Education & Professional History
University of Minnesota, MA; University of Wisconsin-Madison, PhD
Scott Dominic Carpenter (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison) is emeritus professor of French & Francophone Studies. At Carleton from 1990 to 2025, he taught courses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature, creative writing, and cross-cultural studies. He was the frequent director of Carleton’s study abroad program in France, and he served as the founding director of Carleton’s Center for Global and Regional Studies.
His academic publications (sometimes undertaken with students) focus on such authors as Charles Baudelaire, George Sand, Honoré de Balzac, and Prosper Mérimée. His books include Aesthetics of Fraudulence in Nineteenth-Century France: Frauds, Hoaxes and Counterfeits (2009, on literary and cultural mystifications); Acts of Fiction (1996, on political representations in nineteenth-century literature) and Reading Lessons (2000, an introduction to literary theory), Vagabondages littéraires (a co-edited intermediate French reader). In 2019 he published the co-authored volume, Integrating Worlds: How Off-Campus Study Can Transform Undergraduate Education (Stylus Publishing, 2019).
His fiction has appeared in a large number of literary journals, and his books include: Paris Lost & Found (Travelers’ Tales 2024), French Like Moi: A Midwesterner in Paris (2020, Travelers’ Tales), This Jealous Earth: Stories, (2013, MG Press); Theory of Remainders: A Novel, (2013, Winter Goose Publishing) — the last of which was named to Kirkus Reviews “Best Books of 2013” and is now in development to become a major motion picture with T-Street Productions. His writing awards include the Mark Twain House Royal Nonesuch Prize, the Solas House Gold Award, the Next Generation Book Award, the Foreword Indies “Best Book” award. Many of his works have spent numerous weeks on the bestseller list of the Midwest Independent Bookstore Association.
Scott lives in Saint Paul and Paris. His author website can be found at www.sdcarpenter.com.
Highlights & Recent Activity
Creative:
- Paris Lost & Found (2024)
- French Like Moi: A Midwesterner in Paris (2020)
- Theory of Remainders (novel) (2013).
- This Jealous Earth: Stories, MG Press (2013)
Non-fiction:
- With H. Kaufman, M. Torp: Integrating Worlds: How Off-Campus Study Can Transform Undergraduate Education. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2019
- The Aesthetics of Fraudulence in Nineteenth-century France: Frauds, Hoaxes, and Counterfeits. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publications, 2009.
- Reading Lessons: An Introduction to Theory. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.
- Acts of Fiction: Resistance and Resolution from Sade to Baudelaire. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.
- Vagabondages littéraires (co-editor with the members of the French Section at Carleton) New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996.
