Lionel Cuillé

Lionel Cuillé is agrégé de lettres modernes and earned his doctorate in Literature and the Arts from the Ecole Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines, where he co-directed the Centre d’Etudes Poétiques. His area of specialization is 19th-21st century French literature, particularly the relationship between poetry, religion, science, and the visual arts. He has taught seminars in Comparative Literature on “The Acceleration of the World: Literature and Speed” and “The Politics of Engagement: Literature and Ethics” and for the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities on “The Emergence of the Modern mind” and “The European Avant-gardes.” He is coordinator of French 307 and Faculty Fellow for William Greenleaf Eliot Residential College.

Professor Cuillé has authored several articles on French poetry including “Représentation automobile et Avant-garde: l’Alfa Roméo de Cendrars,” “La qualité différentielle: Ponge et le darwinisme,” “Recueil de circonstances ou manifeste du recueillement: Dix-neuf poèmes élastiques de Blaise Cendrars,” and “Allons plus vite nom de Dieu: la matière prise de vitesse.” He is completing two book-length projects entitled La Religion de la Parole: art, science et religion chez Francis Ponge and L’Accélération du monde: littérature et vitesse. His current research is situated at the nexus of military history, art history, philosophy, and literature. It focuses on the “ideology of speed” debated among writers of the historical Avant-gardes that informs the representation of war, woman, and the sacred.