Faculty in French

Faculty
Emeriti
Lecturers

Guillaume Ansart Ph.D., Princeton (1995). Associate Professor of French. 18th-century literature. Author of Réflexion utopique et pratique romanesque au siècle des Lumières: Prévost, Rousseau, Sade (Paris: Minard, 1999). Articles on Pascal, Lesage, Voltaire, Prévost, Rousseau, Marivaux, Diderot. Research interests: aesthetics and sociology of the novel, political philosophy, anthropology. Prof. Ansart is currently working on late 18th-century political culture, particularly the image of America in the Histoire des deux Indes and in Condorcet’s political writings, and Condorcet’s social choice theory.

For a more complete list of Professor Ansart's publications please click here.

Julie Auger Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania (1994). Associate Professor of French. French linguistics. Research interests: sociolinguistics, variation, morphosyntax, Québec Colloquial French, Picard, as well as spoken French in general and other Gallo-Romance dialects. Articles on subject doubling, the subject pronoun ça, morphosyntactic variation, hypercorrection, and relative clauses.

Professor Auger is currently heading a research project on sociolinguistic and grammatical aspects of the variety of Picard spoken in Vimeu, France. She is also pursuing her research on variation and syntactic theory.

For more information on Professor Auger please click here.
Click here for article in Research and Creative Activity on Professor Auger's research on Picard.
Click here for Professor Auger's NSF Research project: "Morphosyntatic Variation in Picard

Patrick M. Bray Ph.D. Harvard University (2005). Assistant Professor of French. 19th-and 20th-century French literature and culture. Critical theory and history of ideas. Space and subjectivity. Text and image, particularly in 19th-century narrative. Professor Bray is working on a book manuscript that deals with spatial constructions of subjectivity in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century first-person narratives, in particular the works of Stendhal, Gérard de Nerval, and Marcel Proust. He is also currently preparing articles on Proust and cinema, the visual in Paul Virilio’s writing, and the spatial discourse of Hélène Cixous and Stendhal.

Jérôme Brillaud Ph.D. Harvard University (2004). Assistant Professor of French. Agrégation, Paris III (1996). Research interests: History of the theater and intellectual history with an emphasis on post-classical tragedy (1680-1789) in France. Professor Brillaud is currently working on Aristotelianism and Greek tragedies in the 18th century.

Laurent Dekydtspotter Ph.D., Cornell (1995). Associate Professor of French. French linguistics. Cornell dissertation (1995): Null Operator Variable Structures, Predication and Interpretive Interface. Prof. Dekydtspotter's areas of investigation are the natural language syntax-semantics interface, and second language (L2) knowledge of interpretation in relation to L2 epistemology. It appears that the natural language interpretive interface is highly idiosyncratic to natural language grammars. Hence, investigating what second language learners know about the interpretation of certain structures of the target language (i.e., French) which are not found in the native language (i.e., English) can be very probative of the kind of knowledge involved in knowing a second language. He and Prof. Sprouse of Germanic Studies received funding by the National Science Foundation to pursue this line of investigation.

Professor Dekydtspotter studies how syntactic structure maps onto semantic interpretation, and how state-of-the art research on linguistic structures sheds light on the task of language acquisition.

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Margaret Gray Ph.D., Yale (1986). Associate Professor of French. 20th-century literature, particularly prose fiction, and literary criticism. Postmodern Proust (1992). Articles on Proust, George Sand, Beckett, Toussaint.

Professor Gray's research concerns issues in narrative dynamics and their relation to historical, cultural and theoretical frameworks. She has completed a manuscript on constructions of feminine excess in a range of modern French and Francophone novels.

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Eileen Julien Ph.D., University of Wisconsin (1978). 20th century literature and culture, especially the novel, postcolonial theory, and the literatures of Africa, the African diaspora and France in their relationships to one another. African Novels and the Question of Orality. Recent publications on Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright; “world” literature; the “extroverted” African novel; gender and national identity; and New Orleans gumbo. An article on Josephine Baker’s French films of the 1930s, The Locations of African Literature, and Travels with Mae: Recollections of a New Orleans Girlhood and Beyond are forthcoming. She is completing a study, Modernity and Multiple Imaginaries in Literature and the Arts: The Example of Senegal.

Professor Julien has been a Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe College, a Fulbright Senior Scholar, and a Guggenheim Fellow. She was president of the African Literature Association in 1990-91, founding director of the West African Research Center, Dakar, Senegal in 1993-95, and executive director of the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the African Diaspora, University of Maryland, in 2002-04.

