Kathryn Hoffmann

Professor

1890 East-West Rd.
432 Moore Hall
Honolulu, HI 96822

Phone: (808) 956-5973
E-mail: hoffmann@hawaii.edu

Education

• The Johns Hopkins University. Ph.D.; M.A.
• The State Univ. of New York at Buffalo. B.A. summa cum laude

Research interests

• Interdisciplinary approaches to European culture including literature, art, history of medicine, natural history, philosophy, and popular culture in France (primarily), Italy, Belgium, England, The Netherlands, Austria
• Seventeenth-century French literature, French theater, fairy tales
• Wax anatomical models and the history of anatomical display, 17th-21st centuries
• Literary, cultural and cross-disciplinary theory

Awards, selected

• Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies, Modern Language Association
• Fellow, Camargo Foundation, Cassis France
• American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship for Recent Recipients of the Ph.D.
• Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Teaching
• Research awards: Institute for Research in the Humanities, Humanities Council, NEH Endowment Fund, Research Relations Committee, Office of Women’s Research

Books

• Society of Pleasures: Interdisciplinary Readings in Pleasure and Power during the Reign of Louis XIV. NY: St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Press (London), 1997.
• Translator of J. Stengers and A. Van Neck, Histoire d’une grande peur: la masturbation. English title: Masturbation: History of a Great Terror. NY: Palgrave Press, 2001
• books in progress on anatomical reveries in museums, art, and literature and on imaginaries of the female body

Articles, recent and forthcoming

• “Excursions to See ‘Monsters’: Odd Bodies and Itineraries of Knowledge in the Seventeenth Century” in Susan McClary, ed. Structures of Feeling in Seventeenth Century Cultural Expression. Univ. of Toronto Press, forthcoming.
• “Private Practices, Public Cures: Masturbation and Medical Fantasies of the Sexual Body” in Diane Brown and Shane Agin, eds. Sexual Education in Eighteenth-Century France. SVEC, forthcoming.
• “Wandering in the Company of Skeletons: Imaginaries of the Body Across Anatomy and Art” Second Nature: International Journal of Creative Media 1:3 (2010) 48-73.
• “’Vertebrae on Which a Seraph Might Make Music.’” PMLA 125:1 (2010) 152-160.
• “The Theatrical Cadaver: Staging Death in the Seventeenth Century”, Calendrier électronique des spectacles sous l’Ancien Régime (CESAR) 2008 http://www.cesar.org.uk/cesar2/conferences/conference_2008/hoffmann_08.html
• “The West Looked Up the Skirts of Venus: Myth and Social Commentary in Masami Teraoka’s Art” in Ascending Chaos: The Art of Masami Teraoka 1966-2006. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2007,194-207.
• “Sleeping Beauties in the Fairground: The Spitzner, Pedley, and Chemisé Exhibits,” Early Popular Visual Culture 4:2 (July 2006) 139-159.

Recent lectures, selected

Australian Network for Art and Technology; Centro d’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci/Accademia di Belle Arti; Modern Language Association; National Library of Medicine; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; European Association of Museums of the History of Medical Sciences; Metamorphoses: An International Colloquium on Narrative and Folklore; Structures of Feeling in Seventeenth-Century Cultural Expression,Clark Library UCLA; History of Science Society

Courses, selected

FR 411 (Masterpieces of the 17th century), FR 421 (French Theatre), FR 690 (The Theater in France); FR 620 (Masterpieces of the 17thCentury); LLEA 270 (Freaks and Monsters); LLEA 471B (Fairies, Devils, and Fantasy); LLEA 680E (Introduction to literary theory)