Education & Professional History
University of California-Berkeley, PhD
IPFE, Sorbonne, Diplôme
Cathy Yandell (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) teaches courses in Early Modern French literature and culture, autobiography, contemporary cultural and political issues in France, and the French language. Her research focuses on the body, temporality, poetics, and gender in Early Modern France. By some quirk of fate, she was knighted by the French government into the Ordre des Palmes académiques in 2019. 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, Vieillir à la Renaissance, Memory and Community in Sixteenth-Century France, and most recently a general interest book, The French Art of Living Well: Finding Joie de Vivre in the Everyday World (St Martin’s Press, 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).
Highlights & Recent Activity
Recent Articles:
“Repenser la souveraineté. Ronsard et les deux corps du roi.” Lire et relire Ronsard, edited by Anne-Pascale Pouey-Mounou, Droz, forthcoming.
“Le corps criminel dans Les Pitoyables et Funestes Regrets de Marguerite d’Auge.” Harmoniques littéraires. Études en l’honneur de Jean-Philippe Beaulieu, edited by Diane Desrosiers and Renée-Claude Breitenstein, Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2024.
“Reading the Bodies of Witches.” Subject/Object and Beyond: Women in Early Modern France, edited by Edith Benkov and Nancy Frelick, Iter Press, 2023.
“Authority and Eros: Rereading Pontus de Tyard’s Solitaires.” Lingua Romana, vol. 7, no.1, 2023, pp. 61-74.
“Ronsard et la corporalité des fleurs.” L’éloge du singulier: lire la littérature française avec Ullrich Langer, edited by Virginia Krause and Jan Miernowski, Garnier, 2023, pp. 277-300.
“Montaigne’s Cogito,” Montaigne Studies 35 (2023): 149-162.
“The Body in Renaisance France: Signifier, Symbol, Metaphor.” Routledge Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, edited by Kristen Poole and Gary Ferguson, 2022.
“L’empreinte de la ‘paillardize’: Catulle et les Folastries de Ronsard.” In Paris 1553 : audaces et innovations poétiques, edited by Olivier Halévy and Jean Vignes. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2021.
“Sex, Salvation, Extermination: Contrafacta and Religious Conflict in 16th-Century France.” Storytelling in Sixteenth-Century France: Medicine, Literature, and the Arts, edited by Emily Thompson. Newark : University of Delaware Press, 2021. 259-289.
“Ronsard et le corps homérique. Une génuflexion devant l’humanisme,” Année Ronsardienne 2 (2020): 193-213.
Papers and Invited Lectures (40 + see c.v.)
Public Interest Talks
Readings (The French Art of Living Well): Content Books, Northfield, Minnesota; Magers and Quinn Booksellers, Minneapolis; Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Wisconsin Public Radio, Elliott Bay Books, Seattle; “The Julie Hartman Show”; The Red Wheelbarrow Bookstore, Paris. Interviews: “New Morning Seattle,” “Bonjour Minnesota,” KFAI Radio; “Adriana Ink”; Secrets of Paris; France Today, all 2023.
“The Renaissance in Italy” (on the Sea Cloud II, May, 2024)
“Napoleon in Exile” (on the Sea Cloud II, May, 2024)
“Lyon in the Renaissance” (on the Amadeus Provence, May 2022)
“Provence through the Eyes and Ear of Van Gogh” (Amadeus Provence, May 2022; University of New Mexico, May 2025)
“La joie de vivre: the French Art of Living Well” (Amadeus Provence, May 2022)
“Notre-Dame de Paris: A Once and Future Icon” (Albuquerque, August 2019; Houston, March 2020′; University of New Mexico, October 2024 )
Organizations & Scholarly Affiliations
Modern Language Association (Executive Committee, two terms; Chair, two terms), 16th-C. French Literature and Culture
Sixteenth Century Society and Conference (President and Executive Committee)
Editorial Boards: French Forum, French Review, Women in French
A brief note on 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 Massachussetts, 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.
Courses taught
[Diverse French language courses]
Love, War, and Monsters in Early Modern FranceIdentity and Gender in 16th Century France
Introduction to French Renaissance Literature
French Exoticism
Contemporary French Theory
French and Francophone Autofiction
French Cinema and Culture
Gender and Sexuality in the Francophone World
Narrative Structures
Invitation au voyage
Autobiographical Lenses: Self/Other/Culture
Cultures of Autobiography
The Seven Deadly Sins
Contemporary Francophone Culture
Madness and Marginality
Sexuality and Sagacity: Introduction to French and Francophone Literatures
Paris from the Imagination to the Streets
“La joie de vivre”: Reality, Myth, Palimpsest
Hybrid Paris
Writing the Self
Banned Books
The Human Body in the Francophone World
Books and Edited Volumes
The French Art of Living Well: Finding Joie de Vivre in the Everyday World (General interest book), Saint Martin’s Press, 2023.
