Lawrence Kritzman
Encyclopedia
Lawrence D. Kritzman, an American
scholar, is the Willard Professor of French, Comparative Literature and Oratory at Dartmouth College
. He has previoiusly held the Edward Tuck professorship in French, the Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professorship in the Humanities, and the John and Pat Rosenwald Research Professorship. He has written works on, edited works on, or given lectures on Barthes
, Foucault
, Kristeva
, Sartre
, Camus
, Malraux
, Derrida
, Montaigne
, Simone de Beauvoir, and others, focusing especially on twentieth-century French
philosophy
. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, he has innovated sixteenth century French studies in his readings of Marguerite de Navarre
, Scève
, Ronsard, Rabelais, Montaigne, and the poètes rhétoriqueurs
.
His books include Destruction/Decouverte: le fonctionnement de la rhetorique dans les Essais de Montaigne, The Rhetoric of Sexuality and the Literature of the French Renaissance, and The Fabulous Imagination: On Montaigne's Essays. He is currently completing "Death Sentences: Writing and Mortality in post 1950 French texts". He has edited Fragments: Incompletion and Discontinuity; "France under Mitterrand"; Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture; Le Signe et le texte; Sans aultre guide; Auscwitz and After: Race, Culture and the Jewish Question in France; and Pierre Nora
's Realms of Memory.
As editor of European Perspectives, a series in social philosophy and cultural criticism from Columbia University Press, he has served as a cultural ambassader between Europe and the United States and has published authors such as Adorno, Althusser, Barthes, Baudrillard, Baumann, Bourdieu, Cixous, Deleuze, Derrida, Ginzburg, Kristeva, and Vattimo. He serves on more than ten editorial boards in fields such as Renaissance and contemporary literatures, French society and politics, and theory and cultural studies.
His most recent editorial venture, the Columbia History of Twentieth Century French Thought, was the winner of the 2006 Modern Language Association Scalgione prize for best book in French. This work also received awards from the Independent Publishers Association and the Ray and Pat Brown Foundation.
Kritzman has also penned articles for Le Monde
, and has been interviewed by Le Figaro
, Télérama
, and Radio France
. Frequently consulted on both sides of the Atlantic on French culture, politics, and intellectual life, he has been interviewed by Liberation, Le Monde, the International Herald Tribuine, Newsweek, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Boston Globe and National Public Radio.
In 1990, the French government
made him a knight
in the Ordre des Palmes Académiques; in 1994, he was made an officer. In 2000, he was awarded the Ordre National du Mérite
, the second-highest civilian award accorded in France, by Jacques Chirac
. Kritzman has received fellowships and awards from the American Councial of Learned Societies, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the Florence Gould foundation. Kritzman is founder and director of the Institute of French Cultural Studies. The major goal of the Institute of French Cultural Studies is to allow advanced graduate students and assistant professors in French to partake in contemporary cultural debates on both sides of the Atlantic and to prepare them to supplement the programmatic needs of French departments in developing courses in interdisciplinary studies taught in French.
He also heads the Institute for European Studies at Dartmouth. In the past, he has taught at Rutgers
, Stanford, Harvard, and Michigan
. Kritzman has been invited as Directeur d'Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) in 2010.
Kritzman received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison
, an M.A. from Middlebury College
, and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
scholar, is the Willard Professor of French, Comparative Literature and Oratory at Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
. He has previoiusly held the Edward Tuck professorship in French, the Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professorship in the Humanities, and the John and Pat Rosenwald Research Professorship. He has written works on, edited works on, or given lectures on Barthes
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
, Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
, Kristeva
Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a Professor at the University Paris Diderot...
, Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
, Malraux
André Malraux
André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...
, Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
, Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne , February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592, was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance, known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and is popularly thought of as the father of Modern Skepticism...
, Simone de Beauvoir, and others, focusing especially on twentieth-century French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, he has innovated sixteenth century French studies in his readings of Marguerite de Navarre
Marguerite de Navarre
Marguerite de Navarre , also known as Marguerite of Angoulême and Margaret of Navarre, was the queen consort of Henry II of Navarre...
