The French Studies Program at Cornell is launching its first annual French Festival on campus from Nov. 5 through Nov. 23.

Called La Quinzaine, which means fortnight, the festival will include two weeks of lectures, movies, round table discussions, films, recitations, culinary events and concerts.

The festival will kick off with a distribution of 200 pounds of French bread, scheduled to arrive in Ithaca by plane from Paris Nov. 5.

"The supplier," said Steven L. Kaplan, Goldwin Smith Professor of History and co-director of the French Studies Program, "is France's most celebrated baker, Lionel Poilane. The loaves are huge, round country loaves that Poilane is donating to the festival."

Buttered slices of the rustic bread will be available in French classes and in front of Willard Straight Hall from noon to 4 p.m., Nov. 5, while supplies last.

The theme of this year's festival is "Frenchness-Otherness," and it will include discussions of such "otherness" themes as feminism, homosexuality, blackness, Islamic/Arab immigration and Jewishness as they encounter and influence France and French culture. Lectures, most in English, will include such topics as: "Women and Resistance: Reappraisals in French History"; "How the French See Frenchness Through American Eyes"; "The Archeology of That Silence: The Problem of Queer Speech in the French Theoretical Tradition." French films will be shown, including Tavernier'sCapitaine Conan and Godard's Contempt.

The two-week festival will end with a cabaret night in the Willard Straight Hall Memorial Room, Sunday, Nov. 23, featuring songs of France and Quebec, with singers Frederique and Jean Brassard.

For more information, contact Kaplan at (607) 255-2311, or Anne E. Berger, associate professor of Romance studies and co-director of the French Studies Program, at (607) 255-1380.