Please note that this event will take place in English.
This event is open to all, and accessible online via Zoom.
Conversations with People who read Montaigne: Jeff Persels
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CONVERSATIONS WITH PEOPLE WHO READ MONTAIGNE
This online series, animated by Phillip John Usher (NYU), features discussions with scholars, writers, philosophers, artists, and others from around the world who read and have something to say about the Essais, Michel de Montaigne’s thousand-page open exploration of topics ranging from the use of thumbs to the ravages of colonial exploration.
Cette nouvelle série virtuelle, animée par Phillip John Usher (Université de New York, NYU), est l’occasion de discuter librement avec ceux et celles (universitaires, écrivain.e.s, philosophes, artistes, etc.) qui lisent les Essais de Montaigne.
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Jeff Persels has professed French at the University of South Carolina-Columbia, for over thirty years, after completing a PhD under the direction of Mary McKinley at the University of Virginia. He has authored numerous articles and edited a few volumes on early modern French literature and culture and French theatre. He has also directed USC’s half-century-old student French-language theatre troupe, the Comédiens Carolingiens, producing annual plays ranging from adaptations of such classic authors as Daudet, Perrault and Voltaire as well as a host of celebrated playwrights from the French tradition, and student-authored works. He also has long directed a local French-language theatre production company, adapting, composing, directing and performing in both original and classic works from medieval farce to absurdist comedy, which efforts are featured on his amateur theatre website. Most recently, he has been interested in adapting the magnificent Donald Frame translation of Montaigne’s Essays for the stage, in three separate versions: Trying (monologue), Montaigne @ the Algonquin (dialogue) and boulevard comedy Montaigne’s Ass, convinced that such vulgarization (in the best sense) is a worthy a critical endeavor as any.
This series is made possible thanks to the support and generosity of NYU’s Maison Française, Department of French Literature, Thought, and Culture, and Medieval and Renaissance Center (MARC).