Caroline Weber (author)

Last updated

Caroline Weber
Born1969 (age 53–54)
Spouse
​
(m. 2018)​
Academic background
EducationB.A., literature, 1991, Harvard University
MA, MPhil, PhD, French literature, 1998, Yale University
Thesis The limits of "saying everything": terrorist suppressions and unspeakable difference in Rousseau, Sade, Robespierre, Saint-Just, and Desmoulins (1998)

Caroline Elizabeth Weber (born 1969) is an American author and fashion historian. She is a professor of French and comparative literature at Barnard College within Columbia University. Her book Proust's Duchess was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.

Contents

Early life and education

Weber was born in 1969. [1] She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in literature (summa cum laude) from Harvard University and her PhD in French literature from Yale University. [2]

Career

After earning her PhD, Weber joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania as an assistant professor of Romance languages. [3] While at the University of Pennsylvania, she authored Terror and its Discontents: Suspect Words and the French Revolution [4] and co-edited Fragments of Revolution with Howard G. Lay. [5]

After seven years at the University of Pennsylvania, Weber joined the faculty at Columbia University as a professor of French and comparative literature. [6] While there, her book Queen of Fashion: What Marie-Antoinette Wore to the French Revolution was published in 2007 and described Antoinette's life starting from her arrival from Austria into France. [7] The biographical novel focused on Antoinette's control over her image through her autonomy of fashion. [8]

While conducting research for her book Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siècle Paris, Weber discovered one unknown and one lost essay by Marcel Proust about Parisian high society. [9] As she was sifting through Élisabeth Greffulhe's personal archive, Weber discovered an unfinished and unpublished essay by Proust from 1902 to 1903 titled "The Salon of the Comtesse Greffulhe." [10] Greffulhe's husband had ordered her to not publish the essay for its vulgar contents, which she agreed to in fear of being beaten. [9] Weber used these essays to trace the lives of three high-society female models for the Duchesse de Guermantes, from childhood to adulthood, in In Search of Lost Time , Proust's novel in seven volumes. [11] Upon publishing the book, Weber was named a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography [12] and received the 2019 French Heritage Society Literary Award. [13]

Personal life

Weber is married to economist Paul Romer. Their wedding occurred in 2018, the morning Romer accepted his Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. [14]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marcel Proust</span> French novelist, literary critic, and essayist (1871–1922)

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu which was published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salon (gathering)</span> Social gathering

A salon is a gathering of people held by a host. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please or to educate". Salons in the tradition of the French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries are still being carried on today.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marie-Thérèse, Duchess of Angoulême</span> Madame Royale (1778–1851)

Marie-Thérèse Charlotte was the eldest child of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette of France, and their only child to reach adulthood. In 1799 she married her cousin Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, the eldest son of Charles, Count of Artois, henceforth becoming the Duchess of Angoulême. She was briefly Queen of France in 1830.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Auguste Louis Albéric d'Arenberg</span> French noble and monarchist politician

Auguste Louis Albéric, Prince of Arenberg was a French noble and monarchist politician, 2nd (French) Duke of Arenberg. He was noted for his great wealth and extensive properties throughout France, in particular at Menetou-Salon (Cher).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marilynne Robinson</span> American novelist and essayist (born 1943)

Marilynne Summers Robinson is an American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In 2016, Robinson was named in Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people. Robinson began teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1991 and retired in the spring of 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rose Bertin</span> French fashion merchant

Marie-Jeanne [Rose] Bertin was a French fashion merchant, known in English as a milliner and in French as a marchande de modes. She was particularly noted for her work with Queen Marie Antoinette. Bertin was the first celebrated French fashion designer and is widely credited with having brought fashion and haute couture to the forefront of popular culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Élisabeth Greffulhe</span> French socialite

Countess Marie Anatole Louise Élisabeth Greffulhe was a French socialite, known as a renowned beauty and queen of the salons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain in Paris.

Jean Valentine was an American poet and the New York State Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2010. Her poetry collection, Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965–2003, was awarded the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drew Gilpin Faust</span> American historian and college administrator

Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust is an American historian who served as the 28th president of Harvard University, the first woman in that role. She was Harvard's first president since 1672 without an undergraduate or graduate degree from Harvard and the first to have been raised in the South. Faust is also the founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She has been ranked among the world's most powerful women by Forbes, including as the 33rd most powerful in 2014.

