EDUCATION

• Columbia University
  Ph.D. in French and Romance Philology, May 2002.
    Dissertation:  The Rhetoric of French Baroque Poetry, 1600-1635.
  M.A., Spring 1994.
• University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)
  M.A. in Comparative Literature, 1992.
  B.A. in French and English Literature, 1990.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

• Hunter College, CUNY, Assistant Professor of French, 2005-2008.
  Hunter College, CUNY, Substitute, 2003-2005.
  SUNY New Paltz, Adjunct Professor, 2002-2003.

BOOK PROJECT

The Dangerous Art of Rhyme 
'Vertu’ and Ethos in Early Seventeenth-Century French Lyric Poetry:  Malherbe, Théophile de Viau, and Saint-Amant

• To analyze, understand, and appreciate early seventeenth-century French lyric poetry in terms other than those strictly provided by the Baroque is the starting point of this book.  Such a reexamination seeks to restore the ethical and political dimensions to a body of poetry that had a complex social and political purpose in its day.  This purpose was to represent noble patrons as the embodiment of “noble virtue” and thus potentially to shore up the patrons’—and the poets’—social standing and political influence.  The way virtue is represented in this lyric poetry is through a representation of character, but not in the way this might be effected in dramatic poetry or the novel, with their reliance on plot.  This representation is instead effected primarily by means of persuasive techniques borrowed from the Ciceronian ideal of eloquence which informed virtually all forms of public discourse in the early seventeenth-century.  Using the terms and categories provided by eloquence, I connect the discourse of character and virtue found in this poetry to the historical role that character and virtue played in the power struggle of crown and nobility after the Wars of Religion.  The goal is to show how stylistic differences amount to very different social and political commitments.  The stakes were high:  a poet risked his reputation, his livelihood, and sometimes his life, in fashioning images of noble virtue for the social and political elite.

ARTICLES

• “Noble Selfhood and Saint-Amant’s Nature Poetry” in Spaces of the Self in Early Modern Culture, eds. David Warren Sabean and Malina Stefanovska (University of Toronto Press, Center/Clark Series, forthcoming).  Submitted.
• “The Rival Virtues of Drink:  Cider, Water, and Wine in Seventeenth-Century Encomiastic Poetry,” Nourritures:  Actes du 40e congres de la North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, Lafayette College, 24-26 avril, 2008, ed. Roxanne Lalande, Biblio 17, vol. 138 (Tübingen:  Gunter Narr Verlag, forthcoming).  Accepted.
• “Figures of Unspeakable Virility in Voiture’s ‘Poésie Galante’” in Cahiers du dix-septième:  An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2007, XII, no. 1, 20 pp.  Under review.
• “Ecrire à la moderne : L’atticisme de Théophile” in Origins:  Actes du 39é congrés de la North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 10-12 mai 2007 eds. Russ Ganim and Tom Carr, Biblio 17, vol. 137 (Tübingen:  Gunter Narr Verlag, forthcoming) 10 pp.  Accepted.
• "L'Ourika de Claire de Duras:  Allégorie révolutionnaire, Allégorie de la Révolution" in Afrique et Africains au siècle des Lumières, eds. Michèle Bocquillon et Catherine Gallouët, special issue, Society for Voltaire and Eighteenth-Century Studies, (forthcoming), 20 pp.  Accepted.
• “Magnanimous Women:  Gender and Souls in Corneille’s Tragic Theater” in Cahiers du dix-septième:  An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2007, XI, no. 2, 20 pp.  Accepted.
• “Poetry and Power:  Théophile’s ‘Franchise’ and the Limits of Clientage, 1621-1623,” The Romanic Review, vol. 93, no. 4 (Nov. 2002) 427-453.
• “Decorum:  The Intersection of Eloquence and Action” in Classical Unities: Place, Time, Action, Actes du 32é congrés de la North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, Tulane University, 13-15 avril 2000, ed. Erec R. Koch Biblio 17, vol. 131 (Tübingen:  Gunter Narr Verlag, 2002) 363-369.
• “Guez de Balzac,” Dictionary of Literary Biography:  Seventeenth-Century French Writers, ed. Françoise Jaoüen (South Carolina:  Bruccoli Clark Layman, 2002) 19-27.