Eric MacPhail Ph.D., Princeton (1988). Professor of French. 16th-century literature. Author of The Voyage to Rome in French Renaissance Literature. Articles on Rabelais, Du Bellay, Montaigne, Cervantes, Cyrano, prophecy, astrology, antiquarianism.

Professor MacPhail's major fields are lyric and narrative, and his particular interest is the experience of time common to both genres. He has recently completed a study of prophecy in Renaissance narrative, for which he was awarded an ACLS fellowship for the 1996-97 academic year.

Jacques E. Merceron Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley (1993). Professor of French. Medieval literature and civilization. Le Message et sa fiction: la communication par messager dans la littérature française des XIIe et XIIIe siècles (1998). Articles on French and Celtic folklore; folklore and Old French prose, Lancelot; communication and medieval messenger motifs in epic poetry; political propaganda and the poetics of the "Vers d'intonation" in the Hugues Capet epic poem; cooks, social status and stereotypes of vioence in medieval French literature and society; Charlemagne and the economics of charity and conversion in the Pseudo-Turpin; medieval hagiography and parody; obscenity and hagiography in three anonymous Sermons joyeux and in Jean Molinet's Saint Billouart; Chrétien de Troyes, literature and physiology.

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Emanuel J. Mickel, Jr. Ph.D., North Carolina (1965). Professor of French. Medieval, 19th-century literature. Director of the Medieval Studies Institute, 1976-1991; Chairman of the Department, 1984-95. NEH Grant, 1980-82, 1982-83, 1984-86; Lilly Fellow, 1981-1982. Visiting Scholar, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, Fall 2006, Chairman, French I, MLA (1981). NEH consultant. The Artificial Paradises in French Literature, (1969); Marie de France (1974); The Old French Crusade Cycle, v. 1, La Naissance du Chevalier au Cygne, Part 1, Elioxe (1977); Eugène Fromentin (1982); Ganelon, Treason and the Chanson de Roland (1989); Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1991); Enfances Gedefroi and Le Retour de Cornumarant (1999); editor, The Shaping of Text: Style, Imagery, and Structure in French Literature (1993); co-editor, Studies in Honor of Alfred G. Engstrom (1972); The Old French Crusade Cycle, 10 Volumes, 1977-2003; editor of monograph series, Medievalia Hungarica, Vols. 1 and 2 have been published. Author of many articles in both nineteenth-century and medieval French literature.

The medieval roman and chanson de geste and nineteenth-century poetry and the novel predominate in Professor Mickel's research; he is also working on the aesthetic relationship between nineteenth century painting and literature. He has been studying Latin and Old French narrative in the 12th century. He is currently writing on the development of persona and character in classical and medieval literature. He is beginning a work on the Roman de la Rose.

Oana Panaïté Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University (2004). Docteur en littérature française. Université de Paris IV – Sorbonne. Assistant Professor of French. 20th-century French and Francophone literature. Contemporary Studies. Poetics and Literary Theory.

Published and forthcoming articles on postcolonial fiction (Salman Rushdie), creolization (Édouard Glissant, Patrick Chamoiseau), metafiction (Jean Echenoz), hybrid genres (Pierre Michon), and narrative strategies of characterization (Éric Chevillard, Antoine Volodine). She is currently preparing a comprehensive study of the main trends of contemporary fiction (1980-2000) focusing on the relation between esthetic creation and ethical stances in the works of French and Francophone writers.

Kevin Rottet Ph.D., Indiana (1995). Associate Professor of French. French Linguistics. Research interests: sociolinguistics, language contact, French dialectology, Louisiana French, pidgins and creoles, lexicology/lexicography, endangered languages and language death, minority language issues, Celtic languages (especially Welsh and Breton). He is currently working as one of several co-authors on the Dictionary of Louisiana French and is pursuing various topics, including interrogatives and dialect contact in Louisiana French, and tag questions in Welsh.

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Sonya Stephens Ph.D., Cambridge University (1990). Professor of French. Nineteenth-century French literature and culture. Editor of XIX Journal of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes. Her books and editions include: Baudelaire’s Prose Poems: The Practice and Politics of Irony (Oxford University Press, 1999), A History of Women’s Writing in France (Cambridge University Press, 2000) and many articles on Baudelaire and nineteenth-century French culture. Her forthcoming publications include a collection of essays on the theme of the ébauche, a collection of essays on Baudelaire, and a number of articles on Baudelaire, French poetry and visual culture in the nineteenth century. She is currently completing a book on the unfinished as a phenomenon in nineteenth-century France.

