The French Department

Ralph Albanese is a Professor of French and Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1972. Before coming to the University of Memphis, he taught at Purdue, USC, the University of Michigan, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His principal area of specialization is seventeenth-century French literature, with an emphasis on sociocriticism. In addition to Le Dynamisme de la peur chez Molière (1976), Initiation aux problèmes socioculturels de France au XVIIèmesiècle (1977), and Molière à l'Ecole républicaine (1992), he has edited two volumes of L'Esprit Créateur ("Molière") [1981] and "Sociocriticism"[1996]) and has published more than fifty refereed articles in national and international journals. He has also lectured extensively both in the United States and abroad. Although much of his work deals with French classical dramaturgy, Professor Albanese has addressed a variety of issues: anomie, criminality, popular humor, gambling, money, feminism, poetic discourse, ideological codes, critical reception, exchange theory, corporeity, spatial dynamics, the nature/culture dialectic, French cultural identity and, most recently, the history of education in modern France. In 2003, he published a book which examines the institutionalization of La Fontaine in the nineteenth-century French educational system and the social and cultural implications of the poet's decanonization in contemporary France. At present he is working on a book-length project: “Corneille à l’Ecole républicaine.”

In addition to serving on the editorial board of several professional journals, Professor Albanese was elected to the Executive Committee of the Modern Language Association's Division on Seventeenth-Century French Literature (1981-85), and is now serving as the co-editor for a special issue of Yale French Studies ("French Education: Fifty Years Later"). He is currently in his sixteenth year as Chair, he received a SPUR Award (Superior Performance in University Research) [1995], a CASDRA Award in the Humanites (College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Research Award) [1997], was co-recipient of the University Distinguished Research Award (1997), and received a Dunavant Professorship (2002-2005), which carried an annual $ 5000 stipend for a three-year period for research purposes. Since 1992, he has co-directed the annual Language Fair, has organized the Memphis Alliance for Foreign Language Education, and has served in an advisory capacity for the International Business Education Center. He was also instrumental in designing the University's International MBA program and in implementing, since 1993, the annual Business Language Conference. In 1999, he was elected President of the University Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi.