Profile

Evlyn Gould is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor in the Humanities and Professor of French at the University of Oregon in Eugene, OR. Her work focuses on 19th century French literature, culture, and the performing arts, as well as issues in Jewish and European Studies. She is the author of Virtual Theater from Diderot to Mallarmé (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), The Fate of Carmen (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996; 2001); and co-author and co-editor of Engaging Europe: Rethinking a Continent in Change (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006; 2007). Her most recent book, Dreyfus and the Literature of the Third Republic: Secularism and Tolerance in Zola, Barrès, Lazare and Proust (McFarland Press, 2012), explores these four authors’ dramatic encounters with the "Jewish question" during the Dreyfus Affair in France, interrogating the moral turning of their deepest convictions in these encounters. Gould's latest work studies signs of Jewish influence in popular social gatherings of the late 19th Century. Tentatively titled, "Salons et cénacles," it considers religious and cultural traditions, aspects of material culture and the effects of mystical and spiritual thinking on late 19th century lyric. Gould also works part-time as a Hazzan or Cantor in Eugene, OR and Mt. Holly, NJ.