CONFERENCE PAPERS

• “Mimesis and Persuasion:  The Hybrid Character of Early Seventeenth-Century Lyric Poetry” at NASSCFL (North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature), May 21-23, 2009, New York University, New York, New York.
• “The Rival Virtues of Drink” at NASSCFL (North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature), April 24-26, 2008, Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania.
• "Saint-Amant's Nature Poetry and the Extravagant Self” at Spaces of the Self in Early Modern Culture, Nov. 30-Dec. 1, 2007, UCLA, Los Angeles, California.
• “Figures of the Unspeakable in Voiture” at SE-17 (Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies), 8-10 November, 2007, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
• "Gender and Souls in Corneille's Tragic Theatre" at SE-17 (Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies), October 12-14, 2006, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa.
• “La noblesse nègre d'Ourika” at the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies, March 30-April 2, 2006, Montréal, Canada.
• "Montaigne's 'Ethos:'  A Portrait of the Soul" at the Renaissance Society of America, March 21-24, 2006, San Francisco, California.
• “Sweet Misanthropy:  Boileau Talks with his Wit,” paper given at the SE-17 2004 Conference, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, October 28-30, 2004.
• “Method or Error:  Cartesian ‘ethos’ in Discours de la méthode,” paper given at the 11th Biennial Conference of the Rhetoric Society of America in Austin, Texas, May 2004.
• “Deleuze’s Signature Style:  ET…ET…ET…”, International Colloquium of 20th Century and Contemporary French Studies, the University of Connecticut, April 4-7, 2002.

TRANSLATIONS

• Deleuze, Gilles.  Two Regimes of Madness, 1975-1995 (Deux régimes de fous), Semiotext(e), 2006, 384 pp.  Co-translated with Ames Hodges.
• Marie, Emmanuelle.  CUT, 2006.  Published in Act French:  An Anthology, edited by Philippa Wehle (Performing Arts Journal, 2007), 30 pp.
• Virilio, Paul and Sylvere Lotringer.  The Accident of Art, Semiotext(e), 2005, 120 pp.
• Deleuze, Gilles.  Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953-74 (L’île deserte et autres texts), Semiotexte, 2004, 414 pp.
• Ionesco, Eugene.  Journeys in the House of the Dead (Voyages chez les morts), 2003.  Commissioned by Division 13 Productions.  Artistic Director:  Joanna Settle.  Performed at the Here Theater in January, 2004, 70 pp.
• Virilio, Paul and Sylvere Lotringer.  Crepuscular Dawn: The Genetic Bomb, Semiotext(e), 2002, 164 pp.
• Derrida, Jacques.  “Deconstructions:  The Im-Possible” in French Theory in America, eds. Sandy Cohen and Sylvere Lotringer (New York:  Routledge, 2000) 13-31.

ROUNDTABLES

• Will chair a special-session panel “Poetry as an Educative Tool in the French Republic of Letters” at the 2008 MLA Convention in San Francisco.  Three speakers will explore the relation of pedagogy and poetry in the French rhetorical tradition from La Fontaine to Ponge.
• Chaired roundtable discussion on “‘L’ennui’ in Pascal’s Pensées” for 'Rage, Folie, & Deséspoir:  Excess and the Passions in Early Modern France,' the annual conference of the French Interdisciplinary Group for Seventeenth-Century Studies, the Graduate Center, New York, New York, October 5, 2007.
• Presented a close-reading of Théophile de Viau's "La Première Journée" on a roundtable chaired by Francis Assaf at NASSCFL (North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature), University of Nebraska, Lincoln Nebraska, May 10-12, 2007.

December 2008