Thomas C. Spear

Professor of French

Lehman College & The Graduate Center
The City University of New York (CUNY)

address, phone & fax numbers, Lehman | home page, French @ Lehman | Department of Languages & Literatures
address, phone & fax numbers, Graduate Center | home page, Ph.D. Program in French | faculty page

Edited anthologies:

• Céline and the Politics of Difference (with Rosemarie Scullion and Philip H. Solomon). Hanover, NH: U. Press of New England, 1995.
• La Culture française vue d'ici et d'ailleurs; treize auteurs témoignent. Paris: Karthala, 2002. [table des matières, 4e de couverture]
• Une journée haïtienne (courts textes de 40 auteurs). Montréal: Mémoire d'encrier / Paris: Présence Africaine, 2007.

Guest editor:

• a/b: Auto/Biography Studies. Two special issues, "Autobiographical Que(e)ries": 15.1 (Spring 2000) and 15.2 (Fall 2000). [table of contents: 15.1, 15.2]

Articles in anthologies/books:

• "De l'Autofiction." Colloque International de Londres, L.-F. Céline 1988. Tusson: Du Lérot, 1989: 237-245.
• "Les Perles de la parlure de Raphaël Confiant." L'Héritage de Caliban. Ed. Maryse Condé. Pointe-à-Pitre: Editions Jasor, 1992: 253-263.
• "Dame Duras: Breaking through the Text." In Language and in Love; Marguerite Duras: The Unspeakable. Ed. Mechthild Cranston. Potomac, MD: Scripta Humanistica, 1992: 12-36.
• "Staging the Elusive Self." Robbe-Grillet and the Fantastic. Eds. Virginia Harger-Grinling and Tony Chadwick. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994: 55-76.
• "Virility and the Jewish 'Invasion' in Céline's Pamphlets." Céline and the Politics of Difference. Ed. Rosemarie Scullion, Philip H. Solomon, and Thomas C. Spear. Hanover, NH: U. Press of New England, 1995: 98-119.
• "Jouissances carnavalesques: représentations de la sexualité." Penser la Créolité. Ed. Madeleine Cottenet-Hage et Maryse Condé. Paris: Editions Karthala, 1995: 135-152.  English translation (by Richard D. Reitsma): "Carnivalesque Jouissance: Representations of Sexuality in the Francophone West Indian Novel." Jouvert 2.1 (1998). [HTML (English)]
• "L'Enfance créole; la nouvelle autobiographie antillaise." Récits de vie de l'Afrique et de la Caraïbe: Enracinement, Errance, Exil. Ed. Suzanne Crosta. Sainte-Foy: GRELCA, 1998: 143-167.
• "Maryse Condé, un phare à part." Maryse Condé: une nomade inconvenante. Ed. Madeleine Cottenet-Hage et Lydie Moudileno. Jarry (Guadeloupe): Ibis Rouge, 2002: 61-64.
• "Introduction; Alié-nations françaises." La culture française vue d'ici et d'ailleurs. Paris: Karthala, 2002: 9-37.
• "Productions marginales et décentrées: l'exemple d'Haïti." Les Représentations de la déviance. Corinne Duboin, éd. Paris: L'Harmattan (Cahiers CRLH n° 13), 2005: 185-194.
• "Réseaux créoles et insulaires." Situations créoles: pratiques et représentations. Carlos Célius, éd. Québec: Nota Bene, 2006: 281-297.

Articles in journals:

• "Céline and 'Autofictional' First-Person Narration." Studies in the Novel 23.3 (Fall 1991):  357-370.
• "Individual Quests and Collective History." World Literature Today (special issue devoted to Maryse Condé) 67.4 (Autumn 1993): 723-30.
• "Dou-dou in the Classroom; Doubrovsky's Professorial Performances." Genre 26.1 (Spring 1993): 109-125.
• "Le 'véritable' Jean Genet." Europe 808-809 (août-septembre 1996): 26-33.
• "Autofiction and Nationality." Sites, the Journal of Twentieth-Century/ Contemporary French Studies 2.1 (Spring 1998): 89-105.
• "'Foreign' Sexualities in Francophone Contexts." Modern Language Studies 28.3 (Fall 1998): 193-200.
• "Frontières archipéliques, fictions critiques," for the "Frontières de la fiction" virtual-conference @ Fabula (1999-2000). [PDF]
• "La plume bifide, le coeur québécois; l'usage de l’anglais chez les écrivains québécois francophones." Globe, Revue internationale d'études québécoises 4.1 (2001): 71-91.
• "L'insularité new-yorkaise." Tribune Juive, Revue de l'actualité culturelle (Montréal) 19.1 (mars 2002): 37-39.
• "Émile Ollivier: enracinerrant de Notre-Dame-de-Grâce." Études littéraires 34.3 (été 2002): 15-27. [HTML] [PDF]
• "Décès d'Émile Ollivier". Africultures 52 (novembre 2002). [HTML]
• "Variations sur la langue de Molière; l'enseignement du français aux États-Unis." Présence francophone 60 (2003): 12-38.
• "Patrimoine haïtien (Ayiti Toma)." Africultures 58 (janvier-mars 2004): 11-18 [HTML].
• "Élans du bicentenaire haïtien." Revi Kiltir Kreol (Nelson Mandela Centre for African Culture, Mauritius) 4 (October 2004): 1-13.
• "Duke Mehu de la 100e rue, Manhattan". Haiti-Tribune 24 (juillet-août 2005): 22-23.
• "Lectures francophones ex-centrées." L'Écrivain dans l'espace francophone. Les Dossiers de la Société des Gens de Lettres (2006): 95-97. [PDF]

