature courses in my senior year, and I still can read German,” she said.
She graduated in 1964, and attended graduate school at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she studied French literature, finishing her master’s degree in 1970. She earned her Ph.D. and M.Phil. from Yale University in 1974.
She began at the UI later that year.
“I wanted to be at a place that had good resources,” she said, adding that the UI’s library and resources for faculty were impressive to a new hire, and still are.
“There’s very good support for research, and it was satisfying teaching grad students,” she said.
Mortimer taught most of her courses in French rather than in English, because in order to understand the French authors and their philosophies, it’s necessary to immerse students into the language itself so that they learn to “write, think and interpret French, becoming competent” in the language.
In addition to her teaching and research, Mortimer also served as head of the French department from 2004 to 2009 and was associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Science in the early ’90s.
Although there’s “less of an accent on one’s own work,” Mortimer said the chance to serve in the leadership roles gave her an opportunity to be of service and support to staff members and students – something she greatly enjoyed.
Mortimer’s own studies included work on Roland Barthes, who was a theoretician; and on Balzac, whose best-known work is “The Human Comedy.”
She and her husband, Rudolf, live in Urbana.
