Michigan State University

Valentina Denzel

Biography

Valentina Denzel is an Associate Professor of French Literature (17th and 18th century) at the Department of Romance and Classical Studies at Michigan State University. Her fields of interest are Italian and French Literatures (15th – 18th century), Queer and Gender Studies, Querelle des femmes, the libertine novel, travelogues, and popular cultures. In her book Les mille et un visages de la virago. Marfisa et Bradamante entre continuation et variation, Garnier Classique 2016, she analyzes the evolution of the representation of the woman warrior in French and Italian literatures from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment by taking into consideration the political and historical context of this evolution and the symbolic value of the woman warrior in each specific time period. Valentina’s second book project examines the impact of the Marquis de Sade on the punk and post-punk movements, as well as on punk-porn feminism and comic books in France, the UK, and the US.enlightenmentlegacies.org/sites.cal.msu.edu/sadeandradicalism/Degree: Ph.D. (Docteur ès lettres) University Paris Diderot Paris 7, Paris,FranceResearch Interest: French and Italian Literature 15th-18th century, Gender Studies, Narratology

Works

Book

Les mille et un visages de la virago. Marfisa et Bradamante entre continuation et variation. France, Paris: Garnier Classique, 2016.

 

(Peer-reviewed) Book Chapters

1.      « ‘Où sont les femmes ?’  Andy Gang et le féminisme de Chantal Montellier », in Chantal Montellier.Irréductible, Dijon : Les Presses du réel, Octobre, 2025, p. 61-82.

2.      “Feminisms: Gendered Approaches to French Universalism(s)”, co-written with Dr. Tracy Rutler, in Cultural Transmission and the French Enlightenment: Repurposing the Past, Olivia Sabee and Hanna Roman (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment Series, 2025.

  1. “Women Working – Women Rebelling. Female Community and Gender Relations in Ah!Nana”, in ‘Taking up Space’: Women at Work in Contemporary France.

Eds. Siham Bouamer and Sonja Stojanovic, University of Wales Press, 2022, https://www.uwp.co.uk/book/taking-up-space

  1. “Sadean Confessions in Virginie Despentes’s Punk-Porn-Feminism.” I Confess: An Anthology or Original Essays on Constructing the Sexual Self in Contemporary Moving Image Art, Media and Culture, editors Thomas Waugh and Brandon Arroyo, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019. See review http://baltimoreoutloud.com/wp/confessing-our-desires/
  2. “La galanterie des Contes indiens de François-Augustin de Paradis de Moncrif, un parcours entre Catholicisme et philosophie des Lumières.” Les Lumières catholiques et le roman français, editor Isabelle Tremblay, SVEC, Voltaire Foundation: Oxford University Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 2019.
  3. “Entre le rire et la Le changement de sexe dans les épopées italiennes et françaises du XIVeau XVIe siècle.” L’Hermaphrodite de la Renaissance aux Lumières. Ed. Marianne Closson, Paris : Classiques Garnier, 2013.
  4. “La continuazione del personaggio della virago dopo Christine de Pizan : una figura ambigua nella Querelle des femmes del Cinquecento italiano e ” Ed. Patrizia Caraffi, Florence: Alinea editrice, 2013. 361-372.
  5. “Selbstdarstellung und Rezeption der Kriegerin in Frankreich während des Jahrhunderts.” Soldatinnen: Gewalt und Geschlecht im Krieg vom Mittelalter bis heute. Eds Klaus Latzel, Franka Maubach and Silke Satjukow, Berlin: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2011. 129-158.

 

Articles in (online) journals

  1. “Love, maternity, and feminism: Exploring alternative relationships in the works of Ah!Nana aritsts Yves Chaland, Nicole Claveloux, and Cecilia Capuana”, in European Comic Art, vol.17, no.2, Autumn 2024, 83-116.
  2. “Paradoxical Philogyny : The Comtesse de Murat’s Defense of Women and Female Friendshipin Dialogue with François Poullain de la Barre and Gabrielle Suchon”, in “Renaissance et Réformes”, La querelle des genres : paradoxes et modèles de la « perfection » féminine (xiie–xviie s.) – La querelle des genres : Paradoxes and Models for the “Perfection” of Women (12th-17th centuries), 3–4, Summer/fall / été/automne 2023.
  3. Ah!Nana’s Fairytale Punk Comics: From the Contesse de Ségur’s ‘Histoire de Blondine, Bonne-Biche et Beau-Minon’ to Nicole Claveloux’s ‘Histoire de Blondasse, Belle-Biche et Gros Chachat’”, in Open Cultural Studies, Special Issue: Gender Fluidity in Early-Modern to Post-Modern Children’s Literature and Culture, edited by Sophie Raynard-Leroy and Charlotte Trinquet du Lys, Vol.5 (1), 2021, p.235-247. https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/culture/5/1/html.
  4. “L’hybridité romanesque et la Querelle des femmesdans les mémoires de l’abbé de Villiers et de la comtesse de Murat.” editor Jeanne Garane, French Literature Series, “Hybrid Genres/ L’Hybridité des genres (42), Brill/Rodopi, 2018.
  5. “A Space of Resistance: Madame Duclos and her Counter-Narrative in The 120 Days of Sodom (1785)” Le monde français du dix-huitième siècle. Eighteenth-Century French World. 1, 1 (2017), p. 1-9. http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/mfds-ecfw/
  6. “La Querelle du mariage et la Querelle des femmes dans la pièce anonyme La Fille sçavante

(1690).” Lendemains, revue franco-allemande. Vol. 137, N. 35 (2010), p. 104-122.

