Office: HMNSS 2506
Phone: (951) 827-1380
Fax: (951) 827-2160

theda.shapiro@ucr.edu

THEDA SHAPIRO
Director of the French and Italian Program
Associate Professor, French/Comparative Literature
Ph.D. in European Social, Intellectual, and Cultural History, Columbia University, 1974

Theda Shapiro teaches French literature and culture from the origins of France up to the present day, and Italian literature and culture from the nineteenth century to the present. She especially enjoys teaching a course on the history, mythology, and literature of Paris, and she has recently taught an introduction to world literature (16 th through 18 th centuries), courses on French literature and life in the middle ages and the twentieth century, on 20 th century French theater, Italian literature and culture in medieval and modern times, and European women writers. Her research interests focus on the culture of the city, on artists and society, and on recent literature and film by descendants of immigrants from francophone countries in France.

Having worked very closely with the Education Abroad Program of the University of California over a period of some 20 years, Professor Shapiro believes strongly that as many young Americans as possible should have the experience of living and studying in another country. This she considers the best possible means for them to broaden their outlook and education, develop a good comfort level with difference and change, learn tolerance, and build self-confidence.

Professor Shapiro is the author of Painters and Politics: the European Avant-Garde and Society, 1900-1925 (Elsevier, 1974), and of articles and papers on artists in the metropolis, Paris architecture and urban planning, the pedagogy of French civilization, and issues in international education. Her current research projects include a study of 18 th century artists in Paris, with particular focus on the landscape painter Joseph Vernet; a study of recent novels and films by first- and second-generation North African immigrants that deal with life in the Paris suburbs; and an interpretive essay on the future of historical archives in the age of the digital.