Memory and Community in Sixteenth-Century France.,edited with David P. LaGuardia, Ashgate, 2015.
Vieillir à la Renaissance [Growing Old in the Renaissance], edited with Colette H. Winn, Honoré Champion, 2009.
Carpe Corpus: Time and Gender in Early Modern France. University of Delaware Press, Associated University Presses, 2000.
Vagabondages littéraires: initiation à la littérature d’expression française, co-author, with Scott Carpenter, François Denis, Chérif Keïta, Marie-Christine Massé, Éva Pósfay and Dana Strand, McGraw-Hill, 1996.
Solitaire second, ou discours de la musique by Pontus de Tyard, Critical edition), Droz, 1980.
Special Issue
Écriture courante: Critical Perspectives on French and Francophone Women. Special Issue of Women in French Studies edited with Mary Rice-DeFosse, 2005.
Articles and Essays
“Montaigne’s Cogito,” Montaigne Studies, 35, 2023, 149-62.
“The Body in Renaisance France: Signifier, Symbol, Metaphor.” Routledge Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, edited by Kristen Poole and Gary Ferguson, 2022.
“Le corps criminel dans Les Pitoyables et Funestes Regrets de Marguerite d’Auge.” Harmoniques littéraires. Études en l’honneur de Jean-Philippe Beaulieu, ed. Diane Desrosiers and Renée-Claude Breitenstein. Forthcoming, 2023.
“L’empreinte de la ‘paillardize’: Catulle et les Folastries de Ronsard.” Paris 1553 : audaces et innovations poétiques, edited by Olivier Halévy and Jean Vignes. Honoré Champion, 2022.
“Ronsard et le corps homérique. Une génuflexion devant l’humanisme,” Année Ronsardienne 2 (2020): 193-213.
“Sex, Salvation, Extermination: Contrafacta and Religious Conflict in 16th-Century France.” Storytelling in Sixteenth-Century France: Medicine, Literature, and the Arts. Ed. Emily Thompson. Newark : University of Delaware Press, 2020. 259-289.
“Ronsard’s Discours for Two Queens: The Poetics of Political Pamphlets.” The Construction of a Vernacular Literature in France. Ed. Jessica DeVos and Bruce Hayes. Yale French Studies 134 (2018) : 113-25.
“Rhetorics of Peace: Ronsard and Michel de L’Hospital on the Eve of the French Wars of Religion.” Itineraries in French Renaissance Literature. Ed. Jeff Persels, Kendall Tarte, and George Hoffmann. Brill, 2018.
“Le corps dialogique dans l’autoportrait de Catherine des Roches. Savoirs, identités et représentations des femmes à l’époque moderne. Ed. Caroline Trotot. Paris: Garnier, 2017.
“The Dialogic Body and the Humanist Woman in the Self-Portraiture of Catherine des Roches.” Women’s Portraits of the Self: Humanist Knowledge and Practices of Resistance. 6.2016, https://aes.revues.org/704.
“Corps” and “Pédagogie.” Articles in the Dictionnaire Ronsard. Ed. François Rouget. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2015.
“Cannibalism and Cognition in Jean de Léry’s Histoire d’un voyage.” Memory and Community in Sixteenth-Century France. Ed. with David P. LaGuardia. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. 187-204.
“Le corps nu au Nouveau Monde. Métaphore et cognition.” Le parcours du comparant. Ed. Xavier Bonnier. Paris: Garnier, 2015. 137-47.
“État présent: The Study of French Renaissance Literature in North America.” Lead author, with George Hoffman, David P. Laguardia, Kathleen P. Long, Todd Reeser, François Rouget, and Colette H. Winn. French Review 88.1 (2014): 3-24.
“Ronsard’s Œuvres choisies.” Every Book, a Tale : Special Collections of the Gould Library. Ed. Roger Paas. 2010.
“Carpe Diem Revisited: Ronsard’s Temporal Ploys,” Poetry Criticism. Ed. Michelle Lee. Detroit: Gale Publishing, 2010, 193-204 (reprint of 1997 below).
