People
Director: Jeffrey Leichman
Jeffrey M. Leichman (he/him) is Jacques Arnaud Associate Professor in the Department
of French Studies at Louisiana State University and Director of the Center for French
and Francophone Studies. Professor Leichman’s research focuses on performance cultures
from the early modern period through the present, with three main areas of concentration:
early modern European and colonial theatre; immersive digital humanities; and performance
in cinema. Recent publications include work on New Wave film director Jacques Rivette,
in dialogue with eighteenth-century polymath philosopher Denis Diderot and (French
Studies 75.1); representations of Native Americans in eighteenth-century French comic
theatre (in Rêver le Nouveau Monde, 2022); pedagogical approaches to Aimé Césaire
and Pierre Corneille (in MLA Options for Teaching French Neoclassical Tragedy, eds.
Bilis and McClure); and computer-designed procedural narrative as historiography (in
Modes of Play in Eighteenth-Century France, eds. Falaky and McGinnis). He is also
co-editor with Karine Bénac-Giroux of Colonialism and Slavery in Performance: Theatre
and the Eighteenth-Century French Caribbean (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment/Liverpool
UP, 2021), and the author of the monograph Acting Up: Staging the Subject in Enlightenment
France (Bucknell UP, 2016; reviews here). In 2018-2019, Mr. Leichman was a fellow
in residence at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Nantes, France.
A digital humanist with a focus on simulation and immersive environments for literary-historical
research, Professor Leichman was the principal investigator for the NEH-funded Interactive
VR Simulation of an Eighteenth-Century Paris Faire Theatre: VESPACE (HAA 266501-19),
and co-directs Virtual Theatres in the French Atlantic World: Urbanism and Spectacle
(18th-19th centuries) with Dr. Pauline Beaucé with support from the Thomas Jefferson
Fund of the French Foreign Ministry’s FACE Council. As Director of the Center for
French and Francophone Studies, Mr. Leichman is looking forward to collaborating with
scholars and centers from around the country and the world at LSU. In addition to
serving as an incubator for doctoral student research initiatives, the LSU CFFS will
curate public-facing scholarly events around the global Enlightenment and performance
studies, with a special focus on collaborative digital projects that look beyond the
statistical capacities of computing to reconceive French studies as an inclusive,
engaging, and intellectually vital center for twenty-first century humanistic inquiry.
Assistant Director: Todd Jacob
Assistant to the Chair
French Studies
Phone: (225)578-6589
E-mail: tjacob1@lsu.edu
Office: 416B Hodges
Graduate Research Assistant: Rachel Kirk
Rachel Kirk is a doctoral student in French Studies interested in the representations
of environmental justice and resistance to colonialism in literature, art, and oral
histories in the Francophone world. She has led several high school and university
intercultural education programs in metropolitan France, Spain, Morocco, Martinique,
and the U.S. South. She was a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Rabat, Morocco
and she has a Master’s in International Education Development from Columbia University
and a B.A. in Political Science and French from Virginia Tech.