Faculty

Jean-Marie Apostolidès

Professor of French
William H. Bonsall Professor in French

Pigott Hall, Rm 106
650 723 4460
aposto@stanford.edu
Office Hours:
M 12:30-2:00 and by appointment

Professor Apostolidès was educated in France, where he received a doctorate in literature and the social sciences. He taught psychology in Canada for seven years and sociology in France for three years. In 1980 he came to the United States, teaching at Harvard and then Stanford, primarily French classical literature (the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and drama. He is interested in avant-garde artistic movements such as dada, surrealism, and situationist international; as well as the theory of image, literary theory, and Francophone literature. He is also a playwright, whose work has been staged in Paris, Montreal, and New York.

Professor Apostolidès has served as chair of the Department of French and Italian and as executive editor of the Stanford French Review and the Stanford Literature Review.

His literary criticism focuses on the place of artistic production in the French classical age and in modern society. Whether it be the place of court pageantry during the reign of King Louis XIV (Le Roi-Machine, 1981), or the role of theater under the ancien régime (Le Prince Sacrificié, 1985), or even the importance of mass culture in the 1950s (Les Métamorphoses de Tintin, 1984), in each case Professor Apostolidès analyzes a specific cultural product both in its original context and in the context of the contemporary world. His most recent books are Les Tombeaux de Guy Debord in 1999, L'Audience in 2001, Traces, Revers, Ecarts in 2002, Sade in The Abyss in 2003, Héroïsme et victimisation in 2003, Hergé et le mythe du Surenfant in 2004. The tools required for such analysis are borrowed from literary criticism and from the social sciences, particularly psychoanalysis, anthropology, and sociology.

In his books, Professor Apostolidès interprets the works of the past as witnesses of our intellectual and emotional life. His examination of the distant or near past seeks to make us more sensitive to the social changes that are taking place now, in order to improve our understanding of the direction in which contemporary society is moving.

Interests

Classical French literature (17th and 18th centuries); Avant-garde artistic movements: Dada, surrealism, situationist international; iconomie, literary theory and Francophone literature

Education

1978: Doctorat d'Etat ès Lettres et Sciences humaines
Université de Tours
1972: Maîtrise d'Anthropologie (ABD)
Université de Montréal
1969: Maîtrise de Psychologie
Université de Paris X
1968: Licence de Psychologie
Université de Paris X
1966: Classe préparatoire de l'IDHEC
Lycée Voltaire, Paris
1965: Propédeutique de Lettres Modernes
Université de Reims
1964: Baccalauréat de Philosophie
Académie de Dijon

Current courses (Winter 2007)

FRENLIT 131 17th and 18th Century France
FRENLIT 222 Ancien Régime

Recent courses

FRENGEN 192E Images of Women in French Cinema: 1930-1990
FRENLIT 225 Multicultural Molière