Paul Scott
Room 2054
Education
PhD, Durham University, UK
MA in Seventeenth-Century Studies (with Distinction)
BA (Hons) in Modern European Languages (French, German, Italian)
About
About Paul Scott is an associate professor of French and an associate faculty member of the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, where he has taught since 2004. His research program focuses on subversion during the Ancien Régime with a particular focus on the seventeenth century. He has worked and published on women writers, the fairy tale, theological treatises, liturgy, sexuality, cross-dressing, male fashion, and poetry. His work has appeared in journals such as French Studies, Modern Language Review, Revue des Sciences Humaines, and Littératures Classiques. He is the joint General Editor of The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies. His critical edition of the Miliade was published in 2010 (MHRA) and resolved the long-standing mystery of the satirical poem’s authorship and publication. One reviewer judged that “This erudite edition will interest students of seventeenth-century history, literature, and all those interested in the history of political dissent” (Renaissance Quarterly). Awards and fellowships he has received include a Clark Short-Term Fellowship (UCLA), an Everett Helm Visiting Fellowship at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, and the Calgary Institute for the Humanities 2012–13 Visiting Fellowship. Internal awards include the Cramer Professorship for meritorious teaching and research (2006–08), the Hall Center for the Humanities Research Fellowship (2013), and nine General Research Fund awards. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2011.
Recent and Selected Publications
Articles
“French Studies: Seventeenth Century,” Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies 75 (2015), 42-59.
“Authenticity and Textual Transvestism in the Memoirs of the Abbé de Choisy,” French Studies 69 (2015), 14-29.
“Rites of Wrong: Confessors’ Manuals and Sins of the Flesh in Eighteenth-Century France,” in Sex Education in Eighteenth-Century France, ed. Shane Agin, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 2011:09 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2011), 46-63.
“La spiritualité d’un ancien mondain: les Tableaux de la pénitence d’Antoine Godeau,” Cahiers Tristan l’Hermite 32 (2010), 110-23.
“Comic and Marital Frustration in George Dandin,” Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature 72 (2010), 15-30.
“‘Ma force est trop petite’: Authority and Kingship in Le Cid,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 45 (2009), 292-304.
“Masculinité et mode au XVIIe siècle: L’Histoire des perruques de l’abbé J.-B. Thiers,” Itinéraires (Littérature, Textes, Cultures) new series 2 (old series 38) (2008), 77-89. Special issue on “L’homme en tous genres: masculinités textuelles,” ed. Gary Ferguson.
“Vested Struggles: The Social and Ecclesiological Significance of Stoles in Seventeenth-Century France,” Church History 77 (2008), 54-72.
“Rotrou et la comédie de dévotion,” Littératures Classiques 63 (2007), 85-96.
Current Projects
Book-length project, Surreptitious Subversions: Breaking Institutional Codes in Ancien Régime France, dealing with unlikely avenues of dissent in the build-up to the French Revolution, such as fantasy works and expressions of eccentricity.
An article on cross-cultural comparison of French, American, and British TV shows themed on zombies.
Edition of the collected works of the Comte d’Ételan (under contract).
The Poetics of Homoerotics in Madame d’Aulnoy’s contes (article).
Recent Graduate Courses Taught
French Science-Fiction and Fantasy, 17th-21st Centuries
Molière, Mirth, and Modernity
Le Spectacle dans le Grand Siècle
Seventeenth-Century Tragedy and Comedy
Recent Undergraduate Courses Taught
French Science-Fiction and Fantasy
Seventeenth-Century French Literature
First-Year Seminar: The Human and the Animal in Science-Fiction
Introduction to French Literature
French Advanced Conversation: Media and Advertising
Survey of French Culture, Medieval to Revolution
Areas of Interest
Early modern literature and culture; French seventeenth century; theater, liturgy, performance; subversion; fairy tales; science-fiction; male-fashion history; human-alien encounters and relations.
