Events & Calendars Janet Beizer: "Talking about Food"

Janet Beizer, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, will give a lecture about the rise of gastronomic discourses in nineteenth-century France. Professor Beizer received her B.A. from Cornell University and her PhD. from Yale University. Her field of research is 19th- and 20th-century French Literature, with special emphasis on feminist studies, narrative theory, psychoanalysis and literature, biography/autobiography, medicine and literature, and cultural studies. In addition to numerous articles, she is the author of "Family Plots: Balzac's Narrative Generations" (Yale UP, 1986); "Ventriloquized Bodies: Narrative of Hysteria in Nineteenth Century France" (Cornell UP, 1994); and "Thinking Through the Mothers: Reimagining Women's Biographies" (Cornell UP, 2009). Professor Beizer's pioneering work on women's biographies has opened up a new field of investigation on the way women writers relate to their female ancestry. In the words of one critic, "Thinking Through The Mothers is "A major work of feminist inquiry. In reimagining feminist biography, Janet Beizer has established herself as one of the leading essayists of French letters." She is currently at work on a new book about the rise of gastronomy in nineteenth-century France, with special emphasis on leftovers. This lecture is sponsored by the Amherst College French Department and the Eastman Fund. Lecture and reception following are free and open to the public. Lecture will be given in English.