Todd W. Reeser

Education

• PhD, French, University of Michigan
• MA, French, University of Michigan
• BA, Oberlin College (French & Classics)

Research Interests & Fields of Study

Todd Reeser works at the intersection of French studies and gender/sexuality studies. His research combines cutting-edge theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches with contextualized close-readings of a variety of types of texts. His temporal frames are the early modern and the 20th/21st-centuries.
 
His first book Moderating Masculinity in Early Modern Culture (University of North Carolina Press, 2006) proposes a model of masculinity and alterity based on an Aristotelian notion of moderation. In the Renaissance, masculinity is often aligned with the virtue of moderation (in the guise of the “moderate man”), as it positions its various others (e.g. women, sodomites, Amerindians) as excessive and lacking. These analogies between quantity and gendered subjectivities remain with us today. Reeser’s 2016 monograph, Setting Plato Straight: Translating Ancient Sexuality in the Renaissance (University of Chicago Press), deals with the complicated question of the reception of Platonic sexuality in philosophical and fictional texts of the European Renaissance, from Leonardo Bruni in the early 15th century to Michel de Montaigne in the late 16th. Comparative and comprehensive in scope, the book studies how hermeneutics and sexuality do and do not dovetail in a variety of textual-sexual contexts as “Platonic love” in Plato’s erotic sense became purified “platonic love” in today’s sense. The book won the Gordan Prize for best book in Renaissance studies from the Renaissance Society of America in 2017. In 2018, Reeser published a translation/edition of one of the very first French feminist Renaissance texts (The Ship of Virtuous Ladies by Symphorien Champier, from 1503). Having edited several volumes and published many articles in Renaissances studies, he is now working on a project “Essaying Affect” on ways in which Montaigne’s Essais relate to affect, arguing that this sophisticated text should be integral to the pre-Spinozan history of affect.

In tandem with his early modern research, Reeser works in contemporary gender/sexuality studies. In 2010, he published Masculinities in Theory (Blackwell), now a widely-cited monograph in a second edition providing a series of theoretical models for considering masculinity studies from a literary/cultural perspective, especially as inflected by post-structuralist thought. The book synthesizes key approaches already in place and proposes new models. His more recent work extends that project into the relation between affect studies and masculinity.

Reeser also publishes on twenty-first century French queer/trans* film, and his book Queer Cinema in Contemporary France: Five Directors was released with Manchester UP in 2022 ("French Film Directors" series). He is currently working on a monograph “Transgender France: Universalism and Sexual Subjectivity,” studying how the inception and development of the category of transgender/transsexual in France starting in the 1950s relates to political ideas on the “universalist” citizen. The corpus includes film, documentary, television, medicine, law, journalism, tabloids, autobiography, theatre, graphic novel, and novels. The project was supported by a senior EURIAS Fellowship at the Collegium de Lyon in 2018-19 and a USIAS Fellowship at the University of Strasbourg in 2022. 

He enjoys working with graduate students and advanced undergraduates writing dissertations/theses in all areas of gender/sexuality studies (as director and as committee member), and he welcomes new PhD students interested in being part of a vibrant community of scholar-teachers working in these areas. Potential graduate students are invited to contact him. He has directed dissertations in many areas of French studies, and he mentors his students to help them connect their work with theoretical approaches and with current Humanistic approaches from across the disciplines. He coordinates the gender/sexuality research network in the department. He teaches graduate and advanced undergrad courses on gender and sexuality in French and in English. 

Reeser has held a number of administrative positions. He served as the inaugural Associate Director of the Pitt Humanities Center, and then as Acting Director in AY2012. From 2013-18, he served as Director of the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program. From 2019-2023, he was Chair of French and Italian, and in AY23 he was Chair of the Humanities Council. He began a three-year term as Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the Dietrich School in August 2023.

Selected Publications

"The Queer Maghreb," special issue of Contemporary French Civilization, 49, 2, 2024. 

