Paul Scott
- Professor of French
- Honors Faculty Fellow
- Undergraduate Director of French
- Study Abroad Advisor
Contact Info
Lawrence
1445 Jayhawk Blvd
Lawrence, KS 66045-7594
Thursdays 12:30-2:30pm
Biography —
Paul Scott is professor of French at the University of Kansas, where he has taught since 2004. He is also an affiliate faculty member of the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction and an associate member of the Center for East Asian Studies. 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 speculative fiction 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), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (elected 2020), and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (elected 2023). 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. The book analyzes the phenomenon of the rational zombie in television shows from France, South Korea, the UK, the USA, and Australia.
Education —
with Distinction
with Honors
Research —
Research interests:
- Early modern studies
- Seventeenth-century France
- Ancien Régime
- Fairy tales
- Twentieth-century science fiction
- SF television shows
- Theater
- Religion and Spirituality
- Subversion
- Zombies
Teaching —
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
Selected Publications —
since 2020
Co-editor, with Christina Lord, of a special issue of European Comic Art themed on Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières’s Valérian et Laureline science-fiction comic series (vol 18.1, 2025).
“Neither Human nor Monster: The Rise of the K-Superzombie,” forthcoming in The Post Zombie: The Current and Future State of the Walking Dead, eds. Kyle William Bishop, C. Wylie Lenz, and Angela Tenga (McFarland, 2024).
“Décolletage Disputes in Early Modern France,” The Seventeenth Century 38 (2023), 853-83.
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, ed. Pierre Zoberman (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2023), translator of fragments 22, 29, 44, 54, 55, 57, 58, 60.
“Aliens and Alienation in Pierre Boulle’s La Planète des singes,” Romance Studies 38 (2020), 26-37.