Francis-Noël Thomas![]() francis-noel@att.net |
My work as a scholar centers on how particular ways of organizing concepts become commonplace. My areas of special knowledge are iconography—the diffusion of ideas through pictures—and the history of literary interpretation—the history of reading as a form of human thought. |
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Professor of Humanities
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(Department Chair 1993-1997)
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and
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Harry S Truman College Distinguished Professor, 2000-2001
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Truman College, City Colleges of Chicago
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Ph.D. University of Chicago, 1974 A.M. University of Chicago, 1965 A.B. Canisius College, 1964
Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises, 1996 (Académie française)
NEH Fellowship for College Teachers and Independent Scholars, 1996
NEH Summer Seminar (Northwestern University), 1987
Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, 1964
Sole author:
The Writer Writing: Philosophic Acts in Literature. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Foreword
Preface
Table of Contents
Order online from Amazon Books
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Joint (first) author with Mark Turner: Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994. Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises 1996 (Académie française). The Princeton University Press Web Page for Clear and Simple Website on Writing and Prose Style
Electronic Publications
Thinking About Writing (with Mark Turner)
Contributions to the Virginia Quarterly Review Online
"Lives in Words" [Review of Mark Rudman, Sundays on the Phone]
"Reading the Gospel of Judas in the Light of Early Christian Literature"
"The Smart Set"
"Cultural Literacy: Concepts and Information,"
in Rhetoric and Pluralism: Legacies of Wayne Booth. Edited by Frederick J. Antczak. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1995. Pages 40-55.
"Barbara Pym"
in Post-War Literatures in English: A Lexicon of Contemporary Authors. Edited by Hans Bertens, Theo D'haen, Joris Duytschaever, and Richard Todd. Groningen, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1988. (Sixteenth supplement, September 1992). Pages 1-9, A-1, and B-1.
"Life in a Box," New England Review 29.3 (Summer 2008): [in press].
"Liebling's War," Humanities 29.3 (May/June 2008): [17]-23.
"Last Looks: Reflections on the Face of Death," New England Review 28.2 (Spring 2007): 177-187.
"Piccolomini Among the Illustrious," Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 51/52 (2006/2007): [211]-223.
"Philip Larkin, Barbara Pym, and the Accident of Literary Fame," New England Review 27.2 (Spring 2006): 8-26.
New England Review is published by Middlebury College.Review Article: "Recent English Translations of La Princesse de Clèves, " EMF: Studies in Early Modern France. 8 (2002): 268-283.
"Une Moult Grande Signifiance: Providence and Madness in Froissart's Chroniques," EMF: Studies in Early Modern France. 2 (1996): 1-15.EMF is sponsored by the Department of French, University of Virginia.
Review of Daniel Karlin, Proust's English. Modern Philology 105:2 (November 2007): 406-409.Modern Philology is published by The University of Chicago Press.Review of David G. Schultenover, A View from Rome: On the Eve of the Modernist Crisis. Modernism/Modernity 2.2 (April 1995): 99-101.
Modernism/Modernity is published by The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Émile Mâle Memorial Lectures in Christian Iconography (University of Chicago)
Case Western Reserve University
Northwestern University: The Writing Program
University of Chicago Law School
Claremont Graduate University: Conference: Exile: Medieval Topos/ Modern RealityUniversity of Illinois, Chicago
Julien Green: Engagement and Exile
Judicial Institute of Maryland
Loyola College in Maryland
University of Maryland
MMLA 1993 (French 1)
University of Minnesota (Center for the Advanced Study of Language, Style, and Literary Theory)
Northwestern University (NEH Seminar)
Truman College (Chicago Architecture Seminar)
Second International Word and Image Conference (Universität Zürich)
Third International Word and Image Conference (Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada)
The Third International Word and Image Confererence is the subject of a review by Charlotte Schoell-Glass and Martin Heusser in Kunstchronik, 47 (October 1994): 641-652. My paper, "Image as Argument: Vermeer's Artist in his Studio," is discussed on page 651.