Associate Professor and Director of European Studies 16th-Century French Literature, Rabelais, Evangelical Humanism, French Theatre Ph.D., University of Virginia, 1991 Email: perselsj@sc.edu Phone: (803) 777-6088 Fax: (803) 777-0454 Humanities 806

Jeff Persels' area of specialization is the French Sixteenth Century. His current research interests include the polemical literature of the French Wars of Religion and the rhetoric of French Evangelical Humanism. He has most recently co-edited with Russ Ganim a volume of essays: Fecal Matters in Early Modern Literature and Art: Studies in Scatology (Ashgate, 2004). He has published articles in Etudes rabelaisiennes, Sixteenth-Century Journal, Romance Notes and Mediævalia, and contributed to a number of anthology publications. “The Sorbonnic Trots: Staging the Intestinal Distress of the Roman Catholic Church in French Reform Theatre,” will appear in the Winter 2003 issue of Renaissance Quarterly. His teaching interests and experience include primarily Early Modern literature in French and in translation on both undergraduate and graduate levels, and French Theatre on the undergraduate level. He has taught, adapted and staged a number of plays in French both at USC and at the University of Virginia. (Photo from the spring 2003 production of his adaptation of Voltaire’s Candide, in the role of Don Fernando.) Les Comédiens Carolingiens Spectacle de marionnettes FREN 309 for February 28