Laure Murat, born 4 June 1967, in Paris, is a French historian, writer, and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. [1]
Laure Murat, born 4 June 1967, in Paris, is a French historian, writer, and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. [1]
Laure Murat is the daughter of the writer and film producer Napoléon Murat and historian Inès d'Albert de Luynes.
In 1986, she began her career as a journalist first at Beaux-Arts Magazine , and then at l'Objet d'art, before spending a year at Profession politique. She subsequently worked as a freelance journalist for several notable reviews ( Connaissance des Arts , Muséart, les Aventures de l'art, l'Œil , among others), supplements (Le Monde de la révolution française) and radio shows (Radio Aligre, France-Culture).
In 1997, she was invited by the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts to give a seminar on the "theory of art criticism."
In 2004, she wrote a thesis, "Le Troisième sexe. Du mythe de l’androgyne à l’invention du neutre," for the Diplôme de l'EHESS. She earned the degree with honours, which permitted her to proceed directly to her doctoral dissertation.
In 2006, she defended her dissertation on "L’invention du troisième sexe. Sexes et genres dans l’histoire culturelle (1835–1939)" and earned her PhD summa cum laude. [2] Her committee was composed of Françoise Gaspard, Dominique Kalifa, Michelle Perrot, Christophe Prochasson (advisor), Denise Riley, and Joan Scott.
The same year, she was hired as a professor in the Department of French and Francophone Studies (now the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies) at UCLA. She currently serves as the department's Vice Chair of Graduate Studies. [3]
From 2015 to 2019, she served as director of the UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies. [2]
In 2022, she was named Distinguished Professor. [2]
Laure Murat's research focuses on three main areas.
Her first area of research is the history of psychiatry in France in the 19th century. In 2001, she published La Maison du docteur Blanche, an investigation into private psychiatry before the invention of psychoanalysis, based on the unpublished records of an asylum that treated Nerval and Maupassant, among others. [4] In 2011, she published L'homme qui se prenait pour Napoléon [5] (translated in English in 2014 as The Man Who Though He Was Napoleon [6] ), which examines the vast body of archives of the public asylums located in the former French administrative département de la Seine (including Bicêtre, [7] la Salpêtrière, Charenton, [8] and Sainte-Anne) for the years 1789–1871. Taking Esquirol's suggestion to make a history of France from the registers of asylums as a starting point, she questions the nature of delirium in the 19th century in order to understand the impact of political events (revolutions, regime changes, etc.) on madness. This political history of madness attempts to show the extent to which psychiatry, a science still in its infancy that was at the whims of an often-changing government, interpreted mental illness and rendered it a social phenomenon. [9]
Her second field of research is cultural history, particularly of literature. In 2003, she published Passage de l'Odéon, devoted to Adrienne Monnier and Sylvia Beach, inventors of the modern bookstore in the interwar period and publishers of James Joyce's Ulysses . In 2015, she published Relire as an investigation of rereading, its reasons and its specificities, after conducting a series of interviews with writers in France (Annie Ernaux, Patrick Chamoiseau, Jean Echenoz, Christine Angot, etc.).
Her third area of research touches on questions of gender and sexuality. In 2006, she published La Loi du genre, a study based on her dissertation research that further explores the concept of the "third sex." In 2018, she published Une révolution sexuelle ? Réflexions sur l'après-Weinstein, which examined the #MeToo movement.
In the course of her research, Laure Murat has also written a great many articles on Marcel Proust. While in the police archives in 2005, she discovered a report from the vice squad attesting to the presence of Marcel Proust in a brothel for gay men that was run by Albert Le Cuziat, who served as the inspiration for Jupien in In Search of Lost Time. [10] This discovery was followed by several further studies, notably in Proust et ses amis, [11] La Nouvelle Revue Française, [12] and the Romanic Review. [13] In the year of Proust's centenary (2021–2022), she contributed to the Cahiers de l'Herne, [14] the exhibition catalog Marcel Proust, un roman parisien [15] at the Carnavalet Museum, and to the exhibition catalog Marcel Proust, la fabrique de l'œuvre [16] at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. On 15 November 2022, she participated in an episode of the "L'Heure bleue" podcast dedicated to Proust, which was presented by Laure Adler and titled "La Recherche est un livre de consolation." [17]
Laure Murat regularly intervenes in the public sphere on social issues, especially since the advent of #MeToo and the controversies around cancel culture, about which she wrote a short book in 2022, titled Qui annule quoi?. Her perspective on these issues is informed by her deep knowledge of both French and American cultures, as shown by her articles in Le Monde and Libération, for whom she wrote for the "Historiques" column between 2016 and 2019, alongside Sophie Wahnich, Johann Chapoutot and Serge Gruzinski.
