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Biography

Robert Doran is Professor of French and Comparative Literature and an Affiliate Faculty member of the Music Theory Department of the Eastman School of Music. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University and a PhD in General and Comparative Literature from the Sorbonne Nouvelle-University of Paris 3.

He is the author or editor of eight books, including the monographs The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant (Cambridge University Press, 2015/2017), which was translated into Spanish in 2021, and The Ethics of Theory: Philosophy, History, Literature (Bloomsbury, 2017). Most recently, he has edited Liszt and Virtuosity (91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Press, 2020), co-winner of the 2023 Alan Walker Triennial Book Award, sponsored by the American Liszt Society, and two volumes of Hayden White’s late essays for Cornell University Press (vol. 1, 2022; vol. 2, 2023). His current book projects are Revolutionary Aesthetics: The Sublime in Nineteenth-Century France and Shakespeare in Paris: Reinventing Nineteenth-Century French Theater.

His teaching focuses on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French literature and culture, in particular on the novel, romanticism, theater, Napoleon, and Paris. He also regularly teaches courses on continental philosophy, aesthetics, and twentieth-century French thought.

Research Overview

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Research Interests

• Nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature and culture
• the novel
• continental philosophy
• literary theory
• aesthetics
• intellectual history
• European cinema
• existentialism

Courses Offered (subject to change)

• CLTR 200:  Topics in Critical Thinking: The Antihero (Spring 2022)
• CLTR 389:  Major Seminar (Fall 2017)
• FREN 157:  French in France (Summer 2018)
• FREN 202:  Introduction to Literature in French (Spring 2018)
• FREN 207:  French in France (Summer 2018)
• FREN 229:  Existentialism (Fall 2019)
• FREN 230:  French Social Thought (Fall 2018)
• FREN 232:  Hugo's "Les Misérables" (Spring 2015)
• FREN 233:  Realists and Romantics (Fall 2015)
• FREN 245:  Revolution and Romanticism (Fall 2018)
• FREN 246:  Dumas's "The Count of Monte Cristo" (Fall 2017)
• FREN 254:  Camus and Sartre (Fall 2014)
• FREN 255:  Sartre and Heidegger (Fall 2016)
• FREN 259:  Les Philosophes & the French Enlightenment (Fall 2019)
• FREN 262:  French Philosophy Since 1960 (Spring 2014)
• FREN 265:  Aesthetics (Spring 2018)
• FREN 266:  Balzac and Baudelaire in Paris (Fall 2013)
• FREN 267:  Baudelaire: Poetry and Modernity (Fall 2016)
• FREN 268:  Jean Renoir and Cinema (Spring 2017)
• FREN 269:  Foucault and the Ethics of Theory (Spring 2017)
• FREN 281:  French Cinema: 1930-1960 (Fall 2014)
• FREN 289:  Philosophy of Art (Fall 2015)

Selected Publications

Single-Authored Books

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Edited Books

• Editor. . By Hayden White. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2023.
• Editor. . By Hayden White. Foreword by Judith Butler. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022.
• Editor. . The Triennial Alan Walker Book Award (2023), sponsored by the American Liszt Society.
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• Editor. . [Spanish Translation: La ficción de la narrativa: Ensayos sobre historia, literatura y teoría, 1957-2007. Translated by María Julia de Ruschi, Eterna Cadencia, 2011. Chinese Translation by Lili Ma and Yun Ma. Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, 2013/2019.]
• Editor. . By René Girard, Stanford UP, 2008. Cultural Memory in the Present.

Journal Issues

• Editor. Rethinking Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009). Spec. issue of Yale French Studies, no. 123, 2013. JSTOR, .
• Editor. Cultural Theory After 9/11: Terror, Religion, Media. Spec. issue of SubStance, vol. 37, no. 1, 2008. JSTOR, .

