Robert Morrissey
Benjamin Franklin Professor of French Literature, and the Committee on Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities
Office: Wieboldt 219
rmorriss@uchicago.edu
Robert Morrissey earned his PhD with honors in French literature from the University of Chicago in 1978 and began teaching there in 1981. Morrissey specializes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French history, literature and critical theory. His work concentrates on themes and cultural currents over the longue durée. His publications include L'Empereur à la barbe fleurie: Charlemagne dans la mythologie et l'histoire de France (Charlemagne and France: A Thousand Years of Mythology), which received the Grand Prix d'histoire Chateaubriand; La Rêverie jusqu'à Rousseau; Recherches sur un topos littéraire; an online edition of L'Encyclopédie de Diderot et d'Alembert; and a critical edition of Rousseau's Rêveries d'un promeneur solitaire. He is Director of the Project for American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language (ARTFL) and of the France-Chicago Center.
Education
- PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago, 1981
Awards, Honors and Professional Experience
- Director of ARTFL and of the France-Chicago Center
- Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite, 1999
- Grand Prix d'Histoire Chateaubriand, 1997
- Chevalier de l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques, 1990
- Visiting professorships at Princeton University and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
Selected Courses Taught
Courses on the French Enlightenment:
- Major authors (Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau)
- New Approaches to the Encyclopédie
- Les "Philosophes"
Courses on nineteenth-century literature and culture:
- Major authors (Stendhal, Hugo, Flaubert)
- Napoléon and the arts