Barbara Vance Ph.D., Cornell, 1989. Associate Professor of French. French linguistics, syntactic theory, historical linguistics. Syntactic Change in Medieval French (1997). Articles on the syntax of Old, Middle, and Modern French; grammatical change.

Rebecca Wilkin Ph.D., University of Michigan (2000). Assistant Professor of French. Profesor Wilkin specializes in seventeenth-century French literature with a focus on the history of ideas, which she approaches from a feminist perspective. Her book in progress traces the gendering of the imagination in medicine, philosophy, and literature from the late sixteenth-century witch trial, through the reception of Cartesian philosophy, to debates around the novel in the 1670s. She has published or submitted articles on missionaries' encounters with Amerindianas in colonial Québec, on the metaphor of authorship as paternity in treatises on generation, on the fetal subject in Descartes's Meditations, on the figures of Renaissance historiography in De l'Origine de romans. She is currently translating and editing the Traite de la morale et de la politique (1693) and De Célibat volontaire (1700) by the recalcitrant nun, Gabrielle Suchon, with Domna Stanton for The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series at the University of Chicago.

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Emeriti

Michael Berkvam Ph.D., Wisconsin (1973). Professor of French and West European Studies. 18th- and 20th-century culture, civilization, history, and literature. NEH Fellow, 1979; Lilly Teaching Fellow, 1981-82. Author of Writing the Story of France in World War II: Literature and Memory, 1942-1958 (New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2000) and co-author of Eighteenth-Century Cities: A Panorama. Articles on Proust, Sartre. Edition (in microfiche): Correspondence and Collected Papers of Pierre Michel Hennin (1979).

Among other courses, Professor Berkvam taught F574, our graduate translation course, and F561, in which he often focused on French cinema and society. He combined lecture, discussion, video, and student presentations in class.

For more information on Professor Berkvam please click here.

Richard A. Carr Ph.D., Princeton (1969). Professor of French. 16th-century literature. Critical edition: Pierre Boaistuau's Histoires tragiques (1977); Pierre Boaistuau's Histoires tragiques: A Study of Narrative Form and Tragic Vision (1979); co-author, Harper's Grammar of French (1983); and co-editor, Vérité Habanc, Nouvelles Histoires tant tragiques que comiques (1989) and Bénigne Poissenot, Nouvelles Histories tragiques (1995). He has recently completed a critical edition of Jean de Marconville's treatise De la bonté et mauvaistié des femmes (1998) and is currently preparing a study of Alexandre de Pontaymeri entitled From Civil Strife to Civilized Life. Professor Carr's research on Renaissance narrative has focused on the formal and stylistic development of the short story and its use as a vehicle for humanist discourse, an aspect of his on-going study of the humanists' adaptation and deformation of antiquity for the purpose of propaganda and the creation of myth. He taught the sixteenth-century survey and seminars on facets of humanism.

Gilbert D. Chaitin Ph.D., Princeton (1969). Professor of French. 19th-century literature, literary theory. The Unhappy Few: A Psychological Study of Stendhal's Novels (1972). Rhetoric and Culture in Lacan (1996). Articles on Chrétien de Troyes, Dostoyevski, Zola, Stendhal, Hugo, Renan, Camus, Lacan, comparative literature, literature and psychoanalysis. Co-editor, Romantic Revolutions (1990). He is currently completing "Fictions of Universal Education in the French Third Republic, 1880-1905, "a book-length study of novels treating the upheaval in national identity occasioned by the dispute between secular and parochial education after the passage of the Ferry Laws. He has begun a project on the history and concept of the "Thesis Novel" in the nineteenth century, starting with an examination of George Sand's role in that development.

Professor Chaitin's research focuses on psychoanalytic theory of narrative, on Lacan's teachings about the relation of subjectivity to language, and on psychoanalytic notions of identity in relation to language and culture. He taught courses on the nineteenth-century novel, poetry and drama, and on theory and criticism.