Alice Yaeger Kaplan is an American literary critic, translator, historian, and educator. She is the Sterling Professor of French and Director of the Whitney Center for the Humanities at Yale University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cathy Park Hong</span> American writer (born 1976)

Cathy Park Hong is an American poet, writer, and professor who has published three volumes of poetry. Much of her work includes mixed language and serialized narrative. She was named on the 2021 Time 100 list for her writings and advocacy for Asian American women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marie-Caroline of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duchess of Berry</span> Duchess of Berry; eldest daughter of Francis I

Marie-Caroline of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duchess of Berry was an Italian princess of the House of Bourbon who married into the French royal family, and was the mother of Henri, Count of Chambord.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geneviève Halévy</span>

Marie-Geneviève Raphaëlle Halévy-Bizet-Straus was a French salonnière who was the wife of composer Georges Bizet. She inspired Marcel Proust as a model for the Duchesse de Guermantes and Odette de Crécy in his novel À la recherche du temps perdu (1913).

Ellen Barry is New England Bureau Chief of The New York Times. She was the paper's Chief International Correspondent from 2017 to 2019, and South Asia Bureau Chief in New Delhi, India, from 2013 to 2017. Previously she was its Moscow Bureau Chief from March 2011 to August 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phyllis Rose</span> American literary critic, essayist, biographer, and educator

Phyllis Rose is an American literary critic, essayist, biographer, and educator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1775–1795 in Western fashion</span> Western fashion throughout the late 1700s

Fashion in the twenty years between 1775 and 1795 in Western culture became simpler and less elaborate. These changes were a result of emerging modern ideals of selfhood, the declining fashionability of highly elaborate Rococo styles, and the widespread embrace of the rationalistic or "classical" ideals of Enlightenment philosophes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caroline Fraser</span> American writer

Caroline Fraser is an American writer. She won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, and the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography, for Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, a biography of American author Laura Ingalls Wilder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caroline Shaw</span> American composer (born 1982)

Caroline Adelaide Shaw is an American composer of contemporary classical music, violinist, and singer. She is best known for the a cappella piece Partita for 8 Voices, for which she won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Shaw received the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Narrow Sea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Élaine Greffulhe</span> French aristocrat

Countess Élaine Marie Joseph Charlotte de Greffulhe, who became the Duchess of Gramont by marriage, was a French aristocrat. She was a descendant of Hortense Mancini through her granddaughter's Pauline Félicité de Mailly son Charles de Vintimille, duc de Luc.

Edyta M. Bojanowska is an American literary scholar and slavicist. She is a professor of Slavic languages and literature at Yale University and is currently the chair of Yale's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures.

References

  1. ↑ "Weber, Caroline 1969–". encyclopedia.com. Retrieved February 11, 2020.
  2. ↑ "Caroline Weber". barnard.edu. Retrieved February 11, 2020.
  3. ↑ "Faculty Appointments and Promotions January 1, 1999, through October 7, 1999". almanac.upenn.edu. Retrieved February 11, 2020.
  4. ↑ Turnovsky, Geoffrey (2003). "Terror and Its Discontents: Suspect Words in Revolutionary France (review)". L'Esprit Créateur. Johns Hopkins University Press. 43 (4): 99. doi:10.1353/esp.2010.0234. S2CID   159768620.
  5. ↑ "Fragments of Revolution - Yale French Studies No. 101 (Paperback)". waterstones.com. Retrieved February 11, 2020.
  6. ↑ "The Political Consequence of Dress". sohorep.org. October 9, 2013. Retrieved February 11, 2020.
  7. ↑ Majer, Michele (2009). "Reviewed Work: Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution by Caroline Weber". Studies in the Decorative Arts. 17 (1): 220–224. doi:10.1086/652675. JSTOR   10.1086/652675.
  8. ↑ Horwell, Veronica (February 10, 2007). "Guillotine chic". The Guardian. Retrieved February 11, 2020.
  9. 1 2 Alberge, Dalya (May 26, 2018). "In search of lost manuscripts: essays reveal Proust's love of society women". The Guardian. Retrieved February 11, 2020.
  10. ↑ Watt, Adam (November 23, 2018). "Crisis of visibility". the-tls.co.uk. Retrieved February 11, 2020.
  11. ↑ Harder, Hollie. "Finding Proust's Duchess". yalereview.yale.edu. Retrieved February 11, 2020.
  12. ↑ "Finalist: Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siècle Paris". pulitzer.org. Retrieved February 11, 2020.
  13. ↑ Fryd, Lee (2019). "The French Heritage Society Honors Caroline Weber". hamptons.com. Retrieved February 11, 2020.
  14. ↑ Mallozzi, Vincent M. (December 11, 2018). "Arts Meets Science and Chemistry Wins the Day". New York Times. Retrieved February 11, 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.