About
I am currently working on a monograph, The Logic of Idolatry: Creation and Human Authorship in Seventeenth-Century France, which examines how writers and philosophers (d’Urfé, Descartes, La Fontaine, Sévigné, Molière, Racine) used the discourse of idolatry to criticize or reimagine models of human and divine agency. Education
PhD in Comparative Literature, University of Michigan, 1997
BA in French (minor: Russian), Swarthmore College (highest honors), 1990
Publications
Sunspots and the Sun King: Sovereignty and Mediation in Seventeenth-Century France. Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006.
“Early Modern: Dieu, mais comme étoile mourante” on the mouvements-transitions.fr website edited by Hélène Merlin-Kajman,
http://www.mouvement-transitions.fr/intensites/transition/sommaire-general-de-transition/865-n-13-e-mcclure-early-modern-dieu-mais-comme-etoile-mourante.html (March 2015)
“Le monde de La Fontaine: Oeuvre sans auteur?”
XVIIe siècle 258:1 (janvier-mars 2013): 65-74.
“Religion and Representation in Marguerite de Navarre’s
Heptaméron,” in
Sacred and Secular Agency in Early Modern France, ed. Sanja Perovic, New York: Continuum Press, 2012, 52-67.
“Neo-Stoicism and the Spectator in Corneille’s
Horace,”
EMF: Studies in Early Modern France, vol. 13 (2010), 144-158.
“Cartesian Modernity and
La Princesse de Clèves,”
Seventeenth-Century French Studies, vol. 29 (2007), 73-80.
“
Lieu Tenant: Diplomacy and Dementia in Racine’s
Andromaque,”
Intersections: Actes de Hanover (Tübingen: Biblio 17, 2005), 237-245.
“Sovereign Love and Atomism in Racine’s
Bérénice,” in
Philosophy and Literature, 2003, 27: 304-317.
“Une parfaite et sincère bonne correspondance et amitié: French-Turkish Trade and Artistic Exchange in Molière’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme,” in Romanic Review 90.2 (March 1999), 155-166.
“Beyond Gramsci: Richard Hoggart’s Neglected Contributions to the British New Left,” in Dispositio/n XXI.48 (1996 [1999]): 21-30.
“De werkelijkheid als wapen: Protestantisme en absolutisme onder Lodewijk XIV,” in Barend Van Heusden, Elds Jongeneel (eds.), De Spiegel van Stendhal: Over de weergave van de werkelijkheid in literatuur, Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij, 1998, 122-135.
Projects
I am currently co-editing the MLA Options for Teaching French Neoclassical Tragedy volume with Hélène Bilis (Wellesley College). Upcoming Talks and Conferences
“Diplomacy and the Donkey in La Fontaine’s Le pouvoir des fables,” at the Theater and Early Modern French Diplomacy: From Secret Deals to Public View” symposium at the University of Southern California, October 20-21, 2016.
“The Evolution of Idolatry in Early Modern France,” Roundtable on Belief, Communities, and Politics in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France, MLA Philadelphia, PA, January 6, 2017.
“Writing Legitimacy: Cardinal d’Ossat and Absolved/Absolute Monarchy,” RSA, Chicago, IL, March 30-April 1.
Memberships
NASSCFL
SE17
MLA
RSA
ACMHE