  1. “Virago valorosa o ‘Marfisa bizarra‘ ? La donna guerriera ne La pazzia d’Isabella (1611) di Flaminio Scala e ne Lo Schiavetto (1612) di Giovan Battista ” Quaderni d’Italianistica, vol. XXX, No.2 (2009), p 1-19.
  2. “Bradamante et Fleurdépine – l’amour impossible du Roland furieux (1532).” Genre, sexualité et société. 2, Fall 2009.

http://gss.revues.org/index1273.html.

  1. “Entre amitié et amour – l’homosexualité masculine dans le Roland furieux (1532) de Ludovico ” Loxias. Vol. 22, Doctoriales V (2008). http://revel.unice.fr/loxias/?id=2519.

 

Article Reviews

  1. Reviewer for peer-reviewed journal @nalyses : revue des li􀆩ératures franco-canadiennes et québécoise, article review spring 2024
  2. Reviewer for peer-reviewed journal Irish Journal for French Studies, article review spring 2024
  3. Reviewer for French Studies, article review June 2020.
  4. Reviewer of a chapter on assessment of literary competences for the Routledge Handbook of SLA and Language Testing, ed. Paula Winke and Tineke Brunfaut (2019)
  5. Dust, by Saverio La Ruina, translated by Thomas Haskell Simpson, The Mercurian, A Theatrical Translation Review, Adam Versényi vol. 5, n. 4 (Fall 2015), p. 174-210.
  6. Reviewer for the peer reviewed French journal PolitiQueer. revue@politiq.info. (2013)

 

Book Reviews

  1. The Sprites of Kernosy Castle. Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, Countess de Murat. Edited and translated by Perry Gethner and Allison Stedman. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 105. Iter, 2024. Reviewed for the journal Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal.
  2. Caricatures en Extrême-Orient. Origines, rencontres, métissages. Laurent Baridon et Marie Laureillard (ed.). Hémisphères Éditions, 2024. Reviewed for the International Journal of Comic Art.
  3. The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader. Critical Openings, Future Directions, (2022), edited by Alison Halsall and Jonathan Warren. Reviewed for the journal European Comic Art.
  4. Guillaume Lancereau, Suzanne Rochefort, and Jan Synowiecki, Échos des Lumières. Un XVIIIe siècle pour aujourd’hui, Paris : Nouveau Monde, 2022, p.373. Reviewed for H-France.
  5. Studi e ricerche sulle letterature di lingua francese, vol 69. Autunno 2015, Anno XXXV. Variations françaises sur les Mille et Une Nuits : quelles versions pour ques effets ? sous la direction de Aboubakr Chraïbi et Ilaria Vitali, Olschki Editore. Dalhousie French Studies, 2018, n.113.
  6. Giorgetto Giorgi, ed. Les poétiques de l’épopée en France au XVIIe siècle. Paris : Éditions Honoré Champion, 2016, 578 pages. Renaissance Quarterly. Spring 2018 issue (71.1) Sponsored by the Renaissance Society of America.
  7. Thomas Alfred. Reading women in late medieval Europe. Anne of Bohemia and Chaucer’s female audience (collection The New Middle Ages). London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, 251 pages. Revue de la littérature comparée, 2017/3, n. 363.
  8. Stefan Biessenecker und Christian Kuhn, Valenzen des Lachens in der Vormoderne (1250-1750). Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2012, 461 pages. The Sixteenth Century Journal. The Journal of Early Modern Studies, 2014/3, vol. XLV, fall 2014.
  9. John Pier, Théorie du récit. L’apport de la recherche allemande. Villeneuve d’Asq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2007, 324 pages. In Le français moderne. Revue de linguistique française. Ed. Jean-Marie Klinkenberg, Paris: Conseil International de la Langue Française, n.1, (2012), p.149-151.

Dictionary entry

“Isabella Andreini”, Biography and representation of the works of Isabella Andreini (1562- 1604), (2007). SIEFAR, Société Internationale pour l’Etude des Femmes de l’Ancien Régime. Dictionnaire                      des                     Femmes                     de                     l’ancienne France. http://www.siefar.org/dictionnaire/fr/Isabella_Canali

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