Rebecca M. Wilkin

Assistant Professor of French Literature and Civilization

Research Interests

History of ideas in early modern France; Descartes and Cartesianism. Feminist criticism; women authors, women and philosophy, women and science, mysticism. Colonial history; Franco-Amerindian encounters.

Publications

• “Renaissance Historiography and Novel Anthropology in Pierre-Daniel Huet’s De l’Origine des romans,” Studi Francesi, accepted.
• “From ex ovo omnia to Ovism: The Father Function,” In Culture and Conflict in Seventeenth-Century France and Ireland. eds. Sarah Alyn Stacey and Véronique Desnain. (Dublin and Portland: Four Courts Press, 2004), 41-51.
• “Figuring the Dead Descartes: Claude Clerselier’s L’Homme de René Descartes (1664),” Representations, vol. 83 (November 2003), 38-66.
• “L’Algonquin par abjection: Une Mystique aborde le Nouveau Monde,” Biblio 17, 117(1999), 31-46.
• “Les Mots et les choses ‘aux Hurons’: L'Archéologie d'une rencontre,” French Literature Series, 25 (1998), 55-75.

Partial List of Presentations

• “Life after Death: The Figures in Posthumous Editions of Descartes’s L’Homme,” History and Philosophy of Science Colloquium, Indiana University, 2002.
• “Descartes and the Fetal Subject,” Institute for Advanced Study, Indiana University, 2001.
• “Waxing Philosophical: Descartes and the Molding of the Modern Imagination,” Indiana University, Harvard University, 2000.
• “The Signs of Disillusionment: Marie de l’Incarnation in Colonial Quebec,” Renaissance Studies Association, New York, 2004; Student-Faculty Forum, Department of French and Italian, Indiana University, 2004.
• “The Strange Scholastic Feminism of Gabrielle Suchon,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, Lexington, 2003.
• “Figuring Descartes’s Intentions: Claude Clerselier’s L’Homme de René Descartes,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, Lexington, 2002.
• “Novel Origins and the End of History: Pierre-Daniel Huet’s Anthropology of Fiction,” British Society for Seventeenth-Century French Studies, Cambridge, Caius College, 2001.
• “On ne l’a jamais imaginée: Pensées et protoféminisme dans La Princesse de Clèves,” North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, Arizona State University, Tempe, 2001.
• “Conceiving the Subject: Descartes’s Fetal Philosophy,” Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies, Indiana University, 2000.

Partial List of Awards

• President’s Initiative for the Arts and Humanities grant for completion of book manuscript, Women, Imagination, and the Search for Truth in Seventeenth-Century France, Spring 2005.
• NEH Collaborative Research Grant ($11,000) to translate and edit Gabrielle Suchon, On Ethics and Politics (1693) and On the Celibate Life Freely Chosen (1700) with Domna C. Stanton.
• Summer Faculty Fellowship ($8000) for research at the French National Library, Research and the University Graduate School, Indiana University, 2003.

Last updated: July 15, 2004
Comments: Nancy Stoute
Copyright 2004, The Trustees of Indiana University