Adrianna M. Paliyenko
Department Chair

Adrianna M. Paliyenko joined the French staff in 1989 and has developed a collaborative approach to teaching language, literature and culture at all levels of the curriculum. She regularly integrates technology and draws on the visual arts to make French and Francophone studies come alive for her students. A passion for poetry deepened by the history of ideas on genius and gender, and enriched by the colonial archive, inspires her scholarship which includes: a book on Rimbaud and Claudel, articles and chapters on 19th-century French psychiatry, Apollinaire and Breton, Paris Dada, Descartes and Lacan, 19th-century poetry by women (Ackermann, Desbordes-Valmore, Krysinska, Siefert, among others) and a critical edition of a 19th-century colonial-themed novel by Anaïs Ségalas. Her most recent publication is a special issue of L'Esprit Créateur, Engendering Race: Romantic-Era Women and French Colonial Memory  to which she contributed an article on Marceline Desbordes-Valmore's belated colonial narrative "Sarah." She is completing a book-length study, Genius Envy: Women Shaping French Poetic History, 1801 - 1900. Future projects include: a critical edition of an 1847 novel on abolition by Mme A. Cashin, a special issue devoted to the cultural currency of 19th-Century French Poetry Studies and a major study on the place of women’s writing in the colonial archive. Visit Professor Paliyenko's homepage.