| Michèle Longino received her PhD from the University of Michigan in 1984, and taught at Rice University before coming to Duke in 1989. Her interests in the epistolary genre and in women’s writing led to the publication of "Performing Motherhood: The Sévigné Correspondence" (1991). She also published articles on the writings of other seventeenth-century authors, including Mme d'Aulnoy, Marie de Gournay, Poullain de la Barre, Mme de Lafayette, Corneille, Boileau, Molière, and Racine. Her current research interests include travel accounts, questions of genre, feminist theory, and seventeenth-century French literature in a cultural studies context. She has recently published a book on the staging of exoticism in seventeenth-century France: "Orientalism and French Classical Drama" (2002).
Her new book project is: Travel, or the Benefits of Discontent: Marseilles to Constantinople (1650-1700). This year Professor Longino serves as President of the EDUCO (Emory / Duke / Cornell Universities) Program in Paris. Education:
- PhD in French Literature University of Michigan, 1984
- MA Claremont Graduate School, 1972
- BA Rosary College, 1968
Research Interests:
I am organizing my new book around six French travel journals
produced between 1650 and 1700. The travelers I treat are:
Guillaume-Joseph Grelot, the artist; Jean Chardin, the protestant
jewel merchant; Antoine Galland, the antiquarian; Laurent
D’Arvieux, the linguist and diplomat; Jean Thévenot, the
orientalist; and Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, the French king’s
diamond merchant. Each of these travelers treats the same
basic trajectory -- the sea voyage between Marseilles, then as
now France’s “Gateway to the Orient,” and the port of
destination, Constantinople, also then as now, a symbolic center
of Levantine power, and the major hub of East-West contact.
Penned within fifty years of one another, these six case studies
enable me to explore three key areas of enquiry that have been
understudied in the critical literature: motivation for travel,
tropes of travel, and perspective.
Given the East-West axis of the travel itineraries in question, the
larger field of orientalism provides an important focus for my
project. In this regard, the work of and around Edward Said is
foundational. In addition, the contributions of cultural
anthropologists (see Marcus and Fischer) to thinking about
western versions of ‘othering’ provide helpful grounding for
considering the projects of each of these travelers (see my
Orientalism book). The writings of philosophers Harraway and
Longino who analyze the constructed nature of knowledge assist
in thinking about the phenomenon of perspective that is the
trademark of these juxtaposed travel accounts. Recent Publications (More Publications)
- "Constantinople: The Telling and the Taking." Approaches to Teaching the Mediterranean Ed. Roberto Dainotto, Eric Zakim. Modern Languages Association, forthcoming 2008.
- M. Longino. "Le "Mamamouchi" ou la colonisation de l'imaginaire français par le monde ottoman.." Théâtre et voyage. Presses universitaires de Paris - Sorbonne, forthcoming 2008. [abs]
- M. Longino. "Derrière le présentisme" du regard lointain." . forthcoming 2008. [abs]
- Nabil Matar, "Britain and Barbary, 1589-1689". South Central Review 24:2 (Summer, 2007): 107-109.
- Elizabeth C. Goldsmith, Colette H. Winn, Eds., "Lettres de femmes: Textes inedits et oublies du XVIe au XVIIIe siecle". The French Review 80:4 (March, 2007): 907-908.
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