PhD in French/Francophone Studies in Evanston United States | Northwestern University

The French and Francophone Studies PhD Program emphasizes literary and cultural works across the French-speaking world while equipping students with robust theoretical foundations. Traditionally focused on educating students in diverse eras, styles, and forms of French cultural expression, the Program stands out for its early adoption of an expansive vision of French and Francophone literature and culture, along with its ongoing engagement with influential developments in literary theory, philosophy, and critical thought that have profoundly shaped modern humanities scholarship. Students cultivate metacritical awareness by exploring the varied theoretical and methodological frameworks employed by our faculty, spanning poststructuralist, psychoanalytic, cultural historical, postcolonial, feminist, visual arts, gender studies, and historical materialist approaches, as well as film and media theories. Faculty expertise is particularly strong in twentieth-century literature and contemporary theory (Ty Blakeney, Christopher Bush, Matthieu Dupas, Scott Durham, Michal Ginsburg [Emerita], Nasrin Qader, Alessia Ricciardi, Domietta Torlasco, Sam Weber [Affiliated], Jane Winston [Emerita]), film and visual culture across historical periods (Ty Blakeney, Christopher Bush, Matthieu Dupas, Scott Durham, Bernadette Fort [Emerita], Michal Ginsburg [Emerita], Alessia Ricciardi, Domietta Torlasco, Jane Winston [Emerita]), Francophone Studies (Christopher Bush, Doris Garraway, Nasrin Qader, Jane Winston [Emerita]), seventeenth and eighteenth-century scholarship (Matthieu Dupas, Bernadette Fort [Emerita], Doris Garraway, Sylvie Romanowski [Emerita]), nineteenth-century studies (Ty Blakeney), Medieval and Early Modern research (Christopher Davis, Matthieu Dupas, Cynthia Nazarian, Bill Paden [Emeritus], Sylvie Romanowski [Emerita]), and gender studies (Ty Blakeney, Matthieu Dupas, Bernadette Fort [Emerita], Cynthia Nazarian, Bill Paden [Emeritus], Sylvie Romanowski [Emerita], Jane Winston [Emerita]).