Jump navigation to main content.

Willa Z. Silverman - Associate Professor of French and Jewish Studies
323 S.Burrowes Bldg.
Phone 863-9660
wzs1@psu.edu
Personal Webpage

Education:
  • Ph.D., French Studies, New York University (1988)
  • M.A., French Studies, New York University (1983)
  • B.A., History and Literature, Harvard University(1981)
Main Courses Taught
  • FR 83S - First-Year Seminar in French (Paris 1900; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity? Human Rights in the French Context)
  • FR 202 Grammar and Composition
  • FR 330 - Culture et civilisation française (Moyen Age-1870)
  • FR 453W - Belle Epoque
  • FR 497 - Special Topics (Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité? Les droits de l'homme dans le contexte français)
  • FR 545B - La France de 1715 à 1870
  • FR 580 - Approaches to French Civilization
  • FR 597 - Special Topics (History of the Book in France from the Ancien Régime to the Present; Belle Epoque; Forces of Change in Contemporary French Cultural History; Représentations de la Révolution Française)
  • INLST 493 - Capstone course in International Studies - Human Rights
  • J ST 83 S - First-Year Seminar in Jewish Studies (Anti-Semitism in Modern France)
  • J ST 497/FR 497 - France and the Holocaust in Literature and Film
Major Publications
  • The New Bibliopolis: French Book-Collectors and the Culture of Print, 1880-1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming 2007).
  • Confrontations: Politics and Aesthetics in Nineteenth-Century France. Co-editor, with Michael E. Lane, Kathryn Grossman and Bénédicte Monicat (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Editions Rodopi, 2001). Co-author of "Editors' Introduction," 1-14.
  • "Intellectuals and the Dreyfus Affair." Co-editor, with Venita Datta, of special issue of Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques, 24 (1), Spring 1998. Co-author of "Introduction: New Approaches to Intellectuals and the Dreyfus Affair," pp. 1-6.
  • The Notorious Life of Gyp: Right-Wing Anarchist in Fin-de-Siècle France (New York: Oxford UP, 1995). In French translation: Gyp, La dernière des Mirabeau (Paris: Plon-Perrin, 1998).
Recent Essays
  • Review article. Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama. Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide Volume 5, Issue 2 (Autumn 2006): http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/autumn_06/reviews/silv.html
  • “The Enemies of Books? Women and the Bibliophilic Imagination in Fin-de-Siècle France.” Contemporary French Civilization 30:1 (Winter 2005/Spring 2006): 47-74.
  • "Books Worthy of Our Era? Octave Uzanne, Technology, and the livre de luxe in Fin-de-Siècle France." Book History 7 (2004): 239-84.
  • "Unpacking his Library: Robert de Montesquiou and the Esthetics of the Book in Fin-de-Siècle France.." Nineteenth-Century French Studies 32.3-4 (Spring-Summer 2004): 316-31.
  • "Open Letters? Approaches to Gyp's Correspondence," in Rosemary Lloyd and Brian Nelson, ed., Women Seeking Expression: France, 1789-1914 (Monash Romance Studies 6 [2000]): 206-19.
  • "Two Generations of Bas-Bleus: The comtesse de Mirabeau and her Daughter, Gyp." WIF (Women in French) Studies 2000: 139-53.
  • "Gyp and Flammarion: A Marriage of Love or Convenience?" French Review 73.5 (April 2000): 910-20.
  • "The New Amazons: Anti-Dreyfusard Women and the Affair," in Jean-Max Guieu, ed., Intolerance and Indignation: The Dreyfus Affair (Paris: Editions Fischbacher, 1999): 220-229.
  • "A War of Words: Publishers and Publishing during the Dreyfus Affair." Contemporary French Civilization 21.1 (Winter/Spring 1997) 18-37.
  • "Life and Death of a ’Non-Conformist:’ Thierry de Martel, 1875-1940." Modern and Contemporary France 5.1 (February 1997) 5-19.
  • "Female Anti-Semitism during the Dreyfus Affair: The Case of Gyp," in Richard J. Golsan and Melanie Hawthorne, ed., Gender and Fascism in Modern France (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997) 12-26.
  • "L'opinion publique juive aux Etats-Unis face à l'Affaire Dreyfus," in Michel Denis, Michel Lagrée and Jean-Yves Veillard, ed., L'Affaire Dreyfus et l'opinion publique en France et à l'ètranger (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1995): 317-32.
  • "Marianne Revisited: Antirepublican Political Caricature 1880-1900" in John Jeanneney and Gail M. Schwab, ed., The French Revolution of 1789 and its Impact (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995) 305-336.
  • "Profession, Antisemite: Ideology and Gender in the Life and Works of Gyp." Nineteenth-Century French Studies 23.1-3 (Winter 1994-95) 222-43.
  • "Gyp," in Michel Drouin, ed., Dictionnaire de l'Affaire Dreyfus de A à Z (Paris: Flammarion, 1994):205-06.
Larger Research Interests, and/or Future Research Projects
  • French society, culture and politics, 1880-1914 ("Belle Epoque")
  • History and arts of the book in France, bibliophilia
  • French decorative arts (19th-20th centuries), Art Nouveau
  • Turn-of-the-(20th)-century Paris
  • History of French Jewry, especially 19th-20th centuries
  • Human Rights
  • Sociology of cultural production