Susan R.Suleiman
C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France and
Professor of Comparative Literature
On Leave 2009-2010
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Susan Rubin Suleiman was born in Budapest and emigrated to the U.S. as a child with her parents. She obtained her B.A. from Barnard College and her Ph.D. from Harvard University, and has been on the Harvard faculty since 1981, where she is currently the C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France and Professor of Comparative Literature. She served as Chair of the Department of Romance Languages & Literatures from 1997-2000 and 2003-2004, and as Head of the French section and Director of Graduate Studies in French from 2001 to 2005.
Suleiman is the author or editor of numerous books and articles on contemporary literature and culture, published in the U.S. and abroad, and has also published poetry and autobiographical works. Her books include Authoritarian Fictions: The Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre (1983); Subversive Intent: Gender, Politics, and the Avant-Garde (1990), Risking Who One Is: Encounters with Contemporary Art and Literature (1994), and the memoir Budapest Diary: In Search of the Motherbook (1996). Edited volumes include Exile and Creativity: Signposts, Travelers, Outsiders, Backward Glances (1998) and the anthology Contemporary Jewish Writing in Hungary (co-edited with Eva Forgács, 2003). Her latest book is Crises of Memory and the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2006).
Suleiman has won many honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship, and several NEH Fellowships. In September 2005, she spent a month as an invited Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo, and in 2005-06 she was a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute. In May 2006, she was named a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow by Harvard University, in recognition of her scholarly achievement. In 1990, she received the Radcliffe Medal for Distinguished Achievement, and in 1992 she was decorated by the French Government as an Officer of the Order of Academic Palms (Palmes Académiques). She served as an elected member of the Executive Council of the Modern Language Association from 1993 to 1996, and as Vice-President and President of the American Comparative Literature Association from 1995 to 1999.
Academic Degrees: Ph.D., A.M., Harvard University; A.B., Barnard College;
Research Interests: 20th-Century French Literature and Culture; Avant-Garde Movements and Theories of the Avant-Garde; Feminist Theory; Problems of Narrative; Writers and Politics; Problems of Memory; the Holocaust
Major
Publications (Books):Crises of Memory and the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2006).
Co-editor, Contemporary Jewish Writing in Hungary: An Anthology. University of Nebraska Press, 2003.
Exile and Creativity: Signposts, Travelers, Outsiders, Backward Glances. Duke University Press, 1998.
Budapest Diary: In search of the Motherbook. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Now in paperback.
Risking Who One Is: Encounters with Contemporary Art and Literature. Harvard University Press, 1994.
Authoritarian Fictions: The Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre. Columbia University Press, 1983; rpt. with new Preface, Princeton University Press, 1993.
Subversive Intent: Gender, Politics, and the Avant-Garde. Harvard University Press, 1990.
The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Susan Suleiman. Harvard University Press, 1986.
Some Recent Articles:
"History, Memory, and Moral Judgment in Documentary Film: On Marcel Ophuls's Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie," Critical Inquiry, Winter 2002, pp. 509-541.
"Choisir son passé: Sartre mémorialiste de la France occupée," in La Naissance du 'Phénomène Sartre': Raisons d'un succès, 1938-1945, ed. Ingrid Galster (Paris: Seuil, 2001), pp. 213-237.
"Problems of Memory and Factuality in Recent Holocaust Memoirs," Poetics Today, 21:2 (Fall 2000), pp. 543-559.
"Jewish Assimilation in Hungary, the Holocaust, and Epic Film: Reflections on István Szabó's Sunshine," Yale Journal of Criticism, 14:1 (Spring 2001), pp. 233-252.
Courses Taught in 2009-2010: On leave
Other Courses Taught:
[French 132b. 20th-Century French Fiction II: The Experimental Mode]
[French 267. The Public Intellectual in France]
[Literature 165 (formerly Comparative Literature 165). The Holocaust and Problems of Representation] [Comparative Literature 257. Trauma, Memory, and Creativity]
For more information, go to the RLL course catalogue.
Return to meet Department faculty.
Last updated on July 21, 2009
