Modern Language Association Honors Jody Enders With Lois Roth Award

Jody Enders, professor of French at the University of California Santa Barbara, has been awarded the Lois Roth Award for a collection of historic French plays she translated into English. Dr. Enders has published four total collections, the third of which, Immaculate Deception and Further Ribaldries: Yet Another Dozen Medieval French Farces in Modern English (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022) won her the award from the Modern Language Association.

“It’s especially rewarding to have been recognized by a foundation that exists to promote and encourage dialogue across national, linguistic and cultural boundaries,” Dr. Enders said.

In 2011, Dr. Enders published her first volume of translated plays, The Farce of the Fart and Other Ribaldries (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). Each collection she has published so far contains 12 plays popular in France roughly 500 years ago that she translated into modern English. She is currently working on her fifth volume.

“I have plans for maybe eight volumes total,” said Dr. Enders “The farces were marketplace theater, and while virtually unknown to us, they were extremely popular in their day. More than 200 extant plays survive in France, which is more than in any other European vernacular.”

The Modern Language Association previously honored Dr. Enders with the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Literature for her study Rhetoric and the Origins of Medieval Drama. Speaking to her recent award, the association stated her “volume masterfully unites technical translation prowess, scholarly rigor and guffaw-inducing creative humor that capture the timbre of these uncomfortably entertaining plays.”

Dr. Enders holds a bachelor’s degree in French and Russian as well as a master’s degree in French literature from the University of Virginia. She received her Ph.D. in romance languages from the University of Pennsylvania.