Stanford Humanities Center
Audrey Calefas-Strébelle is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of French and Italian at Stanford University. She received her BA (1994) and her MA (1997) from Sorbonne University, France. Prior to joining the Ph.D. program in French, she was a lecturer at the Stanford language center for five years. Besides her Ph.D. dissertation project, Audrey created and manages Michel Serres’ website for his class, and she is working on an essay on motherhood.
SHC Project
"The Image of the Turk in French Literature and History"
Audrey Calefas-Strébelle’s s dissertation, "The Image of the Turk in French Literature and History," focuses on the representation of the Turk in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French literature and history, and on its relationship with the disappearing figure of the “grand seigneur féodal,” or feudal lord. In her research, she reveals the existence of strong correlations between these two representations. During the reign of Louis XIV, French society witnessed the disappearance of the feudal lord, but also expressed an increasing curiosity for the figure of the Turk, who was perceived and described with the same admiration and fear that the feudal lord had once elicited.
