Professor
Chair of the
Department of French and Italian and the Department of German
email Roland Racevskis
551 Phillips Hall
335-2252
Roland Racevskis received his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. He is the author of Time and Ways of Knowing: Molière, Sévigné, Lafayette (Bucknell University Press, 2003) and Tragic Passages: Jean Racine's Art of the Threshold (Bucknell University Press, 2008). Racevskis's research interests include early-modern literature and cultural history with a focus on 17th-century French theater and prose. Additional interests include critical theory, modern narrative and ecocriticism. His teaching centers on French language, on Ancien Régime literature and culture, and on ecological approaches to fiction.
"Soft Domination: Voluntary Servitude in Corneille and Racine" Romance Quarterly 54.2 (Spring 2007): 136-52.
"Of Cannibals and Colonizers: Irony, Gender, and Ecology in Rouge Brésil." Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies. Special Issue: Postcolonial Revisions of the Early Modern. Ed. Bernadette Andrea and Mona Narain. 6.2 (Fall/Winter 2006): 69-83.
"La Thébaïde de Racine, des seuils du pouvoir aux limites de l'existence" Australian Journal of French Studies 42.2 (May-August 2005): 229-47.
9:170/Studies in Early Modern France: Versailles under the Sun King
In this course we explore the literature, art, history, and social framework of seventeenth-century France under Louis XIV. At the center of the course is a work of architecture and landscaping--the palace and grounds of Versailles--that has come to represent both baroque and classical esthetic sensibilies and the political culture of absolute monarchy. Through readings of works of literature and cultural history, we will aim to get a sense for how members of the court at Versailles defined their own social roles within a rapidly changing society that included new spheres of public and private existence. Authors to be studied will include La Bruyère, La Fontaine, Molière, and Saint-Simon. Historical and theoretical approaches will be drawn from the work of Jean-Marie Apostolidès, Roger Chartier, Joan DeJean, Norbert Elias, Pierre Goubert, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Louis Marin, and Robert Muchembled among others. Work for the course will include preparation of readings and participation in class discussions, three short papers, a midterm exam, and a final exam. Print resources will be complemented by a survey of films, websites, and CDroms devoted to Versailles.
Students of all majors and backgrounds welcome. Readings available in both French and English.
Copyright © 2003 The University of Iowa. All rights reserved. Contact: french-italian@uiowa.edu - Updated 5/29/09