Recent Articles and Book Chapters

• “The Sublime and French Romanticism,” commissioned for The Oxford Handbook of the Sublime, ed. Emily Brady, Patrick Cheney, and Philip Hardie (Oxford: Oxford University Press), forthcoming 2025.
• “The Tradition of the Sublime in Early Modern Europe,” The Cambridge History of Rhetoric, Vol. 4: Rhetoric from the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Dietmar Til and Adam Potka (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), forthcoming 2024.
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• Chinese only: “Hayden White and the Ethics of Truth,” trans. Zhang Zuocheng, The World History Review, forthcoming, 2020.
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• “Metahistoria y la ética de la historiografía,” in Hayden White: cuarenta años de Metahistoria: Del “pasado histórico” al “pasado práctico” ed. Verónica Tozzi and Julio Bentivoglio (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2016): 189-200. [Spanish translation of “Metahistory and the Ethics of Historiography”]
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• "Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason and the Debate with Lévi-Strauss." Rethinking Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009), edited by Robert Doran. Spec. issue of Yale French Studies, no. 123, 2013, pp. 41-62. JSTOR, .
• "Choosing the Past: Hayden White and the Philosophy of History." Philosophy of History After Hayden White, edited by Robert Doran, Bloomsbury, 2013, pp. 1-33. Bloomsbury Studies in American Philosophy.
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• "René Girard's Concept of Conversion and the Via Negativa: Revisiting Deceit, Desire, and the Novel." Religion and Literature, vol. 43, vol. 3, Autumn 2011, 170-79. JSTOR, .
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• "Ambiguity in Jean Renoir’s La Règle du jeu." Contemporary French Civilization, vol. 34, no. 2, 2010, 167-90. Liverpool UP Online, .
• "Introduction: Humanism, Formalism, and the Discourse of History." The Fiction of Narrative: Essays on History, Literature, and Theory, 1957-2007, by Hayden White, edited by Robert Doran, Johns Hopkins UP, 2010, pp. xiii-xxxii.
• "Erich Auerbach’s Humanism and the Criticism of the Future." Erich Auerbach, edited by Mario Domenichelli and Maria Luisa Meneghetti. Spec. issue of Moderna: Semestrale di teoria e critica della letteratura, vol. 11, no. 1-2, 2009, pp. 99-108.
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• "Introduction: Terrorism and Cultural Theory: The Singularity of 9/11." Cultural Theory After 9/11: Terror, Religion, Media, edited by Robert Doran. Spec. issue of SubStance, vol. 37, no. 1, 2008, pp. 3-19. JSTOR, .
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• "Literary History and the Sublime in Erich Auerbach's Mimesis." New Literary History, vol. 38, no. 2, Spring 2007, pp. 353-69. JSTOR, .

Recent Translations

• Translator. "Rupture and Literary Creation in Jean-Paul Sartre [1968]." By René Girard. Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, vol. 22, Spring 2015, pp. 1-16. JSTOR, .
• Translator. "Living with Others: Reciprocity and Alterity in Lévi-Strauss." By Marcel Hénaff. Rethinking Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009), edited by Robert Doran. Spec. issue of Yale French Studies, no. 123, 2013, pp. 63-82. JSTOR, .
• Translator. "The Future of the Novel [1957]." By René Girard. Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, vol. 19, 2012, pp. 1-8. JSTOR, .

Selected Invited Presentations

• “La sérialité selon Sartre et l’aliénation sociale,” Le Collège de France, June 1, 2023.
  
  
• "On the Use and Reuse of History: Reading Hayden White's The Practical Past." Is Theory Critical? UCI Critical Theory, 22-23 May 2016, U of California, Irvine.
  
  

Interviews

• "The Ethics of Theory." Inteviewed by Rhys Tranter. RhysTranter.com, 5 May 2017, .
• "An Interview with Robert Doran at the International Kant Congress 2015." YouTube, uploaded by Cambridge Academic Books, 22 Mar. 2017,  and .