Biography – Cathy Yandell (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) teaches courses in French Renaissance literature and culture, autobiography, contemporary cultural and political issues in France, comparative literature, and the French language. Her research focuses on the body, temporality, poetics, and gender in Renaissance France. Having published articles on writers from Louise Labé to Montaigne, she has also authored, edited, and co-edited several books including Carpe Corpus: Time and Gender in Early Modern France (2000), and Vieillir à la Renaissance (2009), Memory and Community in Sixteenth-Century France (2015), and The French Art of Living Well: Finding Joie de Vivre in the Everyday World (forthcoming, 2023). Her current project explores the relationship between the body and knowledge, or “ways of knowing,” from Rabelais to Descartes. When not buried in books, she loves dance, yoga, and flying trapeze. She also has a passion for climbing things (mountains, trees . . . and someday, if all goes well, Carleton’s water tower).
Research – Whereas I teach diverse subjects from early modern literature and culture to postcolonial film, my research focuses on the French Renaissance, especially on bodies and ways of knowing, dialogue, gender, poetics, peacemaking, and the French Wars of Religion (see publications in a separate tab). Please feel free to contact me about overlapping interests and projects!
Teaching – I am passionate about teaching and relish the continual exchange among students and professors. Teaching in French comes so naturally to me that when I occasionally teach courses in English, I find myself using filler words in French (euh, bon, et bien.…). There’s really no better way to learn a language than to dive in head first, and no more productive way to discuss French and Francophone literature and culture than to do so entirely in French. My classes aim to be simultaneously challenging and inviting (and if the shoe fits, humorous). In various contexts, I have taught piano in New Mexico, contemporary dance in Massachusetts, American Literature in Paris, American culture and French conversation in Kyoto, and French and Francophone Studies in California and Minnesota. Happily, the most rewarding of all these teaching experiences is what I’m doing now. I was unfamiliar with a liberal arts environment before I came to Carleton, where I had planned to stay for just a few years. But I got hooked, and, as they say, the rest is history.
Learn more about Cathy Yandell by visiting their page on the campus directory.