Published interviews:

• "Literature and Politics: an Interview with Tahar Ben Jelloun." Trans. Caren Litherland. Yale French Studies 83 (1993): 30-43. Rpt. Contemporary Literary Criticism 180 (2004): 125-131.
• "Edmund White on Queer Autofiction, Biography and Sidafiction."  a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 15.2 (Fall 2000): 261-76.

Selected translations:

• Faulkner, Mississippi, by Edouard Glissant (translated with Barbara Lewis).  New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999;  paperback: Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2000.
• Brooklyn Bridge, by Leslie Kaplan. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1992.
• "Three Women in Manhattan", by Maryse Condé, and "Opéra Station, Six in the Evening, For Months...", by Jeanne Hyvrard. Green Cane and Juicy Flotsam: Short Stories by Caribbean Women. New Brunswick: Rutgers U. Press, 1991: 56-67, 119-122.

Internet publications:

• "French @ Lehman, CUNY" - Ressources Internet Francophones <www.lehman.edu/deanhum/langlit/french> (online since January 1996). Links to online resources in French, organized by theme and geographical area. Featured in the Guide des meilleurs sites Web by Thierry Crouzet and Rémi Pécheral (1999), a selected bonweb.com site in 2000, 2002 & 2003, a "Signet" of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF), and a selected resource on sites such as those of the Bibliothèque Nationale du Canada, Fabula, Libération (2000-2003) and the Prime Minister of France (1998-2002).
  Including:
  • Afrique francophone, voted one of the top 100 sites in France in 1998 in Internet en France by David Ausseil. The most frequently visited page of links; a top web site for searching "Afrique."
  • Littérature de langue française, selected resource in College & Research Libraries News (April 2001), and for the Bibliothèque Publique d'Information (BPI) of the Centre Pompidou (Beaubourg).
  • New York City Francophone, featured in the New York Times (March 1999).
  • Presse francophone, frequently visited page; links to online media sources in French.

• « île en île » - A cultural and encyclopedic database focused on French-speaking islands
  <www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile> (online since October 1998). A featured Francophone resource at sites such as those of the Bibliothèques Nationales of Canada and of France, Planète Québec, Windows on Haiti, and ZazieWeb; selected as an NEH EDSITEment reference ("The Best of the Humanities on the Web"), and chosen as "site of the week/month" by various media sources (Lire, Le Magazine Littéraire, Le Monde, Noos, RFI). Awarded the "Trophée de la diversité culturelle" in 2005.

• Hypertext(e)s, <www.lehman.edu/hypertextes>, including:
  • "Duras: La Pute de la côte normande," a hypercriticism, 1996-1997.

• Personal web page, links to all web sites.

Selected television interviews:

• TV5, Portrait of New York and New Yorkers. First broadcast 7-8 December 2002. Online dossier with TV5's "Cités du Monde" <www.tv5.org/newyork> and in an "aventure pédagogique" <www.tv5.org/TV5Site/ap>.
• CUNY-TV, for the program, "Canapé," hosted by Jerry Carlson, broadcast September 2003. Video available online at <www.cuny.tv> in Canapé archives.
• France2, featured guest on "Double je," interviewed by Bernard Pivot, broadcast on France 2 (May 2004) and internationally on TV5 and Tempo (June 2004) and in New York on CUNY-TV (July-October 2004).
• "Frictions francophones," platform hosted by Christian Tortel, broadcast on France Ô (22 March 2006).

