Information about all courses will be posted on the Vanderbilt Oak program.
Personal Statement
My interest in literature, language, and culture was formed in Canada. I studied Latin, Greek, and French at Winston Churchill Collegiate in the greater Toronto area and sat 10 papers for the provincial examinations for grade 13, including literature and composition in four languages. In college, varsity debating honed my analytical skills, so that I have always been interested in criticism and theory. During my graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, where I completed a doctorate in Comparative Literature, with a dissertation in French on Victor Hugo, I continued to work in English, French, Greek, and Latin, adding medieval languages (Old English, Old French, and Provençal). I appreciated particularly my mentorship in the history of criticism as a teaching assistant for Gian Orsini, who had known and worked with Benedetto Croce. My dissertation, on Victor Hugo's literary use of the Middle Ages, was co-directed by two noted scholars, Stephen Nichols, a medievalist, and by Alfred Glauser, a specialist in the poetics of Hugo. Early experiences in France included two summers at the Institut Catholique de Paris and a Fulbright dissertation year in Paris, where I was an admitted student at the Sorbonne. I also studied German in Freiburg-im-Breisgau.
I came to Vanderbilt University in January of 1993 and served as the Chair of the Department of French and Italian until June of 1999. Then I enjoyed an academic year as the Director of Vanderbilt in France in Aix-en-Provence during 2000-2001. In the spring of 2001, we celeberated the 40th anniversary of the Vanderbilt program in Aix with a major reception. I then served for five years as Director of the W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies and was responsible for chairing the editorial committee for the Bulletin Baudelairien.
My teaching at the undergraduate level at Vanderbilt has included undergraduate courses in French (intermediate French; introduction to literature; history of civilization; eighteenth-century literature and culture; senior seminar), undergraduate courses in humanities and comparative literature (the literary tale; Americans in Paris; French-American literary relations), graduate seminars in French (sensibility; the revolution of 1789 as a cultural phenomenon; Diderot and his friends; Diderot and modernity; Hugo et Baudelaire), and informal seminars for the Bandy Center (Baudelaire and his critics; Baudelaire and Hugo; The French Poe). In my courses I try to foster an understanding of how literature functions and how it interacts with culture, the development of skills in critical thinking and writing, and a love of literature as an expression of human experience. The format of my courses includes discussion and lecture, interactive "reading" of short passages, and use of a variety of media.
Teaching at other institutions has included a wide range of courses, from great books to surveys of French literature, romanticism to 20th c. literature, research methods and bibliography, to the history of criticism (ancient to modern), contemporary literary theory, and theories of reading.
My current research and writing center on religion and literature, theories of reading, Baudelaire studies, American and French literary and cultural relations and Fenelon and eighteenth-century culture. Published research has ranged widely from scholarly to general writing and from eighteenth and nineteenth-century French studies to literary theory, American literature, religion and culture, and educational administration.
In addition to holding faculty positions with responsibilities in French and comparative literature at the State University of New York at Albany and at the Pennsylvania State University (University Park), I have served in summer visiting positions at Baylor University (in comparative literature) and at the University of Notre Dame (in English) and in a number of administrative positions. These have included responsibilities as Acting Head, Department of French (Penn State), Dean of Arts and Sciences (Wheaton College, IL., 1984-1992), Chairperson of the Associated Colleges of the Chicago Area (a consortium of liberal arts colleges with Argonne National Laboratory), and Evaluator for the North Central Association (an accrediting agency). I am currently a member of the divisional committee for literature and religion of the Modern Language Association and of the editorial board for the new series Studies in Christianity and Literature.
Recent Publications
Baudelaire and the Poetics of Modernity (edited). Vanderbilt University Press, 2001.
Experimental Theology in America: Madame Guyon, Fénelon, and Their Readers. (under review)
"Madame Guyon (1648-1717)," a chapter in The Pietist Theologians, ed. Carter Lindberg. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004, 161-174.
"L'invective politique de V. Hugo: serment, énoncé performatif, impératif moral, " a chapter in Hugo et la langue, ed. Florence Naugrette et Guy Rosa. Paris: Editions Bréal, 2005, 211-222.
"Fénelon among the New England Abolitionists," Christianity and Literture," 50 (Autumn 2000), 79-93.
"Contexts for Administering Graduate Programs," Chairing the Foreign Language and Literature Department, Part 2, ADFL Bulletin, Special Issue, 32 (Spring 2001), 13-16.
"Why Major in Literature?-- What We say to Our Students," PMLA, 117 (May 2002), 519-521.
"Mapping the Traditions of Methodism and the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements: A Reply to David Bundy," Wesleyan Theological Journal, 39 (Fall 2004), 256-267.
"New Notes on C.A. Bristed, Poe, and Baudelaire," Bulletin Baudelairien, 39 (2004), 111-125.
"Baudelaire et les neurosciences, Note bibliographique," Bulletin Baudelairien, 40 (2005), 41-50. Co-author Julie A. Huntington.
Entries for the Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity for which I am the area editor for literature (in press).
"Scientific Contexts for Understanding Baudelaire's Interest in Synesthesia." An article in preparation, co-authored with Darci Gardner.
Other Books and Monographs
The Medievalism of Victor Hugo (Penn State); Joseph Joubert and the Critical Tradition (Droz); Carnet bibliographique Victor Hugo (two carnets, 1985 and 1992, the second with Bernadette Lintz Murphy, (Les Lettres modernes); Christian Women at Work (with Martha Stout, Zondervan).
Exhibitions
"At the Forefront of Change: Paris, 1900-1970. Selections from the Pascal Pia Collection." Alexander Heard Library, Vanderbilt University, February-March, 2005.
Please contact me at patricia.a.ward@vanderbilt.edu if you wish to correspond with me.
