Shoshana Felman

Thomas Donnelley Professor of French and Comparative Literature 

Shoshana Felman, B.A., M.A, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, PhD University of Grenoble, faculty member at Yale since 1970: Your books have established you as one of the most original French and Comparative Literature scholars in the world. Your signature has been the breadth of your interests. Your work has ranged from traditional literary criticism to philosophy, psychoanalysis, feminism, law, and the Holocaust, on all of which subjects you have written influential and inimitable articles and books. You taught French and Comp Lit at Yale during the seventies, when the excitement and controversy of literary studies, informed by the theoretical work of deMan, Derrida, Hartman, and Hillis Miller, galvanized a generation and shook the literary world. You were deeply a part of that generative moment, but your work has always ranged widely and borne your own special stamp. 

In your scholarly capacity you have traveled extensively, bringing the influence of the Yale French Department to Switzerland, France, and Israel, in all of which countries you are equally at home. Your courses at Yale have been intense and illuminating experiences for your students, who have emerged from them with transformed views of literature and the world. As you retire from Yale to take up another position at Emory University, your colleagues wish you many more years of bold thinking and writing, and the continuation of a stimulating intellectual life.