It has been a privilege to work with Nathalie Buchet Ritchey for thirteen
years. Her generosity, collegiality and elegance were unparalleled. She
was a marvelous and exceptional colleague. Her brilliant scholarship
inspires us to be more demanding of ourselves as scholars, just as she
inspired her students by her own example. Many of her students said she
made a huge difference in their experience at Wellesley. We were lucky to
share her “joie de vivre.”

from Nathalie's collegues in the Department of French at Wellesley College

Nathalie Buchet Ritchey, the distinguished chairperson of the French
Department at Wellesley College, died at the age of 43. Nathalie grew up in Brest but always longed for the city life and associated academic challenges. She was only 16 in 1980 when she received her high school diploma with highest honors.
She then went on to attend l’École Normale Supérieure de Fontenay aux Roses,
and La Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. In 1984, she wrote her Master’s thesis on Virginia Wolf and in 1985 she was granted the title of Professor agrégé in English. Upon moving to the United States, she completed both her Masters and PhD in French Studies at Brown University with a specialty in nineteenth-century French literature.  Her thesis advisor, Naomi Schor, wrote of her in 1992: “Nathalie
has it all: a native speaker of French, a superbly trained product of the fiercely competitive system of the “grandes écoles,” a near-native speaker of English, Nathalie has the potential to become a leading scholar in the field of French.” Indeed, in 2007, she is considered one of the most talented scholars of her generation.
 
Her first book Fictions du scandale: Corps féminin et réalisme romanesque
au dix-neuvième siècle was published in 1998. She was finishing her second
book Révolutions obliques: politique et poétique en France à l’ère
romantique. Prof. Catherine Masson, with the assistance of colleagues, will work toward completing this monograph for publication. Contemporary, Catherine Nesci, Chairperson of the French Department at University of California at Santa Barbara, says, “Although her overarching interpretation is derived from René Girard's thought on violence and the sacred, she presents her own original vision of the scandal embodied by women in nineteenth-century fictions. For me Fictions du scandale remains a model of feminist scholarship and humanistic inquiry.”  In addition, she co-edited a volume on George Sand and wrote numerous articles on nineteenth and twentieth-century French literature and culture on such authors as Flaubert, Sand, Hugo, Chateaubriand, Baudelaire and Proust.

Nathalie has been teaching in the French Department at Wellesley College in 1994 where she received tenure and full professorship status. She was beloved by her colleagues as well as her students. Diana Chapmen Walsh, President of Wellesley College, says that “Wellesley College is deeply shaken by the loss of this brilliant colleague. Nathalie Buchet Ritchey was a meticulous and original scholar of French literary history. Her devotion to the life of the mind inspired and excited her students and earned her the profound respect of all her professional colleagues. She was a strong and gentle leader who brought intensity, intelligence, and elegance to everything she did. She will be sorely missed here, and she will be long remembered.”

An avid traveler as well as researcher, Nathalie spent time in Europe and Asia on a regular basis. Summers were always spent with the family in St. Cyprien in the South of France, her very favorite retreat.

Mrs. Ritchey is survived by her husband, James Ritchey, three children, Camille Rogers (16), Genny Rogers (13), and Charles Rogers (9), and two-step children, Isaiah Ritchey (9) and Wyatt Ritchey (7). Additionally, she leaves her father Jean-Claude Buchet and mother Nelly (Jamin) Buchet of Ploemeur, France; brother Jean-Marc, sister-in-law Marie-Pierre, nephew Arthur (3) of  La Rochelle, France; sister Laurence, brother-in-law Philippe, nieces Cecile (14), Laura (11), and nephew Ethan (2.5) of Rennes, France. Services will be held at First Parish of Westwood in
Westwood at 10:00am, Tuesday, May 29th. Interment will follow.

A fund in the name of Nathalie Ritchey has been created to support cancer research. Contributions should be marked "The Dana Farber Institute GI Research -- Nathalie Ritchey Fund.” Checks should be sent to James Ritchey, 45 Churchill Road, Westwood, MA
02090.

