Cathy Yandell

Education & Professional History

University of New Mexico, BA; University of California (Berkeley), MA, 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. 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

Current projects: Minding the Renaissance Body from Rabelais to Descartes

Recent Articles:

“Eros and Authority: Rereading Pontus de Tyard’s Solitaires,” Lingua Romana, forthcoming 2023.

“Ronsard et la corporalité des fleurs.” In Éloge du singulier. Lire la littérature de la Renaissance avec Ullrich Langer, edited by Virginia Krause and Jan Miernowski. Paris: Éditions Garnier, forthcoming.

“Le corps criminel dans Les Pitoyables et Funestes Regrets de Marguerite d’Auge.” In Harmoniques littéraires. Études en l’honneur de Jean-Philippe Beaulieu, ed. Diane Desrosiers and Renée-Claude Breitenstein, forthcoming.

“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.

“Ronsard’s Discours for Two Queens: The Poetics of Political Pamphlets.” The Construction of a Vernacular Literature in France, in honor of Edwin Duval, edited by 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, edited by Jeff Persels, Kendall Tarte, and George Hoffmann. Brill, 2018.

“Le corps dialogique dans l’autoportrait de Catherine des Roches.” In Savoirs, identités et représentations des femmes à l’époque moderne. Ed. Caroline Trotot. Paris: Garnier, 2018, 33-46.

Papers and Invited Lectures from the past few years:

“Ronsard’s Flowers and Early Modern Ecology,” Sixteenth Century Society Conference, San Diego, October 2021.

Ronsard et le corps des fleurs,” Université Gustave Eiffel, Paris, May 2021 (presented virtually).

“Reading the Bodies of Witches,” Washington University, October 2020 (presented virtually).

“Le corps criminel dans Les Miserables et Funestes Regrets de Marguerite d’Auge (1600),” Sixteenth Century Society Conference, October 2019.

“Ronsard et le corps homérique : une génuflexion devant l’humanisme,” Sorbonne Université, Paris, June 2019.

“Ronsard’s Discours for Two Queens: The Poetics of Political Pamphlets. Yale University, December 2018.

“Rabelais’s Corporeal Learning: Panurge and Thaumaste Reconsidered,” Sixteenth Century Society Conference, Albuquerque, November 2018.

“Sex, Salvation, Extermination: Contrafacta and the French Wars of Religion,” Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University, March 2018.

“Reading La Boëtie’s Discours de la servitude volontaire in 2017,” Sixteenth Century Society Conference, Milwaukee, October 2017.

“Mobility and the Writing Subject in Jean de Léry’s Histoire d’un voyage,” Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, April 2017.

Public Interest Talks

“Notre-Dame de Paris: A Once and Future Icon”  (Albuquerque, August 2019; Houston, March 2020)

“Lyon in the Renaissance” (on the Amadeus Provence, May 2022)

“Provence through the Eyes and Ear of Van Gogh” (Amadeus Provence, May 2022)

“La joie de vivre: the French Art of Living Well” (Amadeus Provence, May 2022)

Organizations & Scholarly Affiliations

Modern Language Association (Executive Committee, 16th-C. French Literature and Culture, 2015-2019); Chair, 2018

Sixteenth Century Society and Conference (President 2010-2011; Executive Committee, 2009-2012)

The Renaissance Society of America

American Association of Teachers of French (Editorial Board, French Review, 2011-present)

Sociéte Française des Études du Seizième Siècle

Société Internationale pour l’Étude des Femmes de l’Ancien Régime

Women in French (Editorial Board, Women in French Studies)

French Forum (External Editorial Board)

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!

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 France

Identity and Gender in 16^th 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

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

Madness and Marginality

Writing the Self

Banned Books

The Human Body in the Francophone World

Books and Edited Volumes

Minding the Renaissance Body from Rabelais to Descartes (in progress). 

Memory and Community in Sixteenth-Century France. Ed. with David P. LaGuardia. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.

Vieillir à la Renaissance [Growing Old in the Renaissance]. Ed. with Colette H. Winn. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009.

Carpe Corpus: Time and Gender in Early Modern France. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 2000.

Vagabondages littéraires: initiation à la littérature d’expression française. (Co-author, with Carpenter, Denis, Keita, Massé, Pósfay and Strand).  New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996.

Solitaire second, ou discours de la musique by Pontus de Tyard. Critical edition. Geneva: Droz, 1980.

 Special Issue

 Écriture courante: Critical Perspectives on French and Francophone Women. Special Issue of Women in French Studies, 2005. Ed. with Mary Rice-DeFosse.

 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.

My interests beyond all things French and francophone include (and the list is far from exhaustive) dance, hiking, yoga, kayaking, flying trapeze, African music, literature of many types, politics, social justice, Navajo culture, music, and poetry. And Hatch chiles.