Laura Burch

Laura J. Burch (B.A. Saint Louis University; M.A. and Ph.D. University of Minnesota) taught courses in French language conversation, composition, culture, literature film for four years at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois before coming to Wooster in the fall of 2012. At Wooster, she continues to teach language and culture courses, as well as topics courses in covering the Revolutionary era; truth, fiction and spectacle in the 17th century; and Haitian history, art, politics, and religions. Her research interests include mixed-gender friendship in the Early Modern period, French and francophone women’s intellectual history, French feminisms, book history, and material cultural history. Prof. Burch has published scholarly articles on works by Denis Diderot, Françoise de Graffigny and Madeleine de Scudéry.

• Studies in the Seventeenth Century
• Advanced French
• Intermediate French
• Beginning French

•  “Le Livre aux lèvres. Apprendre à parler autrement dans les Conversations de Madeleine de Scudéry,” ‘À qui lira’ : Littérature, livre et librairie en France aux XVIIe siècle, edited by Michèle Rosselini and Edwige Keller-Rahbé , Biblio 17, vol. 222 (2020).
• “New Pleasure in Life Unfolding: Madeleine de Scudéry’s Friendship Fan,” Seventeenth-Century French Studies 36:1 (June 2014), pp. 4-17.
• “Madeleine de Scudéry: Peut-on parler de femme philosophe?” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger 203:3 (juillet-septembre 2013) pp. 363-75.
• “A Modest Proposal: Reframing the Frontispieces of Madeleine de Scudéry’s Conversations (1680-1692),” Seventeenth-Century French Studies 34:1 (June 2012) pp. 52-67.
• “The Early Modern Woman’s Preface: From Structures to Subjectivities,”  Structures and Subjectivitites: Attending to Early Modern Women, (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007): 302-03. With Julie Eckerley and Marcela Kostihová.
• “Ceci n’est pas mon corps: Écriture, lecture et culture de l’imprimé dans La Religieuse de Diderot,” French Forum 31:3 (Fall 2006) pp. 1-22.
• “La Nouvelle république des lettres: L’Amitié et la femme philosophe dans les Lettres d’une Péruvienne de Françoise de Graffigny,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 12 (2004) pp. 319-27.

Book reviews

• Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France, (Book Review). Eds., Lewis Siefert and Rebecca Wilkin, French Studies (Oxford University Press), Volume 70, Number 4, October 2016, pp. 594-95.

• Edouard Morot-Sir Fellowship in Literature, Institut Français d’Amérique, 2010
• Faculty Development Grant, Dominican University, 2010
• Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, University of Minnesota, 2005-2006
• Chateaubriand Fellowship, French Government, 2004-2005