Alice Kaplan
Encyclopedia
Alice Kaplan is the John M. Musser Professor of French at Yale University
. Before her arrival at Yale, she was the Gilbert, Louis and Edward Lehrman Professor of Romance Studies and Professor of Literature and History at Duke University
and founding director of the Center for French and Francophone Studies there. She is the author of Reproductions of Banality: Fascism, Literature, and French Intellectual Life (1986); French Lessons: A Memoir (1993); The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach
(2000); and, most recently, The Interpreter (2005), about racial injustice in the American army witnessed by Louis Guilloux
. Kaplan is also the translator into English of Lous Guilloux's novel OK, Joe, Evelyne Bloch-Dano's Madame Proust: A Biography, and three books by Roger Grenier
: Piano Music for Four Hands, Another November, and The Difficulty of Being a Dog.
Kaplan's research interests include autobiography and memory, translation in theory and practice, literature and the law, twentieth-century French literature, French cultural studies, and post-war French culture. Her recent undergraduate courses include coures on Camus, Proust, and Céline; theories of the archive; French national identity; “The Experience of Being Foreign”; and “Literary Trials.” Upcoming courses include “The Modern French Novel” (with Maurice Samuels) and a film course on French cinema of the Occupation. She currently sits on the editorial board at South Atlantic Quarterly, sits on the usage panel for the American Heritage Dictionary, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is represented by the Marly Rusoff Literary Agency.
Kaplan is completing work on a book about the Paris years of Jacqueline Bouvier, Susan Sontag
, and Angela Davis
titled Dreaming in French, to be published by the University of Chicago Press
in 2012.
in French
at the University of California at Berkeley in 1975 and her PhD
in French at Yale University
in 1981.
She describes this period of her life in a chapter of French Lessons.
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. Before her arrival at Yale, she was the Gilbert, Louis and Edward Lehrman Professor of Romance Studies and Professor of Literature and History at Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
and founding director of the Center for French and Francophone Studies there. She is the author of Reproductions of Banality: Fascism, Literature, and French Intellectual Life (1986); French Lessons: A Memoir (1993); The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach
Robert Brasillach
Robert Brasillach was a French author and journalist. Brasillach is best known as the editor of Je suis partout, a nationalist newspaper which came to advocate various fascist movements and supported Jacques Doriot...
(2000); and, most recently, The Interpreter (2005), about racial injustice in the American army witnessed by Louis Guilloux
Louis Guilloux
Louis Guilloux was a French writer born in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, where he lived throughout his life. He is known for his Social Realist novels describing working class life and political struggles in the mid-twentieth century...
. Kaplan is also the translator into English of Lous Guilloux's novel OK, Joe, Evelyne Bloch-Dano's Madame Proust: A Biography, and three books by Roger Grenier
Roger Grenier
Roger Grenier is a French writer, journalist and radio animator. He is Regent of the Collège de ’Pataphysique.- Biography :Young, he lived in Pau, where Andrélie opened a shop selling glasses....
: Piano Music for Four Hands, Another November, and The Difficulty of Being a Dog.
Kaplan's research interests include autobiography and memory, translation in theory and practice, literature and the law, twentieth-century French literature, French cultural studies, and post-war French culture. Her recent undergraduate courses include coures on Camus, Proust, and Céline; theories of the archive; French national identity; “The Experience of Being Foreign”; and “Literary Trials.” Upcoming courses include “The Modern French Novel” (with Maurice Samuels) and a film course on French cinema of the Occupation. She currently sits on the editorial board at South Atlantic Quarterly, sits on the usage panel for the American Heritage Dictionary, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is represented by the Marly Rusoff Literary Agency.
Kaplan is completing work on a book about the Paris years of Jacqueline Bouvier, Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...
, and Angela Davis
Angela Davis
Angela Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. Davis was most politically active during the late 1960s through the 1970s and was associated with the Communist Party USA, the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panther Party...
titled Dreaming in French, to be published by the University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including Critical Inquiry, and a wide array of...
in 2012.
Awards
The Collaborator was awarded the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Award in History and was a finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critic’s Circle awards. The Interpreter was the recipient of the 2005 Henry Adams Prize from the Society for History in the Federal Government, and French Lessons was nominated for the 1993 National Books Critics Circle Award (for autobiography and biography). She was the recipient of a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1994.Education
In 1973 she did a year of study at the Université de Bordeaux III in Bordeaux, France. She obtained her BABachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
at the University of California at Berkeley in 1975 and her PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in French at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in 1981.
Paul de Man Controversy
After the discovery of Paul de Man's controversial wartime journalism for the collaborationist Belgian newspaper Le Soir, Kaplan wrote a widely cited article about her former teacher titled "Paul de Man, Le Soir, and the Francophone Collaboration" for Responses: On Paul de Man's Wartime Journalism, in which she notes:- De Man's work in Le Soir is at once a brilliant and banal example of all the cliches of fascist nationalism: brilliant for the way he argues his position, for the logic he brings to bear, and banal because a thousand other intellectuals claimed the same high ground, reached the same conclusions, had essentially the same effect.
She describes this period of her life in a chapter of French Lessons.
Duke Lacrosse Controversy
During the 2006 Duke University lacrosse case, Kaplan was one of the so-called Group of 88 professors who, in the wake of the lacrosse players scandal, signed a controversial letter thanking protesters for "making a collective noise" on "what happened to this young woman." The letter has been widely criticized as a prejudgment.External links
- Faculty Homepage
- Yale Office of Public Relations & Communications: 'Alice Kaplan Is Appointed the John M. Musser Professor'
- University of Chicago Press author page
- 'Translation: The Biography of an Art Form' essay by Alice Kaplan
- Recent articles in The Nation: "Ghostly Demarcations: On Ramon Fernandez", "La Zone Grise" (on novels concerning the World War 2 Occupation of France and the mass deportation of Jews during the period), and "Love in the Ruins: Review of Irène Némirovsky's Suite Française.
- Review of Susan Sontag's Reborn in French newspaper Libération (in French)
- Excerpt from The Collaborator and Interview
- Audio Interview on The Collaborator at the New York Time
- Excerpt from The Interpreter
- Macalester College talk on The Interpreter from C-SPAN's BookTV
- Steve Moyer's review of The Interpreter