Jeffrey  Leichman 

Associate Professor
Bachelor's Degree(s): B.A., French, B.A., Comparative Literature; Brown University
PhD: Ph.D., French Literature, Yale University
Phone: (225)578-6627
E-mail: jleichman@lsu.edu
Office: 404 Hodges

Biography

Jeffrey M. Leichman (he/him) is Jacques Arnaud Associate Professor in the Department of French Studies at Louisiana State University. Professor Leichman’s research focuses on theatrical culture from the early modern period through the present, with three main areas of concentration: early modern European and colonial performance; immersive digital humanities; and performance in cinema. Recent publications include work on New Wave film director Jacques Rivette, in dialogue with eighteenth-century polymath philosopher Denis Diderot and (French Studies 75.1) and with twentieth-century art-house star Bulle Ogier (European Drama and Performance Studies 17); pedagogical approaches to Aimé Césaire and Pierre Corneille (in MLA Options for Teaching French Neoclassical Tragedy, eds. Bilis and McClure); and computer-designed procedural narrative as historiography (in Modes of Play in Eighteenth-Century France, eds. Falaky and McGinnis), amongst others. Professor Leichman is the principal investigator for two international digital humanities projects, the NEH-funded Interactive VR Simulation of an Eighteenth-Century Paris Faire Theatre: VESPACE (HAA 266501-19), and Virtual Theatres in the French Atlantic World: Urbanism and Spectacle (18th-19th centuries), co-directed with Dr. Pauline Beaucé with support from the Thomas Jefferson Fund of the French Foreign Ministry’s FACE Council. He is also co-editor with Karine Bénac-Giroux of Colonialism and Slavery in Performance: Theatre and the Eighteenth-Century French Caribbean (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment/Liverpool UP, 2021), and the author of the monograph Acting Up: Staging the Subject in Enlightenment France (Bucknell UP, 2016; reviews here). In addition to lecturing widely in the US and Europe on early modern performance, Dr. Leichman is a frequent expert reviewer for scholarly articles and monographs, and serves as a production editor for H-France Review. Professor Leichman’s accomplishments as a scholar and a teacher have been recognized with a 2013-2014 ATLAS grant, as well as three TAF Undergraduate Teaching Awards at LSU (2015, 2016, 2018) and the 2017 College of Humanities and Social Sciences Robert K. Udick Undergraduate Teaching Award. In 2018-2019, Professor Leichman was a Fellow in residence at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Nantes, France.

Areas of Interest

Eighteenth-century global French theatrical culture
Esthetics and politics in the French Enlightenment
Dramatic literature and acting theory (seventeenth century-present)
Theatre and cinema
Digital humanities
Social and sensory digital modeling
Inclusive pedagogy