Laure Murat, born June 4, 1967, in Paris, is a French historian, writer, and professor at the
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...
.
Biography
Laure Murat is the daughter of the writer and film producer Napoléon
Murat Murat may refer to:
Places Australia
* Murat Bay, a bay in South Australia
* Murat Marine Park, a marine protected area
France
* Murat, Allier, a commune in the department of Allier
* Murat, Cantal, a commune in the department of Cantal
Elsewhe ...
and historian Inès d'Albert de Luynes.
In 1986, she began her career as a journalist first at '' Beaux-Arts Magazine'', and then at ''l'Objet d'art'', before spending a year at ''Profession politique''. She subsequently worked as a freelance journalist for several notable reviews (''
Connaissance des Arts
''Connaissance des arts'' is a monthly French art magazine devoted to the arts and their current events, published since March 1952 by the French Society for the Promotion of Art. Its headquarters are on the rue du Quatre-Septembre in Paris.
In 20 ...
'', ''Muséart'', ''les Aventures de l'art'', ''
l'Œil
''L'ŒIL'' ( French: ''The Eye'') is a French magazine created by Rosamond Bernier (née Rosenbaum) and her second husband, Georges Bernier, in 1955 to celebrate and reflect contemporary art
Contemporary art is the art of today, produced i ...
'', among others), supplements (''Le Monde de la révolution française'') and radio shows (Radio Aligre, France-Culture).
In 1997, she was invited by the
École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts
The Beaux-Arts de Paris is a French ''grande école'' whose primary mission is to provide high-level arts education and training. This is classical and historical School of Fine Arts in France. The art school, which is part of the Paris Scienc ...
to give a seminar on the "theory of art criticism."
In 2004, she wrote a thesis, "Le Troisième sexe. Du mythe de l’androgyne à l’invention du neutre," for th Diplôme de l'EHESS She earned the degree with honors, which permitted her to proceed directly to her doctoral dissertation.
In 2006, she defended her dissertation on "L’invention du troisième sexe. Sexes et genres dans l’histoire culturelle (1835-1939)" and earned her PhD ''summa cum laude.'' Her committee was composed of Françoise Gaspard, Dominique Kalifa,
Michelle Perrot
Michelle Perrot (born 18 May 1928, Paris) is a French historian, and Professor emeritus of Contemporary History at the Paris Diderot University. She won the 2009 Prix Femina Essai.
Life
She has worked on the history of labor movements, and stud ...
, Christophe Prochasson (advisor),
Denise Riley
Denise Riley (born 1948, Carlisle
Carlisle ( , ; from xcb, Caer Luel) is a city that lies within the Northern English county of Cumbria, south of the Scottish border at the confluence of the rivers Eden, Caldew and Petteril. It is ...
, and Joan Scott.
The same year, she was hired as a professor in the Department of French and Francophone Studies (now the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies) at UCLA. She currently serves as the department's Vice Chair of Graduate Studies.
From 2015-2019, she served as director of th UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies
In 2022, she was named
Distinguished Professor
Distinguished Professor is an academic title given to some top tenured professors in a university, school, or department. Some distinguished professors may have endowed chairs.
In the United States
Often specific to one institution, titles such ...
.
Research
Laure Murat's research focuses on three main areas.
Her first area of research is the history of psychiatry in France in the XIXth century. In 2001, she published ''La Maison du docteur Blanche'', an investigation into private psychiatry before the invention of psychoanalysis, based on the unpublished records of an asylum that treated Nerval and
Maupassant
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (, ; ; 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a 19th-century French author, remembered as a master of the short story form, as well as a representative of the Naturalist school, who depicted human lives, destin ...
, among others. In 2011, she published ''L'homme qui se prenait pour Napoléon'' (translated in English in 2014 as ''The Man Who Though He Was Napoleon''), which examines the vast body of archives of the public asylums located in the former French administrative ''
département
In the administrative divisions of France, the department (french: département, ) is one of the three levels of government under the national level (" territorial collectivities"), between the administrative regions and the communes. Ninety ...
de la Seine'' (including Bicêtre, la Salpêtrière, Charenton, and Sainte-Anne) for the years 1789-1871. Taking Esquirol's suggestion to make a history of France from the registers of asylums as a starting point, she questions the nature of delirium in the XIXth century in order to understand the impact of political events (revolutions, regime changes, etc.) on madness. This political history of madness attempts to show the extent to which psychiatry, a science still in its infancy that was at the whims of an often-changing government, interpreted mental illness and rendered it a social phenomenon.
Her second field of research is cultural history, particularly of literature. In 2003, she published ''Passage de l'Odéon'', devoted to
Adrienne Monnier
Adrienne Monnier (26 April 1892 – 19 June 1955) was a French bookseller, writer, and publisher, and an influential figure in the modernist writing scene in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s.
Formative years
Monnier was born in Paris on 26 April 18 ...
and Sylvia Beach, inventors of the modern bookstore in the interwar period and publishers of
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
's ''
Ulysses
Ulysses is one form of the Roman name for Odysseus, a hero in ancient Greek literature.
Ulysses may also refer to:
People
* Ulysses (given name), including a list of people with this name
Places in the United States
* Ulysses, Kansas
* Ulysse ...