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Mona T. Houston Ph.D., Yale (1964). Associate Professor Emeritus of French. 17th-century theatre, poetry, and satire. Lilly Fellow, 1989-90. Co-editor, Mauriac's Génitirix (1966) and French Symbolist Poetry: An Anthology (1980); co-author Harper's Grammar of French. Contributed the section on Sigogne and part of the section on Voiture of La Poésie française du premier 17e siècle: textes et contextes, edited by David L. Rubin (1986). Articles on Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Sartre, Pasinetti. Has translated Monsieur de Pourceaugnac for the stage, including portions of the play set to music, and Antonio Tabucchi's two one-act plays Dialoghi mancati. In November 1995, her commissioned translation into French of Richard's Kalinoski's play La Bête sur la Lune was performed in a semi-staged reading for an invited public of theater professionals at the Petit Odéon in Paris. Her translations of Molière's one-act farce The Flying Doctor and his one-act comédie-ballet, The Painter Named Love (Le Sicilien) were performed in 1996 in Bloomington. Professor Houston is concerned with the history of the theater and, increasingly, performance.

Please click here for Professor Houston's personal web page.

Rosemary Lloyd Litt. D., Cambridge (2002); Ph.D., Cambridge (1978). Rudy Professor of French. 19th-century literature and visual arts. Some of her publications are: Closer and Closer Apart: Jealousy in Literature (1995); Revolutions in Writing: Nineteenth-Century French Prose (1996); Nineteenth-Century Women Seeking Expression: Translations from the French. Anthology of passages by women (2002); Women Seeking Expression: France 1789-1914 (2000, with Brian Nelson); Mallarmé: The Poet and his Circle (1999); Baudelaire’s World (2002); Shimmering in a Transformed Light: Writing the Still Life (2004); and, forthcoming, Cambridge Companion to Baudelaire (editor)

Professor Lloyd's research focuses on experiments with representation, verbal and visual, in poetry, prose, prose poetry and autobiography. She has received fellowships from the Leverhulme fund, the Camargo Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her teaching concentrates on providing historical contexts and theoretical frameworks for nineteenth- and twentieth-century prose and poetry. She also teaches Australian literature and art.

Please click here for more information on Professor Lloyd
Please click here for Professor Lloyd's F306 web site for Spring 2004-5
Please click here for Professor Lloyd's F650 web site for Fall 2004-5
Please click here for Professor Lloyd's F450 web site for Fall 2002-3

Russell Pfohl Ph.D., Johns Hopkins (1967). Associate Professor Emeritus of French. 17th-century literature. Racine's "Iphigénie": Literary Rehearsal and Tragic Recognition (1974). Articles on Italo Svevo, Proust, French and Italian literature. Two awards for teaching. Professor Pfohl studies tragedy, comedy, dramatic theory and poetry of the 17th century. He is doing research on Racine's Bérénice and Mithridate, and on Corneille's later plays.

Samuel N. Rosenberg Ph.D., Johns Hopkins (1965). Professor Emeritus of French. Philology, medieval language and literature. Chair of FRIT, 1977-84. Lilly Fellow, 1986-87. NEH Grant, 1989-91. Translator, A. Meillet, Indo-European Dialects (1968). Modern French 'ce': The Neuter Pronoun in Adjectival Predication (1970). Text editor, French Secular Compositions of the Fourteenth Century, 3 vols. (1971-73), Chanter m'estuet: Songs of the Trouvères (1981). Co-translator, Ami and Amile (1981/1996), The Lancelot-Grail Cycle (1993). Editor or co-editor and translator or co-translator,The Lyrics and Melodies of Gace Brulé (1985), The Monophonic Songs in the ‘Roman de Fauvel’ (1991), Chansons des trouvères (1995), Songs of the Troubadors and Trouvères (1997), the Folies Tristan in Early French Tristan Poems (1998), Les Chansons de Colin Muset (2005), The Old French Ballette: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 308 (2006). Co-author, Lancelot and the Lord of the Distant Isles, or ‘The Book of Galehaut’ Retold (2007). Numerous articles, especially on medieval lyric poetry; several recordings.

Professor Rosenberg's interests include medieval language and literature, and historical and modern syntax. In recent years, he has been mainly concerned with Old French lyric poetry and Arthurian prose romances. Together with a group including Professors Richard Carr and Mona Houston, Rosenberg co-authored Harper's Grammar of French (1983), a comprehensive reference work. He has served on the executive board of the American Literary Translators Association (2002-06) and on the advisory board of Romance Philology (2001- ). He is Editor of Encomia, the annual publication of the International Courtly Literature Society and is a member of the Society’s executive committee (2005- ). Projects include a critical edition of the 13th-century French sottes chansons and a collection of Romance folk ballads in English verse translation.

