Lewis C. Seifert
Professor of French Studies:
French Studies
Phone: +1 401 863 1029
Phone 2: +1 401 863 3517
Lewis_Seifert@Brown.EDU
Professor Seifert's research interests include 17th-century literature, gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, and comparative approaches to folklore and the literary fairy tale. He is the author of Fairy Tales, Sexuality, and Gender in France, 1690-1715: Nostalgic Utopias (1996) and of Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth-Century France (University of Michigan Press, 2009). He has co-edited with Todd Reeser a volume of essays, Entre Hommes: French and Francophone Masculinities in Culture and Theory (University of Delaware Press, 2008).
Biography
Lewis Seifert holds a DEA from the Université de Paris III (1986) and a PhD from the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Michigan (1989). He has taught in the Department of French Studies at Brown since 1989. His ongoing research interests include seventeenth-century French literature and culture, folk- and fairy-tale studies, gender and sexuality studies.
Interests
Professor Seifert's research has concentrated on two broad areas: seventeenth-century French literature/culture and folk- and fairy-tale narratives. The central focus of his work has been on questions of gender and sexuality as manifested in both literary and historical contexts. He has also explored problems of early modern authorship and political discourse and has investigated literary renditions of Francophone oral traditions.
In Fairy Tales, Sexuality and Gender in France, 1690-1715: Nostalgic Utopias (Cambridge UP, 1996), he explored reasons why the fairy tale genre appeared in late seventeenth-century France and in particular its ambivalent representations of femininity, masculinity, and (hetero)sexuality. This book argues that the "marvelous" universe of the conte de fées is a throw-back to earlier fictional forms that often allows for a critique of the past and an articulation of yet-to-be conceived identities and relations.
Seifert's book-length study Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth-Century France (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming 2009) investigates the struggle between the expectation of dominance and the risk of subservience and marginality that emerges in such seventeenth-century figures as the honnête homme, the male salon denizen, the sodomite, and the transvestite.
He is currently pursuing future research projects around two different questions. First, bringing to bear insights from a variety of contemporary thinkers, he is interested in clarifying the multiple connections and ruptures between the (early modern French) past and the (French and American) present. Second, in comparative and transhistorical ways, he wishes to investigate how fairy tales have been used to justify and to contest sexual ideologies, from the theoretical to the pragmatic.
Seifert is also involved with collaborative projects, among them a translation of seventeenth-century French women's fairy tales with Domna C. Stanton (City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center) for the University of Chicago Press and a collection of essays on masculinity in French and Francophone cultures (University of Delaware Press, 2008) with Todd Reeser (University of Pittsburgh).
Degrees
Ph.D., University of Michigan
Awards
Faculty Fellowship, Cogut Center for the Humanities, Brown University, semester II, 2005-2006
Research Grant, Office of the Vice-President for Research, Brown University, 2004; 2005; 2006; 2008; 2010
Salomon Grant, Brown University, 2003
Curricular Development Grant from the Office of the Dean of the College, Brown University, 2001
Faculty Research Grant from the Salomon Faculty Research Grant Fund, Brown University, 2000
Curricular Development Grant from the Office of the Dean of the College, Brown University, 1998
Curricular Development Grant from the Office of the Dean of the College, Brown University, 1996
Curricular Development Grant from the Office of the Dean of the College, Brown University, 1994
University Small Grant, Office of Research, Brown University, 1993
Curricular Development Grant from the Office of the Dean of the College, Brown University, 1992
Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards (UTRA), research assistant, Dean of the College, Brown University (for summer 1992)
Travel Grant, Institute for International Studies, Brown University (for use in May-June 1992)
Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards (UTRA), research assistant, Dean of the College, Brown University (for semester II, 1991-92)
Curricular Development Grant from the Office of the Dean of the College, Brown University, 1990
Rackham Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, The University of Michigan, 1988-89
Bourse d'études, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the French Government, 1986-87
Affiliations
American Association of Teachers of French
Centre International d'Etudes du XVIIe Siècle
Modern Language Association
North American Society of Seventeenth-Century French Literature
SE - 17
Teaching
Recent courses taught include:
Les Modernités du XVIIe siècle
Civilité et littérature au XVIIe siècle
Fictions du masculin au XVIIe siècle (graduate seminar)
Fairy Tales and Culture
Contes et identités francophones
Lire et voir le XVIIe siècle
Le théâtre du XVIIe siècle: de la lecture à la mise en scène
De l'anormal: le monstrueux de la Renaissance à nos jours
Funded Research
Research Grant, Office of the Vice-President for Research, Brown University, 2004; 2005; 2006; 2008
Salomon Grant, Brown University, 2003
Curricular Development Grant from the Office of the Dean of the College, Brown University, 1990; 1992; 1994; 1996; 1998; 2001
Faculty Research Grant from the Salomon Faculty Research Grant Fund, Brown University, 2000
University Small Grant, Office of Research, Brown University, 1993
Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards (UTRA), research assistant, Dean of the College, Brown University, 1991; 1992
Travel Grant, Institute for International Studies, Brown University (for use in May-June 1992)