''. In 2015, she published Relire ' as an investigation of rereading, its reasons and its specificities, after conducting a series of interviews with writers in France (
Annie Ernaux
Annie Thérèse Blanche Ernaux (; born 1 September 1940) is a French writer, professor of literature and Nobel laureate. Her literary work, mostly autobiographical, maintains close links with sociology. Ernaux was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize ...
,
Patrick Chamoiseau
Patrick Chamoiseau (born 3 December 1953) is a French author from Martinique known for his work in the créolité movement. His work spans a variety of forms and genres, including novels, essays, children's books, screenplays, theatre and comics. ...
Christine Angot
Christine Angot (born 7 February 1959) is a French novelist, playwright and screenwriter.
Life
Born Pierrette Marie-Clotilde Schwartz (Schwartz being her mother's name) in Châteauroux, Indre, she is perhaps best known for her 1999 novel ''L'I ...
, etc.).
Her third area of research touches on questions of gender and sexuality. In 2006, she published ''La Loi du genre,'' a study based on her dissertation research that further explores the concept of the "third sex." In 2018, she published ''Une révolution sexuelle ? Réflexions sur l'après-Weinstein,'' which examined the #MeToo movement.
In the course of her research, Laure Murat has also written a great many articles on Marcel Proust. While in the police archives in 2005, she discovered a report from the vice squad attesting to the presence of Marcel Proust in a brothel for gay men that was run by Albert Le Cuziat, who served as the inspiration for Jupien in '' In Search of Lost Time.'' This discovery was followed by several further studies, notably in ''Proust et ses amis,'' ''La Nouvelle Revue Française,'' and the ''Romanic Review.'' In the year of Proust's centenary (2021-2022), she contributed to the Cahiers de l'Herne, the exhibition catalog ''Marcel Proust, un roman parisien'' at the Carnavalet Museum, and to the exhibition catalog ''Marcel Proust, la fabrique de l'œuvre'' at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. On November 15, 2022, she participated in an episode of the "L'Heure bleue" podcast dedicated to Proust, which was presented by
Laure Adler
Laure Adler ( née Laure Clauzet; born 11 March 1950, in Caen) is a French journalist, writer, publisher and radio/TV producer.
Works
Biographies
* 1986: ''L'Amour à l'arsenic : histoire de Marie Lafarge'', Denoël.
* 1998: ''Marguerite ...
and titled "''La Recherche'' est un livre de consolation."
Public Engagement
Laure Murat regularly intervenes in the public sphere on social issues, especially since the advent of #MeToo and the controversies around cancel culture, about which she wrote a short book in 2022, titled Qui annule quoi? '' Her perspective on these issues is informed by her deep knowledge of both French and American cultures, as shown by her articles in ''
Le Monde
''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...
Serge Gruzinski
Serge Gruzinski (born 5 November 1949) is a French historian. He is a Latin America specialist.
Career
In 1969, he entered the École Nationale des Chartes and prepared a thesis on sixteenth-century Flanders under the direction of Pierre Gou ...
.
Works
*1992: ''Palais de la nation'', phot. de Georges Fessy, Flammarion, 256 p.
*1996: ''Paris des écrivains'', (dir.), Paris, Éditions du Chêne, series "Paris", 192 p.
*1998: ''L'expédition d'Égypte : le rêve oriental de Bonaparte'', with Nicolas Weill,
Éditions Gallimard
Éditions Gallimard (), formerly Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française (1911–1919) and Librairie Gallimard (1919–1961), is one of the leading French book publishers. In 2003 it and its subsidiaries published 1,418 titles.
Founded by Ga ...
, series " Découvertes Gallimard" vol. 343, 160 p.
*2001: ''La Maison du docteur Blanche : histoire d’un asile et de ses pensionnaires, de Nerval à Maupassant'', Éditions J.-C. Lattès, 424 p.
::-
Prix Goncourt de la biographie
The Prix Goncourt (french: Le prix Goncourt, , ''The Goncourt Prize'') is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year". The prize carries a symbolic reward o ...
2001
::- Prix de la Critique de l'Académie française 2001
*2003: ''Passage de l’Odéon : Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier et la vie littéraire à Paris dans l’entre-deux-guerres'', éditions
Fayard
Fayard (complete name: ''Librairie Arthème Fayard'') is a French Paris-based publishing house established in 1857. Fayard is controlled by Hachette Livre.
In 1999, Éditions Pauvert became part of Fayard. Claude Durand was director of Fayard ...
, series "Histoire de la pensée", 368 p.
*2005: "Proust, Marcel, 46 ans, rentier" in ''La Revue littéraire'', n° 14,
*2006: ''La loi du genre : une histoire culturelle du troisième sexe'', Fayard, series "Histoire de la pensée", 464 p.
*2011: ''L'homme qui se prenait pour Napoléon : pour une histoire politique de la folie'', Gallimard, series "Hors Série Connaissance", 382 p.
:: -
Prix Femina essai The prix Femina essai is a French literary prize awarded to an essay. Established in 1999, it replaced the prix Femina Vacaresco.
France Culture
France Culture is a French public radio channel and part of Radio France
Radio France is the French national public radio broadcaster.
Stations
Radio France offers seven national networks:
* France Inter — Radio France's " generalist" sta ...