Bruno Chaouat
9 Pleasant St SE
Minneapolis,
MN
55455
Bruno Chaouat is Professor of French and Jewish Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is a Honorary Fellow at the Center for the Study of Jewish Culture, Society and Politics, Durham University, UK, and Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques. After publishing on the French romantic writer Francois-René de Chateaubriand, and especially on the question of autobiography, experience and death (Je meurs par morceaux. Chateaubriand, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1999), he focussed his research on testimony and Holocaust studies. He has published numerous articles in France and the US on authors such as Jorge Semprun, Robert Antelme, Marguerite Duras, Patrick Modiano, Jean Genet, Richard Millet, Albert Memmi, etc. He has edited several volumes and conference proceedings (Penser la terreur, 2009; Lire, écrire la honte, 2003). He also dedicated a book to French thought in the aftermath of the Cold War (L’Ombre pour la proie, 2012). More recently he published a book on French responses to the resurgence of antisemitism, and the relations between postmodern thought and those responses (Is Theory Good for the Jews? French Thought and the Challenge of the New Antisemitism, Liverpool University Press, 2016). His book appeared last year in a German translation. His newest book, Out of This World: Gnostic Encounters in French Literature and Thought (Liverpool University Press, 2024), explores the uncanny echoes of ancient gnostic themes in French modernity. He is currently working on the Russian emigres in interwar Paris and their impact on the renewal of French thought.