Selected broadcast radio interviews:

• "L'avenir de la langue française dans le monde." Interviewed by Réginald Martel for "Signes des Temps" on Radio-Canada, as response to citation in "Le français piégé par le multiculturalisme américain" (Le Monde 27 February 1994, Le Devoir 1 March 1994). Broadcast 6 March 1994.
• "L'Anniversaire de l'Abolition de l'Esclavage dans les Antilles." Interviewed by Donald Jean for "L'Invité du jour" on Radio Vision 2000 (Port-au-Prince). Broadcast 1 September 1998.
• "Les élections américaines." Interviewed (in New York) by Léo Kalinda for the program, "Le Monde d’aujourd’hui." Radio-Canada, broadcast 3 November 1998.
• Interviewed (in New York) by Léo Kalinda on Radio-Canada for "La Grande Traversée," a weekly radio program covering social and cultural issues of the French-speaking world. Broadcast 16 September 2000.
• Commentary on 9/11 and its aftermath in New York:
  • Interviewed (in New York) by Dominique Desaunay on RFI for "Le Magazine du Multimédia" regarding New York’s response to the ongoing events of September 11. First broadcast 14 September 2001.
  • "Un an plus tard: les états d'âme des new-yorkais." Interview (in New York) by Danny Braün for "Dimanche Magazine" on Radio-Canada. Broadcast 8 September 2002.
  • New Yorkers' view of September 11, 2001, two years later. Interviewed in New York by Roberto Denis for the "Face à l'info" program on radio channel "La Première" of RTBF (Radio Télévision Belge Francophone), broadcast 11 September 2003.
• "Le Magazine du Net." Interviewed by Dominique Desaunay on RFI with "île en île" as web site of the week. Broadcast 26 November 2001.
• "Île en île," interview (in Brooklyn) by Jean-Junior Joseph for "Fréquence Culturelle" on Radio Lakay. Broadcast 29 September 2002.
• "Entre Nous." Interviewed (with Joëlle Vitiello) by Jan J. Dominique for Radio Haïti-Inter. Broadcast 17 November 2002.
• Radio interviews for special programs in homage to the writer Émile Ollivier:
  • Radio Lakay (Brooklyn, interviewed by Jean-Junior Joseph), broadcast live, 11 November 2002.
  • Voice of America (Washington, D.C., interviewed by Jean Desmarattes), broadcast 17 November 2002.
  • "Dimanche magazine" on Radio-Canada (Montréal, interviewed by Léo Kalinda), broadcast 17 November 2002.
• For the publication of La Culture française vue d’ici et d'ailleurs:
  • Invited guest for the weekly program "Francophonie" on RFI, interviewed by Dominique Baillard. First broadcast 14 February 2003. Reproduced on audio CD, RFI Magazines, Francophonie April 2003.
  • Invited guest for the weekly program "Le Magazine de l’ONU" on RFI, interviewed by Anne-Marie Capomaccio (in New York). Broadcast 22 March 2003.
  • Invited guest for the program "La langue française vue d'ailleurs" on Radio-Méditerranée, interviewed by Christophe Drevet. Broadcast 6 April 2003. Archived online ("écrivains francophones") at <www.medi1.com>.
• "French-bashing." Interviewed by Léo Kalinda for "Dimanche Magazine" on Radio-Canada. Broadcast 16 February 2003.
• Commentary on the U.S. war in Iraq (from New York):
  • Morning program of La Première Chaîne (Radio-Canada), interviewed by Danny Braün, broadcast 20 March 2003.
  • News clips on France-Info, interviewed by Alexandra Ackoun, broadcast 5 April 2003.
  • News clips on RFI, interviewed by Anne-Marie Capomaccio, broadcast 14 April 2003.
• Invited guest for daily program, "RFI-Soir" on RFI, interviewed by Hervé Guillemot on the occasion of the Atlanta conference of French teachers (AATF & FIPF), broadcast 19 July 2004.
• Invited guest for morning program, "À haute voix," interviewed (in Port-au-Prince) by Dominique Batraville. Mélodie FM, Port-au-Prince (Haiti), broadcast 28 June 2006.
• Invited guest for the program "Signes particuliers" on RFI, interviewed by Pierre-Edouard Deldique, broadcast 19 March 2008.

Online interview:

• "Le professeur Thomas C. Spear salué par la francophonie," propos recueillis par Dominique Batraville. Haiti Press Network (20 mai 2005).

Lehman E-News:

• Professor Spear Wins Prestigious Award 1.5 (March 28, 2005).
• Prof. Spear Celebrates Francophone Festival in France 3.6 (April 10, 2006).
• Professor Spear's Newest Book Focuses on Haiti 6.9 (17 December 2007).

Elected positions:

• Secretary, the Francophone Association of CUNY (FRACUNY), since 1993.
• Member of the Advisory Committee on the MLA International Bibliography, 2000-2003.
• Member of the Executive Committee of the Division on Francophone Literatures and Cultures, Modern Languages Association, 2000-2004.
• Member of the Committee on Information Technology of the Modern Language Association, 2005-2008.