, Scève
Maurice Scève
Maurice Scève , French poet, was born at Lyon, where his father practised law.He was the centre of the Lyonnese côterie that elaborated the theory of spiritual love, derived partly from Plato and partly from Petrarch...
, Ronsard, Rabelais, Montaigne, and the poètes rhétoriqueurs
Grands Rhétoriqueurs
The Grands Rhétoriqueurs or simply the "Rhétoriqueurs" is the name given to a group of poets from 1460 to 1520 working in Northern France, Flanders and the Duchy of Burgundy whose ostentatious poetic production was dominated by an extremely rich rhyme scheme and experimentation with assonance...
.
His books include Destruction/Decouverte: le fonctionnement de la rhetorique dans les Essais de Montaigne, The Rhetoric of Sexuality and the Literature of the French Renaissance, and The Fabulous Imagination: On Montaigne's Essays. He is currently completing "Death Sentences: Writing and Mortality in post 1950 French texts". He has edited Fragments: Incompletion and Discontinuity; "France under Mitterrand"; Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture; Le Signe et le texte; Sans aultre guide; Auscwitz and After: Race, Culture and the Jewish Question in France; and Pierre Nora
Pierre Nora
Pierre Nora is a French historian of Jewish descent. Elected to the French Academy on June 7, 2001, he is known for his work on French identity and memory. His name is associated with the study of new history...
's Realms of Memory.
As editor of European Perspectives, a series in social philosophy and cultural criticism from Columbia University Press, he has served as a cultural ambassader between Europe and the United States and has published authors such as Adorno, Althusser, Barthes, Baudrillard, Baumann, Bourdieu, Cixous, Deleuze, Derrida, Ginzburg, Kristeva, and Vattimo. He serves on more than ten editorial boards in fields such as Renaissance and contemporary literatures, French society and politics, and theory and cultural studies.
His most recent editorial venture, the Columbia History of Twentieth Century French Thought, was the winner of the 2006 Modern Language Association Scalgione prize for best book in French. This work also received awards from the Independent Publishers Association and the Ray and Pat Brown Foundation.
Kritzman has also penned articles for Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
, and has been interviewed by Le Figaro
Le Figaro
Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...
, Télérama
Télérama
Télérama is a weekly French magazine owned by Le Monde S.A. Its primary contents are television and radio listings, though the magazine also prints film, theatre, music and book reviews, as well as cover stories and feature articles of cultural interest. The name is a contraction of its earlier...
, and Radio France
Radio France
Radio France is a French public service radio broadcaster.-Mission:Radio France's two principal missions are:* To create and expand the programming on all of their stations; and...
. Frequently consulted on both sides of the Atlantic on French culture, politics, and intellectual life, he has been interviewed by Liberation, Le Monde, the International Herald Tribuine, Newsweek, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Boston Globe and National Public Radio.
In 1990, the French government
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
made him a knight
Knight
A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....
in the Ordre des Palmes Académiques; in 1994, he was made an officer. In 2000, he was awarded the Ordre National du Mérite
Ordre National du Mérite
The Ordre national du Mérite is an Order of State awarded by the President of the French Republic. It was founded on 3 December 1963 by President Charles de Gaulle...
, the second-highest civilian award accorded in France, by Jacques Chirac
Jacques Chirac
Jacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 , and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the...
. Kritzman has received fellowships and awards from the American Councial of Learned Societies, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the Florence Gould foundation. Kritzman is founder and director of the Institute of French Cultural Studies. The major goal of the Institute of French Cultural Studies is to allow advanced graduate students and assistant professors in French to partake in contemporary cultural debates on both sides of the Atlantic and to prepare them to supplement the programmatic needs of French departments in developing courses in interdisciplinary studies taught in French.
He also heads the Institute for European Studies at Dartmouth. In the past, he has taught at Rutgers
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
, Stanford, Harvard, and Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
. Kritzman has been invited as Directeur d'Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) in 2010.
Kritzman received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
, an M.A. from Middlebury College
Middlebury College
Middlebury College is a private liberal arts college located in Middlebury, Vermont, USA. Founded in 1800, it is one of the oldest liberal arts colleges in the United States. Drawing 2,400 undergraduates from all 50 United States and over 70 countries, Middlebury offers 44 majors in the arts,...
, and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
.