Faculty in French
Brooke Donaldson, Assistant Professor of French
Professor Donaldson received her B.A. in French, German, and Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in French Literature from Yale University. Her dissertation, Les mortz qu’en moy tu renovelles: Eros and Thanatos in Maurice Scève’s Délie, focuses on metaphors of death in the first lyrical cycle and the first Petrarch-inspired love poetry ever published in France, making her officially a specialist in early modern poetry. Professor Donaldson's interests outside the Renaissance include nineteenth-century French literature as well as comparative approaches to literature--especially the interface between literature and art and the connection between French and German Romanticism. Email: bdonalds@umw.edu
James Gaines, Professor of French
Dr. Gaines received his B.A. from Michigan State University and his
Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. A specialist in seventeenth-century
French literature, Dr. Gaines has published Social Structures in Molière's
Theater (Ohio State University Press, 1984), Pierre Du Ryer and his
Tragedies: From Envy to Liberation (Droz, 1987), and The
Moliere Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press, 2002), as well as numerous
articles, volume essays, and book and theater reviews. He co-edited
with Michael S. Koppisch Approaches to Teaching Molière's Tartuffe
and Other Plays (MLA, 1995). He is currently working on Molière and Paradox. Dr. Gaines also serves on the editorial board of
Cincinnati Romance Review and Cahiers du Dix-Septième Siècle.
E-mail: jgaines@umw.edu
Leonard R. Koos, Associate Professor of French and department Chair
Dr. Koos received his undergraduate degree in Political Science and
French from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Masters
and Doctorate from Yale University. He is a specialist in nineteenth
and twentieth century French literature, with particular emphasis on
fin de siècle French culture. He received a national Endowment
for the Humanities summer grant in 1995 for the research project "Depopulationist
and Neo-Malthusian Literature in Turn-of-the-Century France." Dr. Koos
has published articles on Perec, Huysmans, Artaud, Jarry, travel writing,
Barrès, and decadence. His most recent publications include "ImproperNames:
Pseudonyms and Transvestites in Decadent Prose" in Perrenial Decay:
On the Aesthetics and Politics of Decadence (University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1999) and "Between Two Worlds: Construction Colonialist Identity
in Turn-of-the-Century Algeria" in French Literature Series (v. 26,
1999). He is currently completing a book-length study of the late nineteenth-century
decadent movement in France and has begun a new project of colonialist
literature in the Maghreb in the nineteenth-century. In addition to
the French courses he teaches, Professor Koos also regularly teaches
IDIS 204, International Cinema. E-mail: lkoos@umw.edu
Scott M. Powers, Assistant Professor of French
Dr. Powers received his undergraduate degree in Secondary Education
from Arizona State University, and a Masters and Doctorate in French
from Tulane University. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the "secularization
of evil" in modern literature and social thought. Dr. Powers has published several articles on French Literature, namely on the topics of evil, seculiarization, anti-Semitism, medicine, French colonialism, and September 11. More recently, he has been working on the question of love and marriage in post-modern French literature in novels by Michel Houellebecq and
Frédéric Beigbeder. Finally, Dr. Powers is also interested in Business French pedagogy, and has published an article in Global Business Languages (Purdue University Press), entitled
"The Integration of Culture in the Business-French Classroom: Engaging Students in the Analysis of an Annual Report." Dr. Powers has experience teaching all levels of French
language, literature, and culture, as well as Business French. Email: spowers@umw.edu
Marie A Wellington, Professor of French
Dr. Wellington has experience teaching courses on all levels of French language and literature, undergraduate to graduate. She is a specialist in the literature of the Enlightenment and has concentrated her research in the theater and prose fiction of that period. In addition to her book on the theater of Voltaire, she has published articles, both in English and French, on various works of prose fiction in such journals as Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, The Australian Journal of French Studies, Dalhousie French Studies, and Romance Quarterly. Her current research centers on the same area of concentration. She is also a regular participant, often by invitation, in conferences on eighteenth-century studies, she serves on the editorial board of three professional journals, and she maintains membership in more than ten professional organizations. E-mail: mwelling@umw.edu