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Academics - Modern Languages Faculty & Staff

Academics - Modern Languages Faculty & Staff

Karen Quandt

Associate Professor of French

CONTACT:

Detchon Center 228
765-361-6201
quandtk@wabash.edu

Picture of Quandt, Karen

Prof. Quandt’s primary research interests involve 19th-century French poetry, particularly the intersections between visual art and literature, and she also works extensively on ecocritical themes in the literature of this period. She enjoys teaching any level of French language or literature, and her courses often take an interdisciplinary approach that seeks to incorporate other areas such as art and music. She has recently turned to questions of social justice in French literature, and offered in spring 2021 a cross-listed course taught in English called "Fighting for fraternité" that incorporated works by Voltaire, Claire de Duras, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as Ladj Ly's award-winning film Les Misérables. In the context of social justice in the US, her EQ class listened to the music of Neil Young, Stevie Wonder, and Kendrick Lamar.

Having studied or worked abroad on numerous occasions, from high school through graduate studies, Prof. Quandt is a big proponent of study abroad and is an active member of the Off-Campus Studies committee. She has led two Wabash immersion trips to Caen, France in March 2019 and Paris in March 2023, which both focused on the enduring impact of WWII on modern French society. She also actively finds ways to take advantage of local cultural opportunities in Indiana and Chicago, and has taken students to French film screenings, productions of Les Misérables, and art exhibitions. Thanks to the generosity of the Albertine Cinémathèque, she has organized two French film festivals on the Wabash campus.

Though she mostly busies herself with music, museums, reading, and writing, one of her favorite activities is seeking out good trails and looking for birds, with her two boys and miniature schnauzer in tow. Given her predilection for romantic angst, it is an open secret that she is a fan of classic rock and alternative music; some of her favorites include Bob Dylan, The Smiths, Tori Amos, and Radiohead.

(Photo: Prof. Quandt and her students at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, March 2023)

EDUCATION

Ph.D. in French, Princeton University (2011)

M.A. in French, University of Notre Dame (2001)

B.A. in Art History, University of Notre Dame (2000)

RECENT COURSE OFFERINGS

Prof. Quandt regularly teaches courses at every level of French, including FRE 101, FRE 102, FRE 103, FRE 201, FRE 202, FRE 301, FRE 302, and FRE 401.

She has taught FRC 101 (Enduring Questions), and has served as an academic advisor for incoming freshmen.

Her freshman tutorial (FRT 101), entitled "Reading Green," focuses on environmental literature; works included Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk, Samuel Beckett's Endgame, as well as an array of modern and contemporary poems.

Special topics courses have included:

Le Moi et ses manifestations (FRE 401)

Displacements (FRE 313)

L'amour à travers les âges (FRE 313)

Expressions modernes: French Literature and Art from Romanticism to Surrealism (FRE 312)

Adventures in Writing (FRE 311)

RECENT PRESENTATIONS

- “Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and the ‘poussière noire’ of 1830s Lyon.” Society for French Studies, Newcastle University, 26–28 Jun. 2023 (Newcastle, UK)

- (with Cary Hollinshead-Strick, American University of Paris) “The Ecologies of Paper Making and Print Production in Nineteenth-Century France.” Cultural Production in the Nineteenth Century, Retrouvailles et reprises, Université Paris Cité, 19–20 Jun. 2023 (Paris, France)

- “‘Et cela se fait en Europe comme en Amérique’: Technology’s Tentacular Reach in Hugo’s Les Travailleurs de la mer.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 3–6 Nov. 2022 (New York, NY)

- “Transatlantic Reverberations of Social Justice.” Roundtable: “Teaching the Nineteenth Century in a Global Context.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 3–6 Nov. 2022 (New York, NY)

- “What’s French Got to Do with It? Transatlantic Reverberations of Social Justice.” Wabash College, Ides of August, 19 Aug. 2022 (Crawfordsville, IN)

- “Reef Ecology in Victor Hugo’s Les Travailleurs de la mer.” Society for French Studies, Queen’s University Belfast, 27–29 Jun. 2022 (Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK)

- “Urban Ecology in Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal.” Parisian Ecologies Symposium, Benton Museum of Art, Pomona College, 8 Apr. 2022 (Claremont, CA)

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Select Publications

- “The Seine’s Swan Song: Urban Riparian Ecology in Baudelaire’s ‘Le Cygne’.” ISLE, 2023.

- “Rimbaud et l’imagination botanique.” Parade sauvage: Revue d’études rimbaldiennes, vol. 33, 2022, pp. 93–118.

- “Mallarmé, Manet, and the Plein-air Eclogue.” Plein Air, special issue of Venti: Air, Experience, and Aesthetics, vol. 1, issue 3, Mar. 2021.

- “Alpine Ecology in Stendhal’s Mémoires d’un touriste.” Ecoregions/Les Écorégions, special issue of Dix-Neuf, vol. 23, no. 4, Nov. 2019, pp. 183–195.

- Aesthetic Contaminations in Baudelaire, co-edited with Nicolas Valazza, special issue of Nottingham French Studies, vol. 58, no. 2, 2019.

- “Victor Hugo and the Politics of Ecopoetics.” French  Ecocriticism: From the Early Modern Period to the Twenty-First Century, edited by Daniel Finch-Race and Stephanie Posthumus, Peter Lang, 2017, pp. 61–81.

- “Embodying Ecopoetry: Victor Hugo, Love, and Landscape.” Odd Bodies, special issue of Nineteenth-Century Contexts, vol. 39, no. 5, 2017, pp. 365–381.

- “Baudelaire and the Poetics of Pollution.” Ecopoetics/L’Écopoétique, special issue of Dix-Neuf, vol. 19, no. 3, Nov. 2015, pp. 244–259.

- “‘Foliis ac frondibus’: Les Misérables and the Ecogarden.” Les Misérables and its Afterlives: Between Page, Stage, and Screen, edited by Kathryn Grossman and Bradley Stephens, Ashgate, 2015, pp. 33–47.

Book and Exhibition Reviews

Stendhal by Francesco Manzini. H-France, vol. 20, no. 84, May 2020, https://hfrance.net/vol20reviews/vol20no84quandt.pdf.

Stones to Stains: The Drawings of Victor Hugo, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (Sept.–Dec. 2018). Société des Études Romantiques et Dix-Neuviémistes (SERD), May 2019 serd.hypotheses.org/5182.

HONORS AND AWARDS

- Great Lakes College Association (GLCA) Global Crossroads, New Directions in Global Scholarship (2023)

- The Everett Helm Visiting Fellowship, The Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington (Summer 2019)

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