“Rhetoric and Virility in Ronsard’s Folastries.” Poetry Criticism. Ed. Michelle Lee. Detroit: Gale Publishing, 2010, 279-287 (reprint of 2006 below).
“Iconography and Iconoclasm: The Female Breast in French Renaissance Culture.” French Review 83:3 (February 2010): 540-558.
“Le maître qui vieillit. Controverse et vieillissement chez Marc-Antoine Muret. Vieillir à la
Renaissance.” Ed. Colette H. Winn and Cathy Yandell. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009, 51-67.
“La poétique du lieu: espace et pédagogie dans les Solitaires de Tyard.” Pontus de Tyard: Errances et enracinement. Ed. François Rouget. Paris: Champion, 2008. 97-106.
“The French Renaissance Chanson and Cultural Context in the Heptameron.” Approaches to Teaching Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron. Ed. Colette H. Winn. New York: Modern Language Association, 2007. 191-97.
“Nicole Estienne.” Encylopedia on Women in the Renaissance. Ed. Anne R. Larsen. ABC-CLIO, 2007.
“Les roses de Ronsard: humanisme et subjectivité.” Nature et paysage : L’émergence d’une nouvelle subjectivité à la Renaissance. Ed. Dominique de Courcelles. Paris: École des chartes, 2006. 29-38.
“Rhetoric and Virility in Ronsard’s Les Folastries.” Masculinities in Sixteenth-Century France. Ed. Philip Ford and Paul White. Cambridge: Cambridge French Colloquia, 2006. 85-102.
“Seeking the Other in Early Modern Literature.” In Reflections on Teaching. Ed. Susan Singer and Carol Rutz. Northfield: College City Press, 2004. 137-46.
“Nicole Estienne.” Dictionnaire des femmes de l’ancienne France. Société Internationale pour l’Etude des Femmes de l’Ancien Régime. 2004.
“Les ames sans cors et les cors sans ames, la pédagogie dialectique de Catherine des Roches,” Lectrices d’Ancien Régime. Ed. Isabelle Brouard-Arends. Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2003. 557-66.
“L’amour au féminin?” Ronsard and Pontus de Tyard Writing as Women.” Ronsard: figure de la variété. Ed. Colette H. Winn. Geneva: Droz, 2002. 65-83.
“Louise Labé’s Transgressions.” High Anxiety: Masculinity in Crisis in Early Modern France. Ed. Kathleen Perry Long. Kirksville: Sixteenth Century Studies, 2002. 1-17.
“Carpe Diem.” The Feminist Encyclopedia of French Literature. Ed. Eva Sartori. Westport: Greenwood Publishing, 1999. 76-78.
“L’habit ne fait pas la nonne”: Controversy and Authority in Anne de Marquets.” Special Issue of Mediaevalia. Ed. Dora Polachek, 22 (1999): 157-80.
“Raconter le temps: la réflexivité dans Les Misères de la femme mariée de Nicole Estienne.” Dans les miroirs de l’Ecriture: La réflexivité dans les textes des femmes écrivains sous l’ancien régime. Ed. Jean-Philippe Beaulieu and Diane Desrosiers. Montreal: University of Montreal Press, 1998.
“Carpe Diem Revisited: Ronsard’s Temporal Ploys.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 28:4 (1997): 1281-1298.
“Corps and Corpus: Montaigne’s ‘Sur des vers de Virgile.’” Montaigne: A Collection of Essays: Language and Meaning. Ed. Dikka Berven. New York: Garland, 1995. 201-211 (rpt. of 1986 below).
“Carpe Diem, Poetic Immortality, and the Gendered Ideology of Time.” Renaissance French Women Writers: French Texts /American Contexts. Ed. A.R. Larsen and Colette Winn. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994. 115-129.
“Dialogic Delusion: Jacques Tahureau and the Rhetoric of Closure.” The Dialogue in Early Modern France: Art and Argument. Ed. Colette Winn. Washington. D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1993. 158-189.
“Of Lice and Women: La Puce de Madame des Roches.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 20 (1990): 123-135.
“A la recherche du corps perdu: a capstone of the Renaissance blasons anatomiques.” Romance Notes 26 (1986): 135-42.
“Corps and Corpus: Montaigne’s ‘Sur des vers de Virgile,’” Modern Language Studies 16 (1986): 77-87.
“Structure and Proportionality in Tyard’s Solitaire second, ou prose de la musique.” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 46 (1978). 561-65.
