Philippe Desan
Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
1115 E. 58th Street.
Chicago, IL 60637
Office: Wieboldt 410
Phone: 773/834-8056
Email: p-desan@uchicago.edu
Howard L. Willett Professor of French and History of Culture
Professor Desan has been at the University of Chicago since 1984. Educated in France (Political Economy and Sociology) and in the United States (Literary Studies), his scholarship mostly includes works of the French Renaissance in relation to their economic, political and sociological context.
Professor Desan is the general editor of the journal Montaigne Studies and directs the Chicago Renaissance Center. He also works on 19th-century literature, especially Flaubert, from a sociological perspective. His books include Naissance de la méthode (1987), Humanism in Crisis: The Decline of the French Renaissance (1991), Les Commerces de Montaigne (1992), Penser l'histoire à la Renaissance (1993), Montaigne dans tous ses états (2001), L'Imaginaire économique de la Renaissance (2002), Portraits à l'essai: iconographie de Montaigne (2007). He has also edited numerous texts of the 16th century - including the first color reproduction of Montaigne's Bordeaux Copy of the Essais (2002), Montaigne politique (2005), and a Dictionnaire de Michel de Montaigne (Paris: Champion, 2004, 2007). He is currently working on a book titled Montaigne: essays de politique and pursuing his long-term research on the history of pre-modern economic thought in Europe.
Education
- Ph.D. in French, University of California, Davis, 1984.
- DEA Economie et Société, Université de Paris VIII, June 1979.
- MA in English, Université de Paris VIII, Oct. 1978.
- Licence in Political Economy, Université de Paris VIII, June 1978.
Awards, Honors, and Professional Experience
- Prix de l'Académie Française (for the Dictionnaire de Montaigne), 2005.
- Ordre National du Mérite, given by the French government (for his recent edition of the Bordeaux copy of Montaigne's Essais), 2004.
- Médaille de Montaigne, given by the Université de Bordeaux (for work on Montaigne), 1995.
- Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques, 1994.
- Médaille de la ville de Bordeaux, in commemoration of the Four Hundredth Anniversary of the Death of Montaigne (for work on Montaigne), 1992.
- American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, 1989-1990.
Professor Desan has also taught at the Ecole Nationale des Chartes (Paris), the Centre d'Etudes Supérieures de la Renaissance (Tours), the Collège International de Philosophie (Paris) and Harvard University.
Selected Courses Taught
Montaigne; Rabelais; La Pléiade; Flaubert; Ecrire l'histoire à la Renaissance; Pro seminar in History of Culture; Ideology and Culture; Variety of undergraduate courses in French and the Common Core in the College.