James Ritchey
Catherine Masson, Chair
Professor of French
Wellesley College

Remembering Nathalie Buchet Ritchey
(1963-2007)

            We have all known the terror of arriving alone for the first time at a conference. Alone in a foreign city, somewhat dazed after a long plane trip. This is how I first met Nathalie – she and I had just arrived in Santa Barbara for the Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium in October 1994. We both obviously looked out of our element. “Vous allez au Colloque?” I asked her. She seemed very young and a bit terrified, though she was, as always, beautiful in her elegant French way. “Mais oui,” she answered, relieved to meet someone from her world. We shared a taxi to the hotel and immediately hit it off. I recognized right away that this was someone of great intelligence and, despite her youth, someone with a deep knowledege of the field. She was an Assistant Professor at Wellesley at the time, her book not yet out. She was already interested in George Sand and I encouraged her to submit her work to George Sand Studies,where she did indeed publish two excellent articles (in 1999 and 2003).

            But you all know how strange academic life is. Even though you may live in the same area, as Nathalie and I did, if you don’t teach in the same institution, you never meet. Except at Conferences! And that it how it was for us. We met regularly at the Nineteenth-Century French Studies Conferences; in fact, we used to say, laughingly, that it wasn’t “a real Nineteenth-Century French Studies Conference” until both of us showed up. Our friendship developed then over the years, thanks to these annual conferences. At the last one we attended together – in Tucson, in 2003 – the pair of us snuck off at one point during the lunch break in search of some Indian jewelry. Nathalie loved jewelry and always wore something that reflected her graceful style. Usually “serious” about attending as many of the conference sessions as possible, we felt like two school girls playing hooky on that delicious afternoon. I still wear on a regular basis one of the turquoise necklaces that I purchased with her on that day. Nathalie bought, I remember, some lovely things for her two daughters...
            Conferences were our reunions. One year she was pregnant with her son. The next she had published her book. She was always smiling, open to others, greeting old friends with pleasure. She had an infectious laugh.

            The year 2004 was the bicentennial year of George Sand’s birth – and a year of many cultural events celebrating the writer. For Nathalie and me, it became a year of reciprocal invitations. I was delighted to invite her to give one of the talks at the conference at Cerisy-la-Salle – and her presentation was one of the best. She, in turn, honored me with her invitation to give the inaugural talk at the wonderful Sand Conference she and her colleagues, Catherine Masson, Marie-Paule Tranvouez and Sylvaine Egron-Sparrow, organized so beautifully at Wellesley College

            And then there was the Sand Conference in Dublin in June 2006. It was to be her last. On the day after the conference, I had the great pleasure – and privilege, I realize now in retrospect – to spend the entire day in her company, as a group of us went out to Dun-laoghaire to visit the James Joyce Tower, the place that inspired the opening pages of Ulysses. We took a suburban train and walked to the tower, stopping along the way at a local organic market to buy our lunch and have an impromptu picnic on the grass. It was a gorgeous day. We were all relieved that the conference was successfully behind us. The summer was poised promisingly before us. Nathalie spoke of her happiness with her new husband, of her children and step-children, of the challenges and deep pleasures of her “famille recomposée”. It was the last time I saw her healthy, blooming, radiant with joy in her family and full of writing plans for the future.

            Nathalie was one of the rising young stars in the George Sand group and a brilliant young scholar of 19th-century French literature in general. Her work on the novel explains her particular interests in Balzac, Flaubert and George Sand. That she was able to produce so much first-rate work during her too short carrer is remarkable. In addition to her scholarly talents, which were great, Nathalie was a generous colleague, always ready to share her knowledge and literary insights with others. She was young enough to have been my daughter. And this is how I want to remember her – as a beautiful and genial intellectual adoptive daughter, who was snatched away from us much too soon.

Isabelle Naginski