Faith E. Beasley

|Professor

Academic Appointments

Professor of French
Affiliated with WGSS
Specialist of early modern French culture and the history France's relationship with India during the pre-colonial period

I am Professor of French Cultural Studies at Dartmouth, an Ivy League university in the United States, where I have taught since receiving my PhD from Princeton in 1986. The focus of my work as a scholar and a teacher is resurrecting the works and voices of French women writers primarily from the early modern period and putting them in dialogue with those of their contemporaries and their historical and cultural context. I interrogate the effect women's actions have had on the cultural field in general, and analyze how and why the historical record has been constructed to erase this influence. I am the author of Revising Memory: Women's Fiction and Memoirs in Seventeenth-Century France (Rutgers UP 1990) and Salons, History, and the Creation of Seventeenth-Century France: Mastering Memory (Ashgate 2006), editor of Options for Teaching Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century French Women Writers (MLA 2011) and co-editor with Katherine Ann Jensen of Approaches to Teaching The Princess of Clèves (MLA 1998), and co-editor with Kathleen Wine of Intersections: Actes de Dartmouth, Proceedings of the 2003 Annual Conference of the North American Society of Seventeenth-Century French Literature (Gunter Narr Publishing 2005).

In 2013 I was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to complete my book, Versailles Meets the Taj Mahal: François Bernier, Marguerite de La Sablière and Enlightening Conversations in Seventeenth-Century France (U of Toronto Press 2018). In that work I explore how one particular salon served as the focal point for the encounter between France and India during France's Grand Siècle and the effect of this encounter on early Enlightenment thought, material culture, and on literature. A French edition, revised, augmented, updated, and reoriented for a French public, was published in 2024 by Les Belles Lettres, Paris. Versailles à la rencontre du Taj Mahal: Conversations éclairées sur l'Inde au temps du Roi-Soleil, translated by Patrick Graille, builds on my previous work and makes it accessible to a new public. I have published dozens of articles on early modern French culture addressing, among other subjects, salon culture, the art of conversation, the development of the novel, feminist approaches to scholarship, Molière, Corneille, the construction of literary history, memory, and the history of France's encounter with India during the early modern, precolonial period. I have lectured on these topics and others, in French and in English, throughout the US and Europe.

In addition to teaching, research, and writing, I have directed over a dozen foreign study programs in France and India and organized numerous international colloquia. I served as the editor of Cahiers du dix-septième for almost a decade and am the past president of the North American Society of Seventeenth-Century French Literature, and The Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies (SE-17). As President of these professional organizations I organized their annual international conferences. I was appointed to the editorial board of PMLA, and am currently on the boards of Women in French and Eighteenth-Century Studies.

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View Curriculum Vitae

Contact

Faith.E.Beasley@dartmouth.edu

603-646-2406

Dartmouth Hall, Room 213F

HB 6087

Education

B.A. Mount Holyoke College
MA Princeton University
Ph.D. Princeton University

Areas of Expertise

Women writers of the early modern period /Intersections between history and literature /Autobiography and memoirs /The development of the novel /Encounters between France and India in the early modern period /17th and 18th century French literature and culture /literary politics of 17th-century France /Salon culture /French collective memory /History of French Gastronomy /the art and influence of conversation /travel narratives

Selected Publications

Book: Quand Versailles rencontre le Taj Mahal: Conversations éclairées sur l'Inde et l'imaginaire français au temps du Roi-Soleil. Translated by Patrick Graille.New edition and translation for a French public of Versailles Meets the Taj Mahal. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2024.
Book: Versailles Meets the Taj Mahal: François Bernier, Marguerite de La Sablière and Enlightening Conversations in Seventeenth-Century France. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018
Book: Salons, History, and the Creation of Seventeenth-Century France: Mastering Memory , Ashgate 2006.

Book: Options for Teaching Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century French Women Writers, (ed.) MLA, 2011.

