Brooke Di Lauro, Associate Professor of French
Dr. Di Lauro received her B.A. in French, German, and Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in French Literature from Yale University. Her dissertation, Les mortz qu’en moy tu renovelles: Eros and Thanatos in Maurice Scève’s Délie, focuses on metaphors of death in the first lyrical cycle and the first Petrarch-inspired love poetry ever published in France, making her officially a specialist in early modern poetry. Dr. Di Lauro’s interests outside the Renaissance include nineteenth-century French literature as well as comparative approaches to literature–especially the interface between literature and the visual arts and the connection between French and German Romanticism. Publications include articles in Emblematica: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Emblem Studies and The National Central University Journal of Humanities, as well as in the special edited volumes entitled Spaces of Consumption and Disposable Culture: A Material Dialogue in Medieval Europe and Euro Pop!: Essays on European Popular Culture. Email: bdilauro@umw.edu. Di Lauro’s CV.
Scott M. Powers, Professor of French
Dr. Powers’ primary field of research is in contemporary literature of Québec. His publications probe the intersection of the religious and the secular in works by Michel Tremblay, Monique Proulx, Gaétan Soucy, Jean-François Beauchemin, and Audrée Wilhelmy. His most recent article, “‘Tu n’as pas à te sentir coupable d’être’: A Multiversal Approach to Guilt in Gaétan Soucy’s L’Acquittement” appeared in Studies in Canadian Literature (2019). Another essay, forthcoming with Québec Studies and entitled “Secularity, the Animal Other, and the ‘Fragilized’ Text in the Works of Jean-François Beauchemin,” applies the theories of Animal Studies to post-secular narratives.
Powers has also published several articles in leading academic journals on French Literature, namely on the topics of evil, secularization, anti-Semitism, medicine, and September 11. He has edited a volume entitledEvil in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), and authored the monograph Confronting Evil: The Psychology of Secularization in Modern French Literature(Purdue University Press, 2016). Dr. Powers is also interested in Foreign language pedagogy. In 2016, he co-authored the ninth edition of the textbook Interaction: Langue et Culture (Heinle, 2016) and has published articles in the MLA Approaches to Teaching World Literature Series.
Located in Combs Hall – Room 225
Email: spowers@umw.edu
Powers’ CV
Leonard R. Koos, Associate Professor of French
Dr. Koos received his undergraduate degree in Political Science and French from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Masters and Doctorate from Yale University. He is a specialist in nineteenth and twentieth century French literature, with particular emphasis on fin de siècle French culture. He received a national Endowment for the Humanities summer grant in 1995 for the research project “Depopulationist and Neo-Malthusian Literature in Turn-of-the-Century France.” Dr. Koos has published articles on Perec, Huysmans, Artaud, Jarry, travel writing, Barrès, and decadence. His most recent publications include “Improper Names: Pseudonyms and Transvestites in Decadent Prose” in Perrenial Decay: On the Aesthetics and Politics of Decadence (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999) and “Between Two Worlds: Construction Colonialist Identity in Turn-of-the-Century Algeria” in French Literature Series (v. 26, 1999). He is currently completing a book-length study of the late nineteenth-century decadent movement in France and has begun a new project of colonialist literature in the Maghreb in the nineteenth-century. In addition to the French courses he teaches, Professor Koos also regularly teaches IDIS 204, International Cinema. E-mail: lkoos@umw.edu. Koos’ CV.