Professor of French and Francophone Studies Rudy Le Menthéour’s La Manière trouble: essai sur Jean-Jacques Rousseau was selected for the latest H-France Forum. The online journal highlights significant new books in Francophone history and literature by developing forum reviews in which five scholars critique a recently published book and the book’s author offers a response.
Le Menthéour has studied the polemical battles between Rousseau and the main philosophers of the French Enlightenment. His work also focuses on the rise of hygiene and medical anthropology in the 18th century. In addition to La Manière trouble, he is the author of La Manufacture de maladies : la dissidence hygiénique de Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He also edited the first modern eugenic treatise, Charles-Augustin Vandermonde’s Essai sur la manière de perfectionner l’espèce humaine as well as an anthology on 17th century French Literature, Baroque et classicism and co-edited Lettre à D’Alembert, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His current research project aims to cast a new light on the emergence of eugenics in early modern France.
In the fall, Le Menthéour will teach French 229 Monstres et Merveilles, a course on European fairy tales, and French 325 Études avancées on abandonment in French literature from the 17th century to today, a new topic for the department.