About

Phillip John Usher was born in England. He studied French literature at Royal Holloway College, University of London, UK, before pursuing graduate work in Romance Languages at Harvard University, Cambridge, USA. He is currently Assistant Professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, where he is also Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. A specialist of French Renaissance literature, he is the author of Errance et cohérence: Essai sur la littérature transfrontalière (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2010), a book that one reviewer called “insightful and probing” for the way it “reflects on the key philosophical question of the period: the relation between self and other, part and whole, the particular and the universal” (Sixteenth Century Journal). He is also the author of an annotated translation of Ronsard’s Franciad (New York: AMS Press, 2010), called a “work of scholarship and a labor of love” (Renaissance Quarterly), and co-editor ofVirgilian Identities in the French Renaissance (London: Boydell and Brewer, 2012), which Lee Fratantuono in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review called "an important contribution to the study of the intertext between Virgil and the art and literature of one of France's most justly celebrated centuries." Usher's research and reviews have appeared in journals such as L’Esprit créateur, the Revue des Amis de Ronsard, Romance Studies, and elsewhere. He is also the founding editor of a new book series, “French Renaissance Texts in Translation” at AMS Press and Associate Director of Barnard College’s Center for Translation Studies. Professor Usher also sporadically writes about film.

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Latest

-NEW: MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE FILM SERIES at Barnard COllege. Starting Fall 2013. Details here.


-CALL FOR PAPERS: Building the Louvre, a special issue of Esprit Créateur. Edited by Patrick Bray and Phillip John Usher.

-Details added of my work on film.

-The 23rd Barnard College Medieval and Renaissance Conference took place on December 1, 2012. Thank you to all who participated! Photos here.

-Write-up in Nouvelles, Nouvelles, November 2012, p. 23, about the "Louvre" conference at OSU with Phillip John Usher, Patrick Bray, and others.

Fall 2013 Courses

BC 3026: Poetry and Painting: Art and Literature of the French Renaissance
MW 4:10pm-5:25pm
Course that pairs writings (poetry, prose, theater) with various art forms (painting, sculpture, 'feather paintings', etc.) in order to understand the relationship between art and literature in the French Renaissance.


BC3021: Major French Texts I
MW 1:10-2:25pm
Survey course of French literature from the very earliest texts written in French up to the seventeenth century. After fragments like the "Serments de Strasbourg" we read the Chanson de Roland, the lais of Marie de France, Rabelais, Montaigne, Molière and Corneille.

For more details on courses, please email me.

Usher's Renaissance Tweets

Tweets by @PhillipJUsher

Contact

 Follow me on academia.edu

Office Hours

Thursday, 2-4pm. (There is a sign-up sheet on my door--Milbank  312; I cannot sign you up by email. You may, of course, just show up--but signing up is a good idea, especially near exams/paper deadlines).

Recommendation letters

If you need a recommendation letter, please click here and then contact me at my regular email address (pusher-at-barnard.edu).

All site content (c) Phillip John Usher 2010-12
phillipjohnusher.weebly.com // Phillip John Usher on academia.edu