Mary Jane Cowles joined the Kenyon faculty in 1989, after teaching both French and Spanish for a number of years at St. Mary's College of Maryland. In addition to courses in French language and culture, she has taught courses in her major area of expertise, nineteenth-century French literature. Other courses have focused on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature, film, drama, and literary theory. Among her research interests are French Romanticism, French film, and psychoanalytic theory. In 2004-05, she served as on-site directory of the Sweet Briar College Junior Year in France.

Areas of Expertise

Nineteenth-century French literature and Romanticism, French film studies and film theory, psychoanalytic theory

Education

M.A., Ph.D., Princeton University
B.A., Mount Holyoke College

Selected Publications

"Napoleon's Compass: The Third Term of History in Balzac's Les Chouans," in Peripheries of Nineteenth-Century French Studies: Views from the Edge, ed. Timothy Raser, Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 2002.

"Speaking the (Absent) Mother: Corinne and la langue maternelle". Psychoanalytic Studies, Vol. 2, no. 4, 2000.

Courses Taught

FREN 111-112: Intensive Introductory French
FREN 213-214: Intermediate French
FREN 321: Advanced Composition and Conversation
FREN 334: Introduction to French Literature II
FREN 337: French Drama and Writing Workshop
FREN 353: 1789: Myth and Meaning of the French Revolution in Film and Fiction