 Chair: Julia Simon, 506 Sproul Hall, 530-752-8573
jsimon@ucdavis.edu
Ph.D. UC San Diego
Professor of French
Director of the Humanities Program
Language Program Coordinator: French 21, 22, and 23
She specializes in 18th-century French literature and culture, particularly the work of the philosophes, with special emphasis on the relevance of Enlightenment social,
political, moral, and aesthetic theory today. She is the author of Beyond Contractual Morality: Ethics, Law, and Literature in Eighteenth-Century France and Mass Enlightenment: Critical Studies
in Rousseau and Diderot and is currently working on a project concerning eighteenth-century music theory.
Dr. Simon's personal website
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 Jeff Fort, 503 Sproul,
530-752-0708
jpfort@ucdavis.edu
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
Assistant Professor of French
Undergraduate Faculty Adviser (Major/Minor)
Jeff Fort specializes in twentieth century prose, with a special interest in the relation between fiction, memory, and autobiography; critical theory, including modern German philosophy from Kant to
Heidegger and its French reception; twentieth century French thought; aesthetics and aesthetic theory; translation. He has translated a number of literary and philosophical works such as Maurice Blanchot,
Aminadab; Jean Genet, The Declared Enemy; Jean-Luc Nancy, The Ground of the Image;
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger and the Politics of Poetry; and most recently Jacques Roubaud, The Loop. He is currently working to complete a study of literary space and
the "imperative to write" in Kafka, Blanchot, and Beckett.
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 Noah Guynn, 504 Sproul Hall
ndguynn@ucdavis.edu
Ph.D., Yale University
Associate Professor of French
Noah Guynn is a specialist in medieval and early modern French literature, theater, and culture. His book Allegory and Sexual Ethics in the High Middle Ages was published in The New Middle Ages
Series at Palgrave Macmillan in 2007. He is currently working on a second book on ethics and politics in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century farce. Guynn's teaching interests extend from the Middle Ages
through the twentieth century, and he regularly offers courses on topics such as medieval romance, Molière, and the Theater of the Absurd.
Guynn was also a recipient of ASUCD's 2004 Excellence in Teaching Award and Phi Beta Kappa's 2009 Excellence in Teaching Award
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 Eric Russell Webb, 508 Sproul Hall
erussell@ucdavis.edu
Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin
Associate Professor of French
Language Program Coordinator: French 1, 2, and 3
Professor Russell specializes in phonology and phonetics, language contact and, particularly, the emergence and
formation of creole languages, with a focus on French- and Dutch-based contact varieties. His work investigates
the influence of grammar external factors on cognitive structure, focusing on the sound component, and how these
processes can be formalized in contemporary theory. His work has appeared in numerous venues, including the Journal
of Pidgin and Creole Languages, Language Science, and the Journal of French Language Studies, as well as several
edited volumes. He currently serves on the executive committee of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics.
In his spare time he races in Ironman triathlons, rides a Ducati and enjoys exploring Northern California.
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 Melissa Stem, 509 Sproul Hall
mstem@ucdavis.edu
Ph.D., University of Michigan
Lecturer in French
Melissa Stem specializes in Early Modern French and Spanish literature. Her research examines civil and religious
conflicts, the construction of French national identity, and la leyenda negra. Her book project examines how
polemicists, historians, and literary scholars, from the sixteenth on into the twentieth centuries, construct and
reshape characteristics of French national identity through their narrations of the failed sixteenth-century French
Huguenot colonies in Florida. Other interests include epic, historiography, memory studies, and interdisciplinary
approaches to large thematic problems. Stem's teaching interests range widely, with a focus on facilitating
students' progress in language use, attentive reading, engaged reflection, and careful exposition.
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