Seth Graebner earned his doctorate in French literature at Harvard University. He holds a joint appointment in French and in International and Area Studies. His area of specialization is the literature and cultural history of French-speaking Africa and the Caribbean, and he also works on nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature. He has taught undergraduate and graduate seminars on “The French Islands from Code Noir to Condé,” “Tragedy and Farce in Francophone African Literature,” “Writing North Africa,” and “Contemporary Francophone Literature.” In International and Area Studies, his courses include a freshman seminar on globalization and culture, as well as “Islam, Immigrants, and the Future of European Culture.” He is Chair of the Francophone Faculty Group.

Professor Graebner has published History’s Place: Nostalgia and the City in French Algerian Literature (Lexington, 2007), as well as articles on literature and urban history, such as “Kateb Yacine and the Ruins of the Present,” in the journal Sub-Stance, “Remembering 17 October 1961 and the Novels of Rachid Boudjedra,” in Research in African Literatures, and “The Bird’s-Eye View: Looking at the City in Paris and Algiers,” in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, as well as several book chapters. He is currently working on a book-length study titled Modernity in the Shadow of the Minaret: Paris and the Mediterranean City, 1830-1900, tracing the development around the Mediterranean of nineteenth-century modes of urban description. His research, focused on the relationship between France and the Arabo-Muslim and African worlds, aims to integrate the literary and cultural studies of the wider French-speaking world with that of France itself.