Jeanne Varney Pleasants

Jeanne Varney Pleasants (24 June 1898 – 16 February 1986) was a French-born phonetician and educator. She spent several decades working at Columbia University and Barnard College, where she was a professor of French and started the institutions' first language labs. She was a 1947 Guggenheim Fellow and published the book Etudes sur l'E Muet in 1956.

Jeanne Vidon was born to Maria (née De Croux) and Ferdinand Vidon^[1] on 24 June 1898 in Évian-les-Bains, a small town in the department of Haute-Savoie.^[2] She studied at the University of Paris, where she obtained a teachers' degree in 1923 and a PhD in comparative linguistics in 1933.^[2] She briefly studied in the United States, where she obtained her BA from the University of California in 1926.^[2]

Back in France, she taught at the Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie (1927–1933).^[1]), as well as at the Institut de Phonétique de Grenoble.^[3] In 1933, she started working at Barnard College as a lecturer. She was later promoted to assistant professor in 1938 and associate professor in 1948.^[4] In 1947, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.^[5] In 1958, she was promoted to full professor,^[4] and in 1969, she was promoted to professor emerita of French.^[6] In addition to Columbia, she also worked as a professor at the École libre des hautes études, starting in 1942.^[1]

In 1954, she started the first language labs at Columbia University, including at Barnard.^[7] In 1956, Barnard College's foreign language studio was inaugurated in her honor.^[8] In 1958, she became director of another new language lab at Columbia, with pronunciation practice running on staff-made audio tapes.^[9] Michael Riffaterre, who was a doctoral student and later professor at Columbia, once worked with her on poetry recordings.^[10] She also worked as a language lab development consultant in other educational institutions.^[7] The Modern Language Journal called her "a pioneer in the use of recording equipment in foreign language study".^[6]

She also supported using literature for language education, particularly pronunciation, instead of the audio-lingual method,^[6] and she once devised a high school-level curriculum on the Comédie-Française theatre.^[2] In 1961, she was involved in the foundation of the journal Teaching Language Through Literature, as one of the editors.^[7][6] She also became vice-president of the New York State Federation of Foreign Language Teachers in 1956 and later president of the American Association of Teachers of French in 1958.^[1]

In addition to language education, she also wrote about phonetics.^[6] Her book Etudes sur l'E Muet, about the e muet in French pronunciation, was published in 1956.^[11][12] Among her education-oriented works include a French education textbook named Pronunciation in French.^[2] Additionally, she was a editorial board member for The French Review  and Word.^[6]

She was twice married: to Charles Edward Varney from 1921 until their divorce in 1946, and to Samuel A. Pleasants from 1948 until his death in 1973.^[2] She had one son.^[4] Pleasants died on 16 February 1986, aged 87, at Memphis, Tennessee, where she lived at the time.^[4]