Student textbook for Paris in Architecture, Literature and Art (409 pp., 97 b/w ill., 98 colored ill.) Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2018. Illustrations by author.
Paris in Architecture, Literature and Art is a student textbook and teacher manual in cultural studies that capitalizes on the little exposure liberal arts students have to architecture, and the widespread popularity of Paris across the curriculum.
Each chapter presents a cultural movement such as the Gothic, classical, romantic and modern that are predominant in the Parisian landscape. The interdisciplinary approach promotes critical thinking, inspiring students to identify and translate esthetic concepts from one discipline to another, and explore, for instance, what impressionist literature or cubist architecture might be.
Available in paperback and e-book at Amazon and Peter Lang Publishing: https://doi.org/10.3726/978-1-4331-3959-8
Teacher Manual e-book for Paris in Architecture, Literature, and Art (753 pp., 18 b/w ill., 59 colored ill.). Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2018. Illustrations by author.
The teacher manual provides detailed commentaries of all documents presented in the student textbook, with analysis that will be engaging to a scholar, but also accessible to instructors without a background in architecture, literature or art.
e-book available at Peter Lang Publishing https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/62533?format=PBK
Papa a dit, Maman aussi, a coming of age memoir. Paris: Éditions Unicité, 2015
The memoir portrays a Parisian family in the 1960’s as seen through the eyes of a young girl. Her coming of age is marked by her struggle with gender identity. “Papa a dit”: the father holds the verb and she chooses to identify with him—better being a tomboy in a society that does not value women much. “Maman aussi”: the mother deprived of a verb exists only as a reflection of the father—but the echo is not without a dissonance.
Available on Amazon.fr and electre.com
Monstrer Diderot, Ph.D. Dissertation, 1996
Mon projet de “monstrer” Diderot consiste à examiner le monstre comme étant une figure privilégiée de son texte, mais aussi comme un moyen d’éclairer certains aspects de sa pensée philosophique. Pour Diderot, les monstres en tant qu’êtres hybrides appartenant à différents règnes, permettent de montrer la continuité de la matière nécessaire à son matérialisme. La monstruosité est aussi l’action normale de la nature ainsi que le pouvoir évolutif et le principe créatif d’une matière toujours en action nécessaires à sa vision transformiste du monde. Mais même si les monstres du Rêve de d’Alembert se veulent scientifiques, ils sont cependant le plus souvent des constructions du texte, comme dans le cas des catachrèses du bipède déformé, le faux manchot, ou la mouvance des genres du chiasme de Mademoiselle de l’Espinasse. Prenant forme dans le texte, les monstres sont enfin eux-mêmes opérateurs de texte, tels que la repousse prolifique du texte polypeux, ou la copulation textuelle sur le mode du chèvre-pied.
MaySpangler 