Department of French and Italian

• 19th-century French literature
• Relationship between painting and literature
• Parnassian and Symbolist poetry
• History of the book
• Clandestine literature
• Literature and the press
• Literary censorship and book burning
• Literary representations of the Haitian Revolution

My primary research interests lie in the relationship between painting and literature, poetry and book history in 19th-century France.

My first book, Crise de plume et Souveraineté du pinceau. Écrire la peinture de Diderot à Proust (Classiques Garnier, 2013) explores the development of French art criticism as a literary genre, in light of the emerging paradigm of sovereignty of painting. The thesis at the core of the book is that the fall of the ut pictura poesis regime, which was governing the classical relationship between painting and literature until the second half of the 18th century, represents a critical moment in the discourse on art—corresponding to the birth of art criticism with Diderot—while causing a proliferation of new literary forms in the 19th century.

My second book, La Poésie délivrée (Droz, 2018), tries to answer a straightforward question: Why did some of the most influential French poets of the second half of the nineteenth century, from the masters of Parnassus to Mallarmé, struggle endlessly to publish books? Situated at the crossroads of literary analysis and book history, La Poésie délivrée examines the singular cases of certain poets, in particular Verlaine, Rimbaud and Mallarmé, in light of the publishing context of the period, characterized by the triumph of the novel at the expense of poetry. Faced with increasing difficulties, often made insurmountable, in their respective attempts to publish books, these poets were thus forced to find other mediums on the fringes of regular publishing (collective volumes, small literary journals, albums, artists’ books, etc.), in order to disseminate their works. The purpose of La Poésie délivrée is to show how such a proliferation of mediums significantly contributed to the renewal of poetic forms at the end of the nineteenth century and, ultimately, to the reinvention of the poetry book.

My third book, Le Livre enflammé. Fictions et poétique de l'autodafé (Hermann, 2024),  examines the fictional theme of book burning in nineteenth-century French novels and poetry, at a time when several historical libraries were destroyed during the successive French revolutions. What is the significance of burning a book (or a library) within a book? Is it an act of self-reflection by the writer, concerned about the fate of their own work, or does it reveal a broader cultural anxiety about the fate of books, the transmission of knowledge, as well as freedom of expression and the press, or all of the above? These issues are more topical than ever, as books continue to be banned if not burned, and more and more academic and public libraries dematerialize their collections. Thus, the question of the transformation of books needs to be urgently addressed, not only from an economic and technological standpoint, but more decisively from the perspective of the humanities.

Books

• Le Livre enflammé. Fictions et poétique de l’autodafé. Paris: Hermann, “Fictions pensantes,” 2024. (introduction)
• La Poésie délivrée. Le livre en question du Parnasse à Mallarmé, Geneva, Droz, 2018. (Introduction + Table of Contents).
• Crise de plume et souveraineté du pinceau: Écrire la peinture de Diderot à Proust. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013. (Table of Contents).

Edited Volumes

• Paul Verlaine: A Bilingual Selection of His Verse. Translated by Samuel N. Rosenberg and edited by Nicolas Valazza. Penn State University Press, 2019
• “Aesthetic Contaminations in Baudelaire.” Co-edited with Karen F. Quandt.; Special issue of Nottingham French Studies 58.2 (2019).
• Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von. La Vénus à la fourrure. Paris: Le Monde, Garnier, 2010

Exhibition

• Banned Books and Engravings in Europe and the United States, 17th-20th Centuries. Works from the Lilly Library and the Kinsey Institute Collections. Lilly Library, April 2019. Online catalog: bannedbooks.indiana.edu