Book: Intersections: Actes de Dartmouth, Proceedings of the 2003 Annual Conference of the North American Society of Seventeenth-Century French Literature. Co-edited with Kathleen Wine. Tubingen, Germany: Gunter Narr Publishing, 2005.

Book: Approaches to Teaching the Princess of Clèves , co-edited with K A Jensen, MLA, 1998.

Book: Revising Memory: Women's Fiction and Memoirs in Seventeenth-Century France , Rutgers UP, 1990.
Book chapter: "Are the Précieuses only Ridicules? Molière, Salon Culture, and the Shaping of France's Collective Memory, " in Molière in Context, ed. Jan Clarke. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2023, pp. 116-124.article: "Changing the Conversation: Re-positioning the French Seventeenth-Century Salon," in L'Esprit créateur, "Writing/Creating in the Feminine in Early Modern France (1500-1700)," ed. Colette Winn, Vol. 60, No. 1 (2020), pp. 34–46.

article: "Molière and 'Indiennes:" Taste in Louis XIV's France. Theater, 52/3, special issue "Decentering Molière," Duke University Press, pp. 81-91. 2022/2
Book chapter: "Seventeenth-Century French Women Writers and the Novel: A Challenge to Literary History," in The Cambridge History of the Novel in French. Ed. Adam Watt. Cambridge UP, 2021, pp. 95-112.
Book chapter: "Recovering Lost Conversations: The Case of François Bernier," in Coups de Maître. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Literature and Culture, in honour of John D. Lyons. Eds. Michael Meere and Kelly Fender McConnell. Peter Lang, 2021, pp. 183-98.
Book chapter: "Accounting for Taste: Corneille and the Power of the Female Spectator" in Options for Teaching Neo-Classical French Tragedy. Eds. Hélène Bilis and Ellen McClure. New York: MLA, 2021
book chapter: "The Enchantements of Eloquence:" Salon Culture and the French Fairy Tale Tradition," in Teaching Fairy Tales, ed. Nancy Canepa, Wayne State University Press, 2019.
Book Chapter: "De Grandes cultures se rencontrent: Conversations indiennes à l'époque classique" in French Global: Une nouvelle perspective sur l'histoire littéraire. Eds. Christie McDonald and Susan Suleiman. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014.
Book Chapter: "Versailles Meets the Taj Mahal" in French Global: A New Approach to French Literary History , eds. C. McDonald and S. Suleiman, (2010).
Article: "Salons and Innovation." Options for Teaching Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century French Women Writers, MLA 2011, pp. 64-75.

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Speaking Engagements

"Feminist Criticism and Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves," recording for the digital bilingual edition of La Princesse de Clèves by Lafayette: A New Translation and Bilingual Pedagogical Edition for the Digital Age, Edited by Hélène E. Bilis, Jean-Vincent Blanchard, David Harrison, and Hélène Visentin, Lever Press 2022. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12629286

"Contextualizing the Past: Encounters with India à la française," Louisiana State University, November 9, 2023.

Constanta, Romania "Conversations et Contextualisation: Faire revivre le 17e siècle français" December 6, 2022

"Reviving the Conversation: Versailles Meets the Taj Mahal," Cambridge Early Modern Seminar, Cambridge, February 4, 2022.

Talkback "In Conversation" for Molière in the Park's performance of "pen/man/ship," by Christina Anderson, April 18, 2021

"Fairy Tales: The Power of Narrative and the Imagination". Duke University, April, 2021

"Textes et Contextes: Writing Conversation." "Autour du Livre." Silver Colloquium, Washington University. October 16, 2020

"Creating Controversy: The Provocative Ending of Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves." Seminar, Duke University, September 2, 2020

"Mythes de Versailles: Influences indiennes." Seminar, Yale 11 November 2019.

"Bernier Re-contextualisé: Vers une autre vision de la rencontre entre L'Inde et la France au Grand Siècle" Keynote address for conference "Le Voyage en Inde à l'âge classique." Univ. Aix Marseille, France, October 18, 2019.

Works In Progress

Biography of Marguerite de La Sablière
Translation of François Bernier's travels to India

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