Cecile Alduy

Bio

Professor Alduy works primarily on French Renaissance Literature and contemporary French politics and culture, particularly political discourse analysis of the far right and presidential campaigns, as they relate to the question of French identity and mythologies of "Frenchness." She works in both field on the intersection between letters and politics in France. Areas of interests includes the history and mythology of national and ethnic identities since the Renaissance, far right ideology and rhetoric (National Front), the intersection between cultural, literary and medical discourses on gender and the body, poetry and poetics, narrative forms and their discontent, French cinema and contemporary French literature.

Prof. Alduy is a regular contributor to The Atlantic, The Nation, the New Yorker's blog, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Boston Review, Le Monde, and the San Francisco Chronicle.She has a blog on contemporary culture, technology, and literature on Arcade.

Her latest book is "Marine Le Pen prise aux mots. Décryptage du nouveau discours frontiste (Paris: Seuil, 2015) and she has contributed a profile of Marine Le Pen for The Atlantic, as well as many investigative, analytical and opinion pieces on the National Front in Le Monde, Politico, The Nation, Al Jazeera America, L'Obs, etc.

She is co-editing with Dominic Thomas and Bruno Cornellier a special issue of the journal "Occasions" on “The Charlie Hebdo Attacks and their Aftermath” that gathers over a dozen essays from French, Canadian, American and English intellectuals from all horizons.

Her previous book is "The Politics of Love: Poetics and Genesis of the "Amours" in Renaissance France" (1549-1560) (Geneva: Droz, 2007). It examines how the poetics of French Petrarchan love collections was exploited by the generation of Ronsard and Du Bellay to promote a nationalist agenda, that of a "Defense and Illustration of the French Tongue" and its cultural supremacy.

She has published extensively on the works of Marot, Scève, Du Bellay, Ronsard, Louise Labé, La Boétie, Montaigne, Rabelais, and Philippe Jaccottet among others. Her publications also include a revised critical edition of Maurice Scève's Délie (Paris: STFM, 2001) and a comprehensive study of all works written by or on Scève from his lifetime to the present (Maurice Scève. Roma: Memini, 2006). She has served as guest editor of two collected volumes: a special issue of Réforme Humanisme Renaissance entitled "Licences et censures poétiques. La littérature érotique et pornographique vernaculaire à la Renaissance" (vol. 69, 2009); and the proceedings of the 2008 interdisciplinary conference Between Experience and Experiment In The Early Modern World, co-edited with Roland Greene and published in Republic of Letters (2010).

In other work, she expands the traditional field of Renaissance poetics by exploring new areas of inquiry: multi-authored collections as polemical proto-media (The Anatomical Blazons); the intersection between the emerging field of obstetrics, its book market, and the pre-history of obscenity and pornography ("Archeology of a Close-up"); the instability of gender in male and female lyrics ("The Anatomy of Gender"); or the economy of poetic production ("Self-Sustainable Economies," RQ. 2010).

Prof. Alduy was the Director of the Center of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (CMEMS) from 2010 to 2013.

She is Director of the French and Italian Department, starting in September 2015.

Academic Appointments

• Professor, French and Italian

Administrative Appointments

• Associate Professor, Stanford University (2010 - Present)
• Visiting Faculty, Stanford Overseas Program in Paris (2009 - 2009)
• Visiting Faculty, Stanford Overseas Program in Paris (2005 - 2005)
• Assistant Professor, Stanford University (2003 - 2010)
• Assistant Professor, Boston University (2002 - 2003)
• Lecturer, University of Reims (1999 - 2002)
• Visiting Scholar, Department of French, University of California, Berkeley (1998 - 1999)

Honors & Awards

• Junior Faculty Colloquium Initiative, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Stanford (2004)
• Fellowship, Hewlett Packard International Studies Fellowship (2004)
• Research Project "Renaissances", Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Stanford University (2005-2007)
• Fellowship, Bibliographical Society of America (2005)
• Edouard Morot-Sir Research Fellowship in Literature, Institut Français de Washington (2007)
• Summer Research Fellowship, Northeast Modern Language Association (2007)
• Fellowship, Bibliographical Society of America (2007)
• Stanford Official Nominee for National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship, School of Humanities, Stanford University
• Nominee for Recognition Award for Emerging Scholars, American Association of University Women (2007)
• Franklin Award, American Philosophical Society (2008)
• Dean's Distinguished Teaching Award for First Years In Teaching, Stanford University (2008)
• Hoefer Prize in Undergraduate Writing Mentorship Award, Stanford University (2011)
• Stanford Official Nominee for National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship, School of Humanities, Stanford University (2012)

Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations

• Member, American Association of Journalists and Authors
• Member, Société des Textes Français Modernes
• Member, Modern Languages Association
• Member, Société Française Des Études Seizièmistes
• Member, Réforme Humanisme Renaissance
• Member, Sixteenth Century Society and Conference
• Member, Northeast Modern Language Association
• Member, Renaissance Society of America
• Research Affiliate, Fondation Jean Jaurès (Paris) (2014 - Present)
• Participant, Teagle Foundation Project on Collaborative Faculty-Graduate Student Teaching (2013 - 2014)
• Chair, Graduate Affairs Committee, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Stanford University (2012 - 2013)
• Member, Executive Committee, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Stanford University (2012 - 2013)
• External Reviewer, Research Enhancement Program in the Arts and Humanities Fellowships, Wayne State University (2012 - 2012)
• Manuscript Peer Reviewer, University of California Press (2012 - 2012)
• Translator, Le Nouvel Observateur (2012 - 2012)
• Chair of Graduate Studies, French Doctoral Program, Stanford University (2010 - 2013)
• Director, Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2010 - 2013)
• Co-Chair, Renaissances Focal Group, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Stanford University (2010 - 2011)
• Director of Undergraduate Studies, French and Italian Department, Stanford University (2007 - 2010)
• Liaison, Overseas Stanford Campus in Paris for the French and Italian Department (2007 - 2010)
• Member, Obscenity in Renaissance France (University of Exeter) (2007 - 2009)
• Member, Editorial Board, Republics of Letters (2007 - 2009)
• Member, Advisory Board, Stanford Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2007 - 2008)
• Manuscript Peer Reviewer, University of Delaware Press (2007 - 2007)
• Manuscript Peer Reviewer, Honoré Champion Publisher (2007 - 2007)
• Liaison, École Normale Supérieure-Stanford Exchange Program (2006 - 2013)
• Researcher Affiliate, Stanford European Forum at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (2006 - 2013)
• Member, Steering Committee, Stanford Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2006 - 2007)
• Coordinator, Cultural Events of the French and Italian Department, Stanford University (2005 - 2006)
• Founder and Organizer, From Script to Screen: Conversations on Contemporary French Cinema (2003 - 2006)
• Member, ad-hoc committee, Graduate Student Exchange Program with the École normale Supérieure (2003 - 2006)
• Member, Planning and Personnel Committee, Division of Literature, Cultures, and Languages, Stanford University (2003 - 2004)

Professional Education

• Docteur ès Lettres (Ph.D.), University of Reims, French Literature (2003)
• D.E.A. (M.A.), University of Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle, French Literature (1999)
• Agrégation de Lettres Modernes, French Ministry of National Education, French and Comparative Literature (1997)
• Maîtrise (B.A.), University of Paris VII-Sorbonne Nouvelle, French Literature (1996)

Current Research and Scholarly Interests

Within the field of French studies, my work focuses on two historical periods: the Renaissance and contemporary France. In both, I am interested in the rhetorical construction, in literary and political texts, of collective and individual identities at critical historical junctures. Specifically, I have pursued two distinct, but interconnected lines of research: (1) the emergence of a proto-national sentiment in Renaissance literature on the cusp of the Wars of Religions; (2) the nationalist rhetoric of the successive leaders of the National Front (FN) party, Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen, in France’s current cultural, economic and social crisis.

2024-25 Courses

• Cinema and The Real: The French New Wave and the Quest for the Truth
  FRENCH 279, FRENCH 379 (Aut)
• Liberte, Egalite, Laicite: French Political Myths and Concepts
  FRENCH 289, FRENCH 389 (Win)
• The New Wave: How The French Reinvented Cinema
  FILMEDIA 87N, FRENCH 87N (Aut)
• Women in Contemporary French and Francophone Cinema
  FEMGEN 192, FILMEDIA 112, FRENCH 192, FRENCH 392 (Win)
• Independent Studies (7)
  • Honors Thesis Oral Presentation
    DLCL 199 (Spr)
  • Honors Thesis Seminar
    DLCL 189B (Win)
  • Honors Thesis Seminar
    DLCL 189C (Spr)
  • Individual Work
    FRENCH 199 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum)
  • Individual Work
    FRENCH 399 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum)
  • Individual Work
    ITALIAN 199 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum)
  • Individual Work
    ITALIAN 399 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum)
• Prior Year Courses

  2023-24 Courses

  • Film and Fascism in Europe
    COMPLIT 104N, FILMEDIA 105N, FRENCH 104N, ITALIAN 104N (Spr)
  • Sex, Gender and the Body in Renaissance France
    FRENCH 219, FRENCH 319 (Win)
  • Sex, Gender, and Violence: French and Francophone Women Writers Today
    FEMGEN 287X, FRENCH 287 (Aut)
  • The New Wave: How The French Reinvented Cinema
    FILMEDIA 87N, FRENCH 87N (Win)

  2022-23 Courses

  • Women in Contemporary French Cinema
    OSPPARIS 95 (Aut)

  2021-22 Courses

  • The New Wave: How The French Reinvented Cinema
    FRENCH 87N (Aut)
  • Women in Contemporary French and Francophone Cinema
    FRENCH 291, FRENCH 391 (Win)