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Sun Min
Director of Media Relations
Alyssa Vine
Associate Director of Media Relations
Phillip john Usher
Assistant Professor of French and Comparative Literature
Professor Usher joined Barnard’s faculty in January 2006 after undergraduate studies at the University of London and graduate work at Harvard University. He has been assistant professor (tenure-eligible) since September 2008. His main research focus is on early modern and modern France, with strong secondary interests in film and comparative literature. Most of his research and teaching at the present time falls into two main areas: (1) spatial reading of literature; and (2) the connections between literature (especially epic), other art forms, and questions of power. He is also a dedicated language instructor who regularly teaches intermediate and upper-level language courses.
His first book, Errance et cohérence (due 2010), studies ways in which works by early modern French writers map geographical and cultural boundaries, or rather how they constantly both invent and cross those boundaries. Looking east and west from France, the study takes up in particular the limits and connections between France and the New World (Brazil, Canada) and between France and Jerusalem. His second book (also due 2010) is an annotated translation of Pierre de Ronsard’s epic, La Franciade (1572). His research has also appeared in journals such as the Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, l’Esprit Créateur, and La Revue des Amis de Ronsard.
He is currently working on several projects, including a book about epic literature and the sister arts in the French Renaissance with chapters on Etienne Dolet, Pierre de Ronsard, Agrippa d’Aubigné, and others. With Isabelle Fernbach (Montana State University-Bozeman), Professor Usher is also editing a book of essays about how writers in early modern France appropriated Virgil’s Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid. With Patrick Bray (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), he is editing a book that offers a cultural, literary, and political history of the Louvre.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
Errance et cohérence : Essai sur la littérature transfrontalière à la Renaissance. (Forthcoming, Paris: Classiques Garnier, expected 2010).
Ronsard’s Franciade (1572). An annotated translation with introduction. (Forthcoming, expected 2010)
“Non haec litora suasit Apollo : la Crète dans la Franciade de Ronsard.” in: La Revue des Amis de Ronsard, no. XXII, May 2009, p. 65-89.
“Of Mute Dolphins and Taking Leave of Kings: The Praise Poems of Ronsard’s Franciade.” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance LXXI, 2009 no. 1, p. 61-75.
“Oicoe-gatou: l’altérité linguistique chez Breydenbach et Léry”, in issue on early modern alterity edited by Scott Juall of L’Esprit Créateur, 48:1, Spring 2008, p. 5-17.
“Joyce he war, yes: la microlecture selon Jacques Derrida.” in: Fabula Littérature, Histoire, Théorie 3, issue on “Complications de texte : les microlectures” edited by Marc Escola, September 2007.
"Lancelot: le chevalier du circulaire” Equinoxes 8, issue titled “Révolutions,” hiver 2006-7.
“Translation” (about the role of translation in the history of American Poetry) in: Encyclopedia of American Poetry edited by Jeffrey Gray (Westport: Greenwood Press), May 2006.
“Chopping up Columbus’ Pear: World Roaming after 1492” in Space: New Dimensions in French Studies, edited by Emma Gilby and Katja Haustein (Oxford: Peter Lang), June 2005, pp. 71-89.
212.854.5321
pusher@barnard.edu
EDUCATION:
B.A. University of London
A.M., Ph.D. Harvard University
RELATED LINKS:
SPECIALIZATIONS:
Early modern and modern French literature and film Comparative literature
Epic literature translation