Faculty

EDWARD J. AHEARN, Professor, University Professor. Ph.D. Yale University. Comparative Literature; 19th and 20th century French literature and poetry; literary theory; literature and the city. His publications include: Rimbaud, Visions and Habitations (1983); Marx and Modern Fiction (1989); Visionary Fictions (1996); Urban Confrontations in Literature and Social Science, 1848-2001 (2010).

Comparative Literature Department, Marston Hall; phone (401) 863-3029. >>More information

DENIS BENEICH, Teaching Associate, DEA de Philosophie, sous la direction de Jeanne Delhomme, Université de Paris X : "Valéry : Philosophie, Poésie et Poétique. " Taught philosophy at the French Lycée of New York. Journalist at Libération. Editor at Editions Balland, Paris. Has published seven novels, including, most recently, Le sérieux des nuages (2010, Actes-Sud). Taught French civilization course FREN 1510 last spring at Brown. Currently working on a new novel.

Rochambeau House, room 319; phone (401) 863-6495

RÉDA BENSMAIA, Professor, University Professor. Doctorat de Troisième Cycle, École Pratique des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. 20th-century literature and literary theory; postcolonial Francophone studies; literature and film. Author of The Barthes Effect (1987); The Year of Passages (1995); Alger ou la maladie de la mémoire (1997); Experimental Nations or The Invention of the Maghreb (2003). Editor of Gilles Deleuze (1989) and Recommending Deleuze (1998); Deleuze et le cinéma (Cinémas, Journal of Film Studies, 2007); Littérature et Philosophie (Special issue of SITES, Forthcoming).

Sabbatical 2011-2012. >>More information

YOUENN KERVENNIC, Senior Lecturer. Ph.D. University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. Culture and Civilization of France; otherness and travel, teacher training. Author of a novel L'appel de la mer (2000) and a travelogue Le routard en smoking blanc (2011). Currently working on 3 short stories.

Rochambeau House, room 304A; phone (401) 863-2850. >>More information

VIRGINIA KRAUSE, Associate Professor. Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Renaissance literature, particularly early modern romance and the history of leisure. Author of Idle Pursuits: Literature and oisiveté in the French Renaissance (2003). Her current projects include an edition (with Christian Martin) of Jean Bodin's De la démonomanie des sorciers and a study of confessional practices and Witchcraft titled Witches' Confessions: The Making of Witchcraft Theory in Early Modern France. >>More information

STÉPHANIE RAVILLON, Lecturer. Ph.D. University of Burgundy, France. French language, culture and society ; pedagogy and teaching with technology; teacher training; translation.

Rochambeau House, room 311; phone (401) 863-6494.

THANGAM RAVINDRANATHAN, Robert and Nancy Carney Assistant Professor. Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania and Université de Paris VIII. 20th- and 21st-century literature and criticism/theory; poetry; narratives of travel; the contemporary novel; the question of the animal. Author of a book manuscript titled Là où je ne suis pas: récits de dévoyage (forthcoming, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes) .

Rochambeau House, room 208; phone (401) 863-2740.

PIERRE SAINT-AMAND, Professor, Francis Wayland Professor. Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University. 18th-century novel; philosophy of the Enlightenment; the French Revolution; literary criticism and theory. His publications include: Diderot, Le labyrinthe de la relation (1984), Séduire ou la passion des Lumières (1987; English trans. The Libertine's Progress (1994), Les Lois de l'hostilité: La politique à l'âge des Lumières (1992; English trans. The Laws of Hostility, 1996). He is the editor these special issues of Stanford French Review: Diderot; Le Roman au XVIIIe siècle: Postérités; Autonomy and the Enlightenment (1984, 1987, 1993), and of Thérèse philosophe; Confession d'une jeune fille ('Bibliothèque de la Pléiade', 2000, 2005). He has completed a new book, The Pursuit of Laziness: An Idle Interpretation of the Enlightenment (2011). Director of Graduate Studeis 2011-2012. >>More information

Rochambeau House, room 205; phone (401) 863-3035.

GRETCHEN SCHULTZ, Associate Professor. Ph.D. Cornell University. 19th-century poetry and fiction; gender and sexuality studies; literary theory; sociology of literature. Author of The Gendered Lyric: Subjectivity and Difference in 19th-Century French Poetry (1999); editor of An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Women's Poetry from France: In English Translation with French Text (2008); co-editor of Marie Krysinska: Innovations poétiques et combats littéraires. Her current project is entitled Sapphic Fathers: Discourses of Same-Sex Desire from Nineteenth-Century France. Director of Undergraduate Studies and Honors Program. >>More information

Rochambeau House, room 229; phone (401) 863-3753.

LEWIS SEIFERT, Chair, Department of French Studies, Professor. Ph.D. University of Michigan. 17th-century literature; gender and sexuality studies; cultural studies; comparative approaches to folklore and the literary fairy tale. Author of Fairy Tales, Sexuality, and Gender in France, 1690-1715: Nostalgic Utopias (1996) and Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth-Century France (2009); and co-editor with Todd Reeser of Entre Hommes: French and Francophone Masculinities in Culture and Theory (2008). His current projects include an anthology of fairy tales by seventeenth-century women writers and a book-length study, Classical Modernities: Confronting Past and Present in Seventeenth-Century France. >> More information

Rochambeau House, room 230; phone (401) 863-1029.

SHOGGY T. WARYN, Senior Lecturer. Ph.D. University of Iowa. French language and French film; media history and technology; cross-cultural studies; on-line pedagogy and teaching. Curator of the Providence French Film Festival and the French film collection at Brown. Brown-in-France Campus Director Spring, 2012. >>More information

Rochambeau House, room 304B; phone (401) 863-2494