Karen Quandt
- Associate Professor of French, Dept Chair
- Detchon Center 228
- 765-361-6201
- quandtk@wabash.edu
I am a student-centered scholar who relishes working in a liberal arts environment and the critical thinking, cultural awareness, and interdisciplinary initiatives that it cultivates. I work closely with my students, tap into their interests and strengths, and strive to set them up for success. Graduates from the French program routinely secure teaching fellowships abroad (TAPIF, Fulbright), and have pursued graduate studies or careers in the law and business sectors.
I am a big proponent of study and travel abroad and am eager to advise students in this area. I have led three Wabash immersion trips: to Caen, France in March 2019; to Paris in March 2023; and back to Caen in 2025, which all focused on the enduring impact of WWII on modern French society. I also take advantage of local cultural opportunities in Indiana and Chicago, and have taken students to French film screenings, productions of Les Misérables, and art exhibitions. Thanks to the generosity of the Albertine Cinémathèque, I have organized two French film festivals on the Wabash campus.
(with students abroad in Caen, France in March 2025)
Education
Ph.D. in French, Princeton University
M.A. in French, University of Notre Dame
B.A. in Art History, University of Notre Dame
Recent Course Offerings
I regularly teach courses at every level of French, including FRE 101, FRE 102, FRE 103, FRE 201, FRE 202, FRE 301, FRE 302, and FRE 401.
I have taught FRC 101 (Enduring Questions), and enjoy serving as an academic advisor.
My first freshman tutorial (FRT 101, Fall 2020), entitled "Reading Green," focused on environmental literature; works included Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk, Samuel Beckett's Endgame, as well as an array of modern and contemporary poems. My second freshman tutorial (Fall 2025) is entitled "The Power of Paris," and will examine the history and culture of the City of Lights through works of literature, art, and film.
Research
My research interests are centered on 19th-century French poetry, particularly the intersections between visual art and literature, and I work extensively on ecocritical themes in Romantic poetry and prose. I primarily examine the role of nature in the works of Victor Hugo, but more recently, I have turned to the question of botany and its aesthetic implications in the works of major literary figures such as Balzac, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, and Zola.
Recent Presentations
- “Stéphane Mallarmé and Paper Acceleration in fin-de-siècle France.” University of Genoa, Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies, 18–20 Jun. 2025 (Genoa, Italy)
- “Paper Ecology in Balzac’s Illusions perdues.” Duke University, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 19–21 Sept. 2024 (Durham, NC)
- “Tree Substance in Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris.” Wabash College, Division II Humanities Colloquium, Sept. 2024 (Crawfordsville, IN)
- (with Cary Hollinshead-Strick, American University of Paris) “The 19th-century Literary Passage from Plant Paper to Wood Pulp.” Johns Hopkins University, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 9–11 Nov. 2023 (Baltimore, MD)
- “Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and the ‘poussière noire’ of 1830s Lyon.” Newcastle University, Society for French Studies, 26–28 Jun. 2023 (Newcastle, UK)
- (with Cary Hollinshead-Strick, American University of Paris) “The Ecologies of Paper Making and Print Production in Nineteenth-Century France.” Université Paris Cité, Cultural Production in the Nineteenth Century, Retrouvailles et reprises, 19–20 Jun. 2023 (Paris, France)
Recent Publications
- “Paper Ecologies in Balzac’s Illusions perdues.” The Balzac Review/Revue Balzac, vol. 8, 2025, pp. 61–81.
- “Tree Substance in the Cathedral-Novel Notre-Dame de Paris.” SubStance, vol. 54, no. 1, 2025.
- “The Seine’s Swan Song: Urban Riparian Ecology in Baudelaire’s ‘Le Cygne’.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE), vol. 31, no. 3, Fall 2024, pp. 630–652.
- “Rimbaud et l’imagination botanique.” Parade sauvage: Revue d’études rimbaldiennes, vol. 33, 2022, pp. 93–118.
- “Mallarmé, Manet, and the Plein-air Eclogue.” Plein Air, special issue of Venti: Air, Experience, and Aesthetics, vol. 1, issue 3, Mar. 2021.
- “Alpine Ecology in Stendhal’s Mémoires d’un touriste.” Ecoregions/Les Écorégions, special issue of Dix-Neuf, vol. 23, no. 4, Nov. 2019, pp. 183–195.
Honors & Awards
- The Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA) Fellowship, The Newberry Library, Chicago (July 2025)
- Great Lakes College Association (GLCA) Global Crossroads, New Directions in Global Scholarship (2023)
- The Everett Helm Visiting Fellowship, The Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington (Summer 2019)