About the Faculty
| Thomas Kavanagh Department Chair |
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Augustus R. Street Professor of French Has published on eighteenth-century literature and culture, chance and the Enlightenment, literature and the visual arts, narrative and its social implications, and French cinema. Recently published a book tracing the cultural history of gambling in French culture from the Middle Ages to the present and is currently working on a study of "Epicurean Stoicism" in eighteenth-century French literature. |
| Maurice Samuels DGS (on leave Spring 10) |
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Professor of French Nineteenth-century literature and culture. Has published on romanticism and realism, historical representation, modernity, and visual culture. Recently finished a book on France's first Jewish fiction writers. Currently working on French Philosemitism, or positive representations of Jews in modern French culture. |
| R. Howard Bloch Acting DGS Spring 10 |
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Sterling Professor of French, Chair Humanities Program Has written on a variety of topics in and around medieval literature and social history, legal, economic, familial, and political institutions, humor and the fabliaux, gender and the rise of Western romantic love and the history of the discipline of Medieval Studies. His most recent book on the Bayeux Tapestry has been published by Random House. |
| Edwin M. Duval DUS |
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Professor of French "Renaissance literature, classical humanism, and poetry. His publications include three books on form and meaning in the works of Rabelais, and many articles on Rabelais and other French Renaissance authors, including Marot, Marguerite de Navarre, Scève, Du Bellay, Ronsard, Montaigne, and d’Aubigné. He is currently researching a book on the evolving relationship between musical form, poetic genres, and logical articulation in French lyric from the late fourteenth to the late sixteenth century." |
PROFESSORS |
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| Ora Avni | |
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Professor of French (Spring 10) l9th and 20th century literature. Has published on poetry and narrative. Interdisciplinary and cultural approaches to literature, in particular, philosophy and history. Currently working on literature and history. Has directed dissertations on various aspects of l9th and 20th century literature and culture. |
| Marie-Hélène Girard | |
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Visiting Professor of French and Art History Professor en délégation from the University of Picardie. 19th century French literature and comparative literature. Interdisciplinary approach to literature. Has published on literature and the visual arts, travel literature and cultural relationships between France and Italy. Currently editing Theophile Gautier's Salons and art literature. |
| Alice Kaplan | |
 ©Catherine Hélie |
John M. Musser Professor of French Her research interests include World War II and post-war France, literature and law, biography/autobiography, and French cultural studies. Recent courses have focused on theories of the author (Proust, Céline, Camus); trials and "causes célèbres"; and the Second World War in film and fiction. Work in progress includes a collection of Camus's essential Algerian writings and portraits of American women in Paris. |
| Christopher L. Miller | |
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Frederick Clifford Ford Professor of French and African and Afro-American Studies Francophone black African and Caribbean literature; literary and anthropological theory. Has published on Africanist discourse in French literature and on Francophone sub-Saharan African literatures. Currently working on and directing dissertations in African and Afro-Caribbean literatures, theory and cultural studies. |
| Jean-Jacques Poucel | |
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Associate Professor of French Twentieth and twenty-first century French literature and criticism. Has published on the Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle (Roubaud, Perec, Queneau), the extreme contemporary, and the poetic avant-garde. Current projects include a study of experimental French poetry since 1980 and a critical edition on the notion of constraint in art. Coordinates the Whitney Humanity Center Working Group in Contemporary Poetics and is a contributing editor for Double Change and Drunken Boat. |
| Edwige Tamalet Talbayev | |
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Assistant Professor of French Her research interests include Francophone Maghrebi literature; postcolonial theory; non-Western modernities and transnational modernisms. She has published on North African colonial and postcolonial literatures and on issues of modernity in European and non-European contexts. Her current book project considers Maghrebi writing in various languages in a transnational Mediterranean context. |
| Yue Zhuo | |
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Assistant Professor of French Twentieth-century French literature and theory. Her research focuses on problems of narration and temporality, with special emphasis on attempts at circumventing the limits of historical/linear representation of time and on their responsibility for the recent erosion of genre distinctions, most notably in the works of Barthes, Bataille, Lacan and Quignard. She has published on Pascal Quignard and translated Walter Benjamin into Chinese. She is currently preparing a book entitled Bataille et la préhistoire. |
ASSOCIATE FACULTY |
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| Dudley Andrew | |
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R. Selden Rose Professor of Film and Comparative Literature An historian of film theory, and specialist in André Bazin, he reflects on the nature of the film image in relation to movements in French criticism and philosophy (Bergson, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty,Malraux, Ricoeur, Deleuze, Lyotard, Rancière). His exploration of world film is anchored in the French and Francophone traditions. He has published two books on France in the 1930s. |
| Carol Armstrong | |
| Professor of History of Art Carol Armstrong teaches and writes about 19th century French painting, the history of photography, the history and practice of art criticism, feminist theory and the representation of women and gender in art and visual culture. She has published books and essays on Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Paul Cézanne, and 19th and 20th century photography. Her current projects include a book on Cézanne and a series of essays about still life, description, and the “feminine” principle. |
