Brown

Nathan Brown

Associate Professor of French

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I grew up in Myrtle Beach, SC. I loved French from the first time I heard it spoken in middle school. Reading Dangerous Liaisons in college and studying the eighteenth-century philosophers in Political Science got me hooked on the field of eighteenth-century French studies.

I studied French in Montréal, QC as a teenager. I had the opportunity to spend a semester in Versailles, France as a student, forming lasting bonds with my host family. In graduate school, I lived in Lyon, France while completing my doctorate.

My wife and I enjoy drinking wine and riding on the Swamp Rabbit Trail. We often speak French to each other, much to the annoyance of our children.

Favorite quotation: "il faut cultiver notre jardin" - Candide by Voltaire.

Honors

  • Francis Bonner “American Scholar” Award. Furman University, 2018.

Education

  • Ph.D., University of Virginia
  • M.A., University of Virginia
  • B.A., Furman University

Research

I work primarily on transatlantic visions of the French New World in the eighteenth century with secondary interests in Enlightenment writers and Québécois identity issues. I have published or presented on subjects as disparate as transvestism in the eighteenth-century to the video game Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation. After two years as an Assistant Professor at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, VA, I had the opportunity to come back to Furman.

In my classroom I strive to display my passion for the subject matter and to connect the material to the larger world. I see myself as a guide to help students develop deep reasoning skills and a personal engagement with learning. Moreover, I try to provide students with "real world" transferable skills through digital projects, reflection, and time management tips, for example.

My teaching style respects the diversity of the classroom and of the French-speaking world through engagement with different learning activities, various cultural products, and a variety of pedagogical approaches. ​

Publications

  • “Cultural Transvestism, Identity, and New France in Alain-René Lesage’s Les Avantures de Monsieur Robert Chevalier, dit de Beauchêne.” Romanic Review, vol 106, 2017.
  • “A New / Novel American Identity and Proto-feminism in Sidonie de La Houssaye’s Cinq Sous: Nouvelle Américaine.” MIFLC Review, vol. 17, 2015.
  • “Frenchness and its Peripheries in Daniel Boukman's Delivrans! And Jean Barbeau's Manon Lastcall.” MIFLC Review. vol. 16, 2015.
  • (Review) White, Sophie. Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians: Material Culture and Race in Colonial Louisiana. French Studies, January 2014.;

Additional Professional Activities 

  • ​​American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies member
  • Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Association, Vice-President (2018-2019)
  • Phi Beta Kappa
  • Reflections Fellow, 2018-2019
  • French house, supervising faculty member, fall 2019.

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