Masha Belenky
Masha Belenky
Professor of French, Director, Centre d'Excellence, Director of French Literature
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Masha Belenky
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(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 19th-century French popular culture, cultural studies, the genre of 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 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 a former co-editor of Dix-Neuf: Journal of the Society of Dix-Neuvièmistes (2018-2023), and former forum editor for H-France (2018-2021). She is currently on the executive committee of the Modern Language Association’s forum for 19th-century French literature, and co-convenes a monthly virtual book dialogue series, NCFS Unbound.
Professor Belenky is an affiliated faculty member of the Global Food Institute at GW.
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
Books and edited volumes:
- Popular Literature from Nineteenth-Century France, co-edited and co-translated with Anne O'Neil-Henry (MLA Text and Translation, 2021)
- The Fergusonian Field: Essays in Memory of Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, 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)
- Engine of Modernity: the Omnibus and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Manchester University Press, 2019)
- 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, co-edited with Rachel Mesch. Special issue of Dix-Neuf (2009).
- The Anxiety of Dispossession: Jealousy in Nineteenth-Century French Culture (Bucknell University Press, 2008).
Articles:
- “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)