Mariah Devereux Herbeck, professor of French in the Department of World Languages, presented her paper, “Loss as Presence: Élise Girard’s Sidonie au Japon (2023),” at the South Atlantic Modern Languages Association annual conference, held in Atlanta, Georgia, Nov. 6–8, 2025. In her paper, she demonstrated how — through slow pacing, moments of silence, understated special effects, and even surprising touches of comedy — Girard’s recent film reimagines the traditional ghost story by reframing mourning and loss. Furthermore, she highlighted stylistic choices that situate the film within a broader tradition of women’s innovative cinematic responses to death and absence, with echoes of icons from Chantal Akerman to Agnès Varda.