James
M. Petterson
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James
M. Petterson
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James Petterson
Assistant Professor
French Department
Wellesley College
Wellesley, MA 02481131 Green Hall
Phone: (781) 283-2423
Fax: (781) 283-3578
jpetterson@wellesley.edu
James Petterson is a specialist of nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry, and of twentieth-century French literature prior to World War II. In the year 2000 Professor Petterson published Postwar Figures of L'Ephémère: Yves Bonnefoy, Louis-René des Forêts, Jacques Dupin, André du Bouchet(Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. 248 pp.)
His teaching and research focus on the historical, social and ideological contexts of literature. Along with courses on poetry, he regularly teaches a course on French song from 1945 to present-day French rap, as well as a course on French lyric poetry from the twelfth-century troubadours to the Surrealists. He regularly teaches an upper-level course entitled "Literature and Inhumanity: Novel, Poetry, and Film in Interwar France," examining the confrontation between literature and inhumanity through the French literature, poetry and film of the early twentieth century. He also teaches an interdisciplinary course entitled The Artist as Critic studying questions of dependence and hegemony in the relationships between poetry, music , and the visual arts in Europe from the 1860s to the 1950s. He is also developing an experimental course entitled "1913" exploring the literary, scientific and political innovations and upheavals of this pivotal year in world history. Another course taught by Professor Petterson is upper-level translation.
He is the translator of French literary, philosophical, and art historical texts, and he has published numerous articles ranging from the seventeenth-century French Poet Théophile de Viau to the contemporary poetry of Jacques Dupin, Louis-René des Forêts, and Yves Bonnefoy.
He is currently working on a book-length project provisionally entitled Poetry Proscribed: The Trials of Poetry in France.