Articles

• “‘L’Univers sans l’homme’? Réalisme et photographie dans le Salon de 1859.” In Relire les Salons de Charles Baudelaire. Ed. Didier Philippot and Henri Scepi. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2023: 185-194.
• “La raison du poète et les torts du critique.” Lire les Salons de Baudelaire. Ed. Andrea Schellino and Julien Zanetta. Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2023: 173-181.
• “Le dess(e)in au croisement des arts et des lettres: de la théorie au style.” The Poetry of Life, the Life of Poetry: Essays in Honor of Jacques Neefs. Modern Language Notes 136.4 (2021): 54-68.
• "Le bateau dans le ciel, de Dante à Rimbaud.” Parade sauvage. Revue d’études rimbaldiennes 31 (2020): 169-188.
• “‘Elle dansa et plut à Hérode’: les arts d’incarner Salomé.” Romantisme 184 (2019): 66-76.
• “Veine de marbre et veine poétique: Clésinger, Baudelaire et la chair de la Présidente.” Nottingham French Studies 58.2 (2019): 198-209.
• “L’Éditeur et le Graveur en société avec le Poète: Poulet-Malassis, Rops et Baudelaire en Belgique.” L’Esprit Créateur 58.1 (2018): 87-100.
• “Maldoror, corps et sang. Une littérature “comme incantatoire”: aspects et échos de l’incantation en littérature (XIXe-XXIe siècle)”. Ed. Patrick Thériault. Toronto: Presses françaises de l’université de Toronto, 2018: 81-94.
• “L’en-vers de la cellule.” Revue Verlaine 15 (2017): 87-98.
• “Presqu’un livre: l’édition photolithographiée des Poésies de Mallarmé.” French Studies 71.2 (2017): 196-211.
• “Peindre les ruines de l’Empire: Huysmans et Zola face à l’œuvre de Gustave Moreau.” La Revue des lettres modernes. “Huysmans et les arts.” (2016): 101-117.
• “Le ‘canot’ de Glatigny: prétexte clandestin du Bateau ivre.” Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France 116 (avril 2016): 353-363.
• “The ‘Zutiste’ and the Parnassian: Verlaine as Reader of Coppée.” Poets as Readers in Nineteenth Century France: Critical Reflections. London: Institute of Modern Languages Research, 2015: 169-185.
• “‘L’Idole’ zutique entre souffle lyrique et excrétion corporelle.” Parade sauvage. Revue d’études rimbaldiennes 25 (2014): 103-115.
• “Les Goncourt et la neutralisation de la critique: des chroniqueurs de L’Éclair à la figure de Chassagnol.” Elseneur 28 (2014): 103-117.
• “Fantaisies artistiques aux débuts de la revue L’Artiste.” Modern Language Notes 128.4 (September 2013): 935-949.
• “Félicien Rops: graveur de la décadence latine.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 41.3-4 (Spring-Summer 2013): 237-254.
• “Baudelaire au Parnasse satyrique.” L’Année Baudelaire 15 (2012): 87-101.
• “Aux seuils de l’enfer de la bibliothèque: à propos de quelques éditions clandestines de Poulet-Malassis.” Romantisme 155 (2012): 135-146.
• “Portrait de Proust en dentellière: Au-delà du petit pan de mur jaune.” Marcel Proust Aujourd'hui 8 (2011): 149-169.
• “Reading the Paratext in Clandestine Literature: The Case of the Publisher Poulet-Malassis.” Textual Cultures: Texts, Contexts, Interpretation 6.1 (Spring 2011): 97-113.
• “The Flower and the Monster: On Huysmans’ Painters.” In The Beautiful and the Monstrous: Essays in French Literature, Thought and Culture. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010: 93-104.
• “Fleurs pour Des Esseintes.” Bulletin de la Société Joris-Karl Huysmans 101 (2008): 3-16.
• “La Chair du Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu.” L’Esprit Créateur 47.3 (2007): 145-154.
• “Antonin Artaud et l’essoufflement du logos.” Working papers 1 (2006).

• Loïc Lerme. “Mélusine, Medusa, and the Mermaid: Scaly Ladies and Monstrous Esthetics in 19th- and early 20th-century French Literature.” Defended on April 4, 2018.
• Jill Owen. “Space and the Self: Representations of the Bedroom in Nineteenth-Century French Literature” Defended on October 30, 2018.

• F300: Revolutions and Literature
• F300: The Discovery of the New World
• F300: Adultères et Trahisons dans la littérature française
• F306: Exoticism & Exile in Novels and Poetry
• F443: The Poet Before the Mirror: Forms of Lyricism in the 19th Century
• F445: French Romantic Drama
• F446: The Figure of the Painter in the 19th-Century French Novel
• F540: 19th-Century Poetic Manifestos
• F540: Les Poètes maudits
• F545: Clandestine Literature and Literary Trials in the 19th Century
• F640: The Emergence of French Art Criticism
• F640: The Metamorphoses of the Muse in the 19th Century
• F640: Literature and the Press in 19th-Century France
• H233: The Pen and the Paintbrush

• CAHI Faculty Research Fellowship (2023-2024)
• HathiTrust Research Center Curriculum Development Fellowship (2023-2024)
• Institute for Digital Arts & Humanities Faculty Fellowship, Indiana University Bloomington (2018-19)
• CAHI/Kinsey Institute Research Fellowship, Indiana University Bloomington (2017-2018)
• Larry Schehr Memorial Award for the best junior faculty essay presented at the Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium, 2013
• Trustees Teaching Award, Indiana University, 2010-2011
• Gilman Fellowhip, 2004-2009
• Johns Hopkins Fellowship for the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, 2006-2007