Marcus Keller

Ph.D. UC Irvine

• Early Modern French Literature and Culture
• French and European Theater
• Literature and Philosophy
• The Literature and Culture of Belgium

In my research and teaching, I focus on 16th- and 17th-century French literature and culture with a special interest in aesthetics and politics/ethics. I am currently finishing a book manuscript entitledThinking through the Turk: Islam and the Ottoman Empire as Paradigms in Renaissance France, an exploration of French orientalist discourses of the sixteenth century (literature, political discourses, cosmographical writings, and travel narratives). Other research and teaching interests of mine include the rise of a national and European consciousness in early modern French texts; the experience of the first age of globalization in the sixteenth century and its representation in text and image; early modern notions of friendship and forms of social networks; humanism and humanist ideals of learning and education. I am also interested in contemporary Belgian literature and culture, with a focus on the processing of the country's colonial history and its aftermath. 

In connection with my research for Thinking through the Turk, I edited "The Turk of Early Modern France" (L'Esprit Créateur 53.4, 2013) and co-edited the collection The Dialectics of Orientalism in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

Since 2012, I am also the co-editor of the series "Rethinking the Early Modern" (Northwestern University Press)