Approaches to Teaching Duras's Ourika

Mary Ellen Birkett is professor of French studies at Smith College. Her publications touch on Desbordes-Valmore, Fontenelle, Hugo, Lamartine, Nodier, Rousseau, Sainte-Beuve, Sand, Senancour, Stendhal, and Vigny. She is coeditor of Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Ancient and Modern Worlds and author of Lamartine and the Poetics of Landscape. Christopher Rivers is professor of French at Mount Holyoke College. He is the editor and translator of My Life and Battles, a memoir by Jack Johnson, and Mademoiselle Giraud, ma femme and the author of Face Value: Physiognomical Thought and the Legible Body in Marivaux, Lavater, Balzac, Gautier, and Zola.

"Professors and students in French will particularly want to consult this volume, but those interested in history, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, the humanities in general, and race and gender studies will also find engaging material and approaches." --Cheryl A. Morgan, Hamilton College "[T]he chapters of this collaborative volume highlight the richness of this female-authored literary work of nineteenth-century France. . . . [The essays] provide teachers and scholars with a plethora of pedagogical tools, exercises and approaches to Duras's novel both within and beyond the (French) undergraduate curriculum. [T]his volume has greatly enhanced my own teaching as well as the scholarly lens through which I read this novel. I highly recommend [it] to professors of French and Francophone Studies, specialists in the field of nineteenth-century French literature and to nonspecialists who wish to incorporate the English version of Ourika into history and world literature courses. In addition, the collection of essays will be equally beneficial to scholars and graduate students whose research focuses on the French and Haitian Revolutions, the French colonial empire, the African Diaspora, Black Studies or the slave trade." --Sarah E. Mosher, Nineteenth-Century French Studies "A treasure trove and a valuable resource for students, teachers, and scholars in a variety of fields." --Margaret Waller, French Review