Queer Cinema in Contemporary France (Manchester, UK: Manchester UP, 2022). Series "French Film Directors." 

Masculinities in Theory (Malden, MA: Wylie-Blackwell, 2023), second edition.

The Routledge Companion to Gender and Affect, edited volume (45 contributors), 2023.

Transgender France: Universalism and Sexual Subjectivity, monograph in progress. 

Essaying Affect, monograph in progress (on Montaigne).

"Situer les masculinités/Situating Masculinities," special issue of Simone de Beauvoir Studies, with Kaliane Ung. 32.2 (Nov. 2022).

Théorie littéraire et littérature de la Renaissance (Paris: Garnier, 2021), edited volume, with David LaGuardia (Dartmouth).

Symphorien Champier, The Ship of Virtuous Ladies, edition and translation of La nef des dames vertueuses, in “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe” series (Toronto, 2018).

“Montaigne, Affects, Emotions,” special issue of Montaigne Studies (2018), edited with 14 original articles plus introduction.

“Masculinity and Affect” and “Complicating the Emotions of Men and Masculinities.” NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies, with Lucas Gottzén (2017/2018).

Setting Plato Straight: Translating Ancient Sexuality in the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). 418 pp. Winner of the 2017 Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Book Prize for best book in Renaissance Studies, awarded by the Renaissance Society of America.

"Transgender France," special issue of Esprit Créateur (Spring 2013).

“The Idea of France,” co-edited special issue of Contemporary French and Francophone Studies (Sites). (Spring 2013).

Approaches to Teaching the Works of François Rabelais, co-edited with Floyd Gray (New York: Modern Language Association, 2011). In book series "Approaches to Teaching World Literature."

Masculinities in Theory (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2010). First edition. 236 pp. 

“Entre hommes”: French and Francophone Masculinities in Theory and Culture, co-edited with Lewis Seifert (University of Delaware Press, 2008).

Moderating Masculinity in Early Modern Culture (University of North Carolina Press, 2006).

"French Masculinities," special issue of Esprit Créateur (Fall 2003), co-edited with Lewis Seifert.

Numerous articles on Renaissance literature/culture, gender/sexuality studies, critical theory, contemporary French literature, and French/Francophone film in journals such as Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, French Review, Romance Quarterly, Symposium, Modern and Contemporary France, and Exemplaria.

Selected Awards and Honors

• USIAS residential fellowship, University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study (France), Spring 2022
• EURIAS senior residential research fellowship, Collegium de Lyon (France), residential, 2018-19
• Renaissance Society of America: Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Book Prize, 2017 (for Setting Plato Straight)
• Solmsen Fellowship, Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Madison (year-long residential fellowship, 2012-2013)
• Kraus Fellowship in Rare Books, Beinecke Library, Yale University
• Folger Shakespeare Library Fellowship, Washington DC, (short-term fellowship)
• Harry Ransom Center Research Fellowship, University of Texas, Austin
• Residential fellowship at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuttel, Germany, 2008
• Various teaching and research grants, U Pittsburgh, 2005-present
• NEH Long-term Fellowship, National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, 2003–04
• Short-term Fellowship, Newberry Library, Chicago, 2004

Teaching

• Gender and Sexuality in 21st-century France (advanced cultural studies seminar in French)
• Gender, Sexuality, French Thought (taught in English)
• French Cultural Studies: "L’Idée de la France" 
• Masculinity: Theory, Film, Culture
• Montaigne in Dialogue (graduate)
• Gender and Sexuality in the French Renaissance (graduate)
• Contemporary Perspectives on the French Renaissance (graduate)
• Nation/Transnation: France and Frenchness in the Renaissance (graduate)
• Rabelais (graduate)
• French Studies, Gender Studies (graduate "network" seminar)
• Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (graduate, interdisciplinary course)
• Masculinities in Theory and Practice (graduate, interdisciplinary course for GSWS)
• Queer Theories (graduate, interdisciplinary course for GSWS)