William Trapnell Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh (1967). Professor Emeritus of French. 18th century literature and philosophy. Books: Voltaire and his Portable Dictionary (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1972); Voltaire and the Eucharist (Oxford UP, 1981); Christ and his “Associates” in Voltairian Polemic: An Assault on the Trinity and the two Natures (Stanford UP, 1982); Eavesdropping in Marivaux (Geneva: Droz, 1987); The Treatment of Christian Doctrine by Philosophers of the Natural Light from Descartes to Berkeley (Oxford UP, 1988); Thomas Woolston, Madman and Deist? (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1994); Ed., Thomas Woolston, Six Discours sur les miracles de Notre Sauveur. Deux traductions manuscrites du XVIIIe siècle dont une de Mme Du Châtelet (Paris : Champion, 2001. Author of 21 articles on Marivaux, Voltaire, the Arabian Nights, Woolston, Swift, the “Militaire Philosophe”, Pascal, Challe. Recipient of Mellon Fellowship, 1963-1964; Fulbright Fellowship, Paris, 1965-1966; Lilly Open Fellowship, 1986-1987. Honored as First Hampden-Sydney College Fellow for the Humanities, 1995. Graduate courses taught include Théâtre du XVIIIe, Marivaux, Voltaire, Rousseau. Undergraduate seminars include Les Mille et une nuits, Enlightenment Novel; Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau; Comédie classique.

In 2001, Professor Trapnell and his wife generously established the William and Maryse Trapnell Scholarship/Fellowship Fund to support the study of French and Italian literature prior to the French revolution.

Albert Valdman Ph.D., Cornell (1960). Rudy Professor of French. French Linguistics. Director of the Creole Institute, Chairman of the Committee for Research and Development in Language Instruction (CREDLI). Guggenheim Fellow, 1968; Fulbright Lecturer, 1971-72; NATO-NSF Fellow, 1975; Fulbright Senior Fellow, 1985; President, American Association of Teachers of French (AATF). Editor, Studies in Second Language Acquisition. French, a Guide for Teachers (1961); Applied Linguistics and theTeaching of French (1969); Introduction to French Phonology and Morphology (1976); Le Créole: structure, statut et origine (1978); Haitian Creole-French-English Dictionary (1981); Ann Pale Kreyol: Introductory course in Haitian Creole (1988). Editor/co-editor: Trends in Language Teaching (1966); Identité Culturelle et Francophone dans les Amériques, I,II (1976, 1977); Pidgin and Creole Linguistics (1977); Le Français hors de France (1979); Créole et enseignement primaire en Haiti (1979); Theoretical Orientations in Creole Studies (1980); Historicity and Variation in Creole Studies (1981); Issues in International Bilingual Education (1982); Haiti Today and Tomorrow: An Interdisciplinary Study (1984). He is the academic editor and principal author of the Scott, Foresman French Series and the co-author of the beginning college French text Chez Nous (Prentice Hall, 1997).

Professor Valdman specializes in phonology, dialectology, sociolinguistics and applied linguistics. In general linguistics, his interests center on second language acquisition and creole and pidgin studies. He also belongs to the linguistics faculty and oversees the basic French language program.

Please click here for the Creole Institute web site.
Please click here for Professor Valdman's personal web page.

Lecturers

Bryan Donaldson Bryan is a visiting lecturer in the Department of French and Italian at Indiana University. He is ABD in French linguistics and serves as the course supervisor to F150 (second semester elementary French). His scholarly interests include second language acquisition, discourse analysis and the study of information structure, spoken French, phonology, prosody, null objects, Old French, and Occitan. Bryan has served as Assistant to the Editor of Studies in Second Language Acquisition, has taught in the French Program, is a member of the French SLA research group headed by Professor Laurent Dekydtspotter, and has recently spent a year as lecturer in English at the Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour. His dissertation (in progress) examines aspects of the linguistic competence and language use of near-native speakers of French.

Audrey Liljestrand Fultz ABD French linguistics, Indiana University. Visiting Lecturer. Research interests include Second Language Acquisition, language processing and prosody. Course supervisor for F100.

Eric Matheis ABD French Literature, Columbia University. Visiting Lecturer. Research interests: medieval French and Occitan texts and their literary, linguistic, and historical contexts. Course supervisor for French F200.

Kelly Sax Ph.D., Indiana, 2003. Lecturer in French. Coordinator of French Language Instruction. Training and supervision of Associate Instructors. Dissertation: Acquisition of Stylistic Variation by American Learners of French. Research interests include second language acquisition, language pedagogy, computer-assisted language learning, and French phonetics. Course supervisor for F250.

Faculty in French

Faculty Emeriti Lecturers

Emeriti

Lecturers

Faculty
Emeriti
Lecturers