Masha Belenky

Professor of French, Director, Centre d'Excellence, Director of French Literature

Contact:

Email: Masha Belenky

Office Phone: (202) 994-6937

Masha Belenky is a scholar of nineteenth-century French literature and culture. She received her M.A. from NYU and her Ph.D. in French Literature from Columbia University. Her research and teaching interests include nineteenth-century French popular culture, cultural studies, the novel, and urban studies. Her first book investigates representations of romantic jealousy in post-Revolutionary France. Her second book, Engine of Modernity: The Omnibus and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris examines the relationship between early mass transit and popular culture, and the ways in which they shaped the concept of modernity in France. She has co-edited and co-translated, with Anne O’Neil-Henry, an anthology of popular literature from nineteenth-century France. She is currently working on a translation of a novel by Eugénie Foa -the first French Jewish author to support herself through her writing - in collaboration with Professor Lisa Leff. She is a former co-editor of Dix-Neuf: Journal of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes (2018-2023), and former forum editor for H-France (2018-2021). She also served on the executive committee of the Modern Language Association’s forum for 19th-century French literature, and she currently co-convenes a monthly virtual book dialogue series, NCFS Unbound.
Professor Belenky is an affiliated faculty member of the Global Food Institute at GW.

Classes

French 2500: The Cultural Politics of Food in France

French 4540: Power, Politics and the Press in Nineteenth-Century France

French 4540: Windows on Paris: Writing the City in the Nineteenth Century

French 4540: High Culture and Low Culture in Nineteenth-Century France

French 3600: Victor Hugo and the Nineteenth Century

French 4470: Writing Women

French 4910 &4920: Proseminar for French Majors

French 3500: Jewish Culture in Modern France

Publications

Books:

Popular Literature from Nineteenth-Century France, co-edited and co-translated with Anne O'Neil-Henry (MLA Text and Translation, 2021)
Engine of Modernity: the Omnibus and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Manchester University Press, 2019)
The Anxiety of Dispossession: Jealousy in Nineteenth-Century French Culture (Bucknell University Press, 2008).

Edited Volumes and Special Issues:

To the Passers by: Before and After Baudelaire, Special Issue of Dix-Neuf, guest co-
edited with Cheryl Krueger and Rachel Mesch, (forthcoming, 2026)
The Fergusonian Field: Essays in Memory of Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, guest co-
edited with Carolyn Betensky and Susan Hiner. Special issue of Romanic Review, vol.
112 n. 2 (2021)
New Directions in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, co-edited with Larry Duffy and
Andrew Watts. Special issue of Dix-Neuf, vol 25 n. 3-4 (2021)
French Cultural Studies for the 21st Century. Co-edited with Kathryn Kleppinger and
Anne O'Neil-Henry (University of Delaware Press, 2017).
“State of the Union: Marriage in Nineteenth-Century France,” guest co-edited with
Rachel Mesch. Special issue of Dix-Neuf (2009).

Articles and Book Chapters:

“Les passantes avant “A une passante”: Urban Encounters in Panoramic Literature,”
Special issue of Dix-Neuf : “To the Passerby: Before and After Baudelaire” (forthcoming,
2026)
“Revolutionary Ragamuffin: the Gamin de Paris in July Monarchy Popular Culture,”
Nineteenth-Century Contexts (2025).
“Parisian Types Revisited: le gamin, la grisette, and le rat” (co-authored with Anne
O’Neil-Henry) in Routledge Handbook on the History of Paris since 1789, edited by
Kory Olson, Amanda Shoaf Vincent, and Erin-Marie Legacey (Routledge, 2025)
“Disordered Topographies in Zola’s La Curée,” Romance Notes, 53. 1 (2013)
“Transitory Tales: Omnibus in Nineteenth-Century Paris,” Dix-Neuf, 16:3 (November
2012)
“Nomadic Encounters: Leïla Sebbar Reads Isabelle Eberhardt,” Dalhousie French
Studies, 95.4 (Fall 2011)
“Feydeau in the Public Eye: Jealousy, Marriage, and the Bourgeois Culture of
Possession,” Romance Studies, 25.3 (2007)
“From Transit to Transitoire: Omnibus and Modernity,” Nineteenth-Century French
Studies 35. 1 & 2 (2007)
“Letters, Lies, and Legible Urban Space in Balzac’s Ferragus,” Romance Notes 45.2
(2005)
"Gender Reversals: Reading Jealousy in Balzac and Rachilde" in Visions/Revisions:
Essays in Nineteenth-Century French Culture. Ed. Nigel Harkness (New York: Peter
Lang, 2003)