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| John Merriman | |
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Charles Seymour Professor of History Teaches modern French history. Four of his books have appeared in French, including Aux marges de la ville: faubourgs et banlieues en France, 1815-1871 (Éditions du Seuil); Mémoires de pierres: Balazuc, un village ardéchois (Tallandier); and most recently a study of the short life of the anarchist Émile Henry, Dynamite Club, l’invention du terrorisme à Paris (Tallandier). He has been awarded a Doctorat Honoris Causa in France. |
| Charles Walton | |
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Assistant Professor of History His research focuses on eighteenth-century French political culture, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. In his current research he examines the problems revolutionaries encountered in trying to establish civil liberties and political legitimacy in the context of abrupt political change. |
SENIOR LECTURERS AND LECTURERS |
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| Diane Charney | |
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Lecturer; Tutor, Bass Writing Program; Mellon Senior Forum Fellow Teaches advanced language courses, in which she tries to cultivate in her students a sense of confidence and a lifelong passion for France. Interests include inter-relations among the arts, psychoanalytic approaches to literature, and literature as lessons for life. |
| Farid Laroussi | |
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Lecturer Twentieth century French studies, Maghreb literatures in French, and postcolonial studies. Has published extensively on questions pertaining to cultural representations and literary constructions and on issues regarding identity and identification, both in France and the Maghreb. His second book _Of Lesser Truths. Orientalism, France and the Maghreb_ is coming out in December, 2009. Work in progress _Pretexts and Assumptions: The Politics of Arab Identity in Literature in the 21st Century_ has been submitted for a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University (2010-11). |
| Maryam Sanjabi | |
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Senior Lecturer 18th century literature. Has written on the interplay between French and Persian literatures and thought. Currently working on the European women writer's images of Muslim women in Travel Literature. Interested in French translations in Middle Eastern languages. Has taught stylistic and literary analysis, and variety of courses on 18th century literature and culture. |
| Alyson Waters | |
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Lecturer and Managing Editor of Yale French Studies Translation, 20th century novel. Translator of fiction, poetry, criticism, theory. Interested in writers who write in a language other than their mother tongue. 2004 recipient of National Endowment for the Arts Translation Award. |
SENIOR LECTORS AND LECTORS |
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| Ruth G. Koizim | |
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Senior Lector. Course Chair of French 130 (Intermediate and Advanced French). Coordinator of proficiency and placement testing in French. Advisor on study and work opportunities in Francophone countries. Professional interests: language acquisition theory and language-teaching methodologies, images of the German Occupation period in literature and film, Elsa Triolet and other 20th century women writers. |
| Matuku Ngame | |
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Senior Lector Second language acquisition and teacher education. Interests include applied linguistics to language teaching methodology, cross-cultural evaluation of speech perception and its impact on language learning, African women writers. |
| Lauren Pinzka | |
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Senior Lector Teaches and coordinates language and literature courses. Has published articles on Flaubert, Sand, Stendhal, Mme de Duras, and Condillac. Particular interests include psychoanalytic theory, history, and gender studies. |
| Françoise Schneider | |
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Senior Lector Teacher and coordinator of advanced language courses. Interested in curriculum development, language teaching methodologies, French cinema, and contemporary crime novels. |
| Marie-Dominique Boyce | |
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Lector Course chair of French 118 (intermediate French). Teaches elementary and intermediate French language classes. Has written a doctorate thesis on "Le dialogisme dans le roman rustique". Academic interests include French linguistics and French Canadian and Quebecois writers. Has published articles on Anne Hebert and Gabrielle Roy. Organizes the café littéraire book club. |
| Kathleen Burton | |
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Lector Has recently published a book, Nazisme comme religion, Quatre théologiens déchiffrent le code religieux nazi, (1932-1945). A passion for the WWII period in France and French religious history in general. Has taught elementary, intermediate and advanced French with emphasis on French history and 19th century literature. |
| Karen Duval | |
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Lector Teaches elementary and intermediate French. For many years Associate Editor at the Papers of Benjamin Franklin. Interests include 18th century intellectural and social history of France and 16th century French poetry. |
| Soumia Koundi | |
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Senior Lector Teaches elementary, intermediate and advanced French. Has taught in Casablanca as well as several areas of the United States. Academic focus is Linguistics and Francophone literature. Thesis was written on "Le parler de la femmme casablancaise". |
| Constance Sherak | |
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Lector Has taught a range of language and literature courses and is currently teaching intermediate language. Has published articles on Hugo, Balzac, Duras, the Musée d'Orsay, and Christo. Research interests include visual culture studies, historiography, and the poetics of the museum. |
| Candace Skorupa | |
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Lector |
| Katrien Wynant | |
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Lector Teaches intermediate and advanced French. Has taught French as a second language in Belgium and Ghana. Interested in applied linguistics, twentieth century French literature and post-war movements in French criticism and philosophy. |
Visiting Lectors from the Ecole Normale Supérieure: |
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