maleuvre@frit.ucsb.edu
Phelps 5319
Didier Maleuvre is Professor of French and Comparative Literature. He writes and lectures on the history of ideas, philosophy, religion and art in the Western world since antiquity to the present age. He is the author of several books, namely: The Legends of the Modern: A Reappraisal of Modernity from Shakespeare to the Age of Duchamp (Bloomsbury, 2020), which invites the reader to think anew about the pretensions of modern art; The Art of Civilization: A Bourgeois History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), which ties Western art to the rise of rationality and productivity in Western societies; The Horizon: A History of our Infinite Longing (UC Press, 2010), which offers a journey through artistic representations of the infinite from ancient Sumer to the computer age; The Religion of Reality: Inquiry into the Self, Art, And Transcendence (Catholic University of America, 2006), which explains how art is an escape from, paradoxically, the sentimental subjectivism of modern thought; Museum Memories: History, Technology, Art (Stanford, 1999), which discusses the rise and meaning of museum culture (Spanish translation, Memorias del Museo: historia, tecnología, arte (Cendeac, Spain, 2012). He has recently completed a new book manuscript entitled, "The Unquiet Sky: Life in the Age of Science" which discusses the mutual influence between modern science, especially physics and cosmology, and the spiritual life. Professor Maleuvre's various articles include topics in philosophy (Plato, Kant, Descartes, Emerson, Tocqueville), literature, art and religion. He earned his MA and PhD from Yale University (1993).