The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year". The prize carries a symbolic reward of only 10 euros, but results in considerable recognition and book sales for the winning author. Four other prizes are also awarded: prix Goncourt du Premier Roman, prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle, prix Goncourt de la Poésie (poetry) and prix Goncourt de la Biographie (biography). Of the "big six" French literary awards, the Prix Goncourt is the best known and most prestigious. The other major literary prizes include the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française, the Prix Femina, the Prix Renaudot, the Prix Interallié and the Prix Médicis.
ComteJean Bruno Wladimir François-de-Paule Lefèvre d'Ormesson was a French writer and novelist. He authored forty books, was the director of Le Figaro from 1974 to 1977, as well as the dean of the Académie Française, to which he was elected in 1973, until his death, in addition to his service as president of the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies within UNESCO (1992–1997).
Éditions Gallimard, formerly Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française (1911–1919) and Librairie Gallimard (1919–1961), is one of the leading French book publishers. In 2003, it and its subsidiaries published 1,418 titles.
The Prix Théophraste-Renaudot or Prix Renaudot is a French literary award.
Jacques de Lacretelle was a French novelist. He was elected to the Académie Française on 12 November 1936.
Annie Saumont was a French short story writer and English to French translator.
Thierry Sandre was a French writer, poet, and essayist. He won the Prix Goncourt in 1924 for Le Chèvrefeuille.
The prix Guillaume Apollinaire is a French poetry prize first awarded in 1941. It was named in honour of French writer Guillaume Apollinaire. It annually recognizes a collection of poems for its originality and modernity.
The Grand prix des lectrices de Elle is a French literary prize awarded by readers of Elle magazine.
Brasserie Lipp is a brasserie located at 151 Boulevard Saint-Germain in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. It sponsors an annual literary prize, the Prix Cazes, named for a previous owner.
Laurence de Cambronne is a French journalist, novelist and humanitarian.
Antoine Compagnon is a Professor of French Literature at Collège de France, Paris (2006–), and the Blanche W. Knopf Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, New York City (1985–).
Éric Vuillard is a French writer and film director. He has made two films, L'homme qui marche and Mateo Falcone, the latter based on the story Mateo Falcone by Prosper Merimee. He is the author of Conquistadors (2009) which won the Prix de l'inaperçu in 2010. He won the Prix Goncourt in 2017 for L'Ordre du jour.
Laure Adler is a French journalist, writer, publisher and radio/TV producer.
The prix Contrepoint is a French literary award established in 1971 by a group of young French novelists and journalists. Each year a French-speaking novelist is selected.
Brigitte Giraud is a French writer, author of novels and short stories. She was awarded the 2022 Prix Goncourt for her autobiographical novel Vivre vite.
Diane Jacquin de Margerie was a French woman of letters and translator from English.
The grand prix de la Critique littéraire was created in 1948 by Robert André. It is awarded each year by the French PEN club to a literary essay. Chaired by Joël Schmidt, its jury is now made up of Jean Blot, Jean-Luc Despax, Jean-Claude Lamy, Daniel Leuwers, Jean Orizet, Laurence Paton, Antoine Spire and Patrick Tudoret. Since its creation, it has rewarded many leading authors and intends to promote a literary criticism of quality and, quite simply, literature.
Patricia Reznikov is a Franco-American writer.
Laure Hayman was a French sculptor, salonnière, and demi-mondaine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Paris.
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