Dr. Paul Scott

Education

PhD, Durham University, UK

MA in Seventeenth-Century Studies

BA (Hons) in Modern European Languages (French, German, Italian)

About

Paul Scott is an associate professor of French and an affiliate faculty member of the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction and of the Ad Astra Center for Science Fiction and Speculative Imagination at the University of Kansas, where he has taught since 2004. His research program focuses on subversion during the Ancien Régime and he also works on the radical potential of science fiction, with a particular focus on French literary SF and SF television shows from the USA, France, and South Korea. He is joint general editor of The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies (published by Brill). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (elected 2010), a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists (elected 2019), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (elected 2020), and holds current Chartered Linguist status. He is currently working on a book-length project tentatively entitled Cognitive Cadavers: The Evolution of the TV Zombie under contract with the Contributions to Zombie Studies series of McFarland to appear in 2023. The book analyzes the phenomenon of the rational zombie in television shows from France, South Korea, the UK, the USA, and Australia..

Recent and Selected Publications

“‘On n’est pas dans Black Mirror!’:The Futuristic Optimism of Osmosis” forthcoming in French Screen Studies (2023).

Co-editor with Nicholas Hammond, special issue of Œuvres et Critiques (vol. 47.2, 2022), the first study devoted to French novelist Philippe Besson.

“D’un voile d’amitié j’ai couvert mon amour’: Homoerotic Subtexts in Racine’s Bérénice,” Racine’s Roman Tragedies: Essays on Britannicus and Bérénice,” eds. Nicholas Hammond and Paul Hammond (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 218-39.

 “Heroism and Homoeroticism in Madame d’Aulnoy’s Belle Tales,” Early Modern French Studies 43 (2021), 186-99

“Interplanetary Intimacy: Alien-Human Love in J.-H. Rosny aîné’s Martian Novels,” Neophilologus 105 (2021), 349-64.

“Aliens and Alienation in Pierre Boulle’s La Planète des singes,” Romance Studies 38 (2020), 26-37.

“Corneille’s Character Failure: The Problematic Portrayal of Sévère in Polyeucte,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 56 (2020), 177-96.

“From Contagion to Cogitation: The Evolving TV Zombie,” Science Fiction Studies 47 (2020), 93-110.

Recent Graduate Courses Taught

Studies in French Science Fiction

Studies in the Seventeenth-Century (Molière, Mirth, and Modernity)

Seminar in French (Le spectacle dans le Grand Siècle)

Seminar in French (French Science Fiction, 17th-21st Centuries)

Recent Undergraduate Courses Taught

Zombies, Aliens, Monsters

Identity, Absolutism, and Power in France, 1589-1715

Introduction to French Literature

French  Science Fiction and Fantasy

Areas of Interest

Early modern studies; seventeenth-century France; Ancien Régime; fairy tales; twentieth-century science fiction; SF television shows; theater; religion and spirituality; subversion; zombies.