Déborah Blocker (ENS Ulm, Lettres 1990; DEA in Political Science — Sciences Po Paris, 1993; Doctorat in French Literature and Culture, University of Paris III, 2001; HDR in Comparative Literature, University of Paris IV, 2017) is Professor of French and affiliated faculty in Italian Studies.
She has been an engaged member of the Groupe de recherches interdisciplinaires sur l’histoire du littéraire (or Grihl: http://grihl.ehess.fr ) since its inception in 1996. She was visiting professor at the EHESS in Paris in the spring of 2014, and visiting senior research fellow at the Sonderforschungsbereichs 980 ("Episteme in Bewegung. Wissenstransfer von der Alten Welt bis in die Frühe Neuzeit”) in Berlin, in June-July 2019, within the framework of Teilprojeckt B05 (“Theorie und Ästhetik elusiven Wissens in der Frühen Neuzeit: Transfer und Institutionalisierung”). At UC Berkeley, Déborah Blocker is also affiliated with the Renaissance and Early Modern Studies DE, the doctoral program in Romance Languages and Literatures, on the executive committee of which she has served (2017-2020), and has recently joined the faculty of the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion. She also sits on two major committees of Berkeley’s faculty Senate, DIVCO (2025-2027) and LSEC (2024-2027), as an elected member, and was also a founding member of the executive committee of the Berkeley Initiative for Free Inquiry from January 2024 to July 2026.
OFFICE HOURS FOR FALL 2026: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4PM-5PM PST. Zoom appointments available upon request (via email).
Déborah Blocker is a comparative historian of early modern literature and aesthetics, with a primary specialization in French and Francophone studies and secondary expertise in early modern Italian studies. Her research is interdisciplinary, freely associating literary, art historical and musical analysis, the history of ideas, social and political history, as well as cultural history. Her work also relies heavily on the history of philology, the history of the book and manuscript studies. Since 2008, she has trained herself extensively in early modern paleography and codicology, and archival sciences.
Her first full-length study (Instituer un ‘art’: politiques du théâtre dans la France du premier XVIIe siècle, Paris, Champion, 2009) examined the social and political processes through which early modern French theater was instituted into an art (1630-1660).
Her second book, Le Principe de plaisir: esthétique, savoir, et politique dans la Florence des Médicis (XVIe-XVIIe siècle), Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2022, studies how new conceptions of art emerged in a late 16th century Florentine academy, the Accademia degli Alterati. The book was one of the recipients of the Prix Monseigneur Marcel of the Académie Française in 2023. This prize annually honors books devoted to “l'histoire philosophique, littéraire ou artistique de la Renaissance” .
Over the last few years, she has developed ties with scholars of aesthetics in two neighboring fields, comparative literature (in which she now holds a habilitation à diriger des recherches from the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne) and the history of knowledge, where much of the most innovative research in the history of early modern aesthetics is currently being conducted.
Déborah Blocker is currently working on three different research projects.
The first one concerns Maria-Felice Orsini (1600-1666), the last duchess of Montmorency, and her uses of the fine-arts and of the "arts of memory" during her life. This is heavily archival project, involving work in Parisian archives (mostly the Bnf at Richelieu), in the Archivio di Stato in Florence, in the Archives of the Museum of the Visitation in Moulins-sur-Alliers in France, in the Fondo Orsini of the Capitoline Archive in Rome and at the Clark Library (UCLA), which also holds fragments of the former Archivio Orsini.
Since 2020, she has also been working collaboratively with two other colleagues, Ulrike Schneider (Freie Universität, Berlin) and Veronica Vestri (Prato) on a digital edition of two Florentine manuscripts, BMLF Ashburnham, 560 and 561. In these manuscripts, the Alterati of Florence collectively discuss the writing and evaluation of poetry, engaging in sustained aesthetic, philosophical, political and theological reflections.
Finally, Déborah Blocker is currently actively at work on a 300-page essay entitled ‘Through the Looking-Glass’: Aristotle’s Poetics and the Crystallization of Modern Conceptions of the Arts. Drawing on case studies, her essay examines the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics since the 16th century, with the aim of better understanding how modern-day conceptions of literature and the arts emerged. She is particularly interested in accounting historically for the conflicted and at times paradoxical nature of the discourses on literature and the arts circulating today. To this end, the book highlights major turning points as much as abandoned avenues. It also brings out the contingent nature of these developments by focusing on the agency of individual actors (editors, translators, interpreters, commentators) within specific social, cultural, and political contexts. By carefully examining a restricted number of examples of the Poetics’ reception, she foregrounds both the historical emergence and cultural inertia of theories and practices of literature and the arts, which were often at odds, and mostly remain so in today’s world.
In the fall of 2021, Déborah Blocker followed an in-depth training at the CNRS in France on how to elaborate and lead a digital humanities project. In 2021-2022, while on sabbatical leave, she was a senior research fellow at the Cluster of Excellence Temporal Communities, Freie Universität, Berlin (June-July 2021 and January 2022) and a senior researcher in residence at the École Française de Rome at the Palazzo Farnese in Rome (February-August 2022).
Déborah Blocker is also a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts of Angers (Maine et Loire, France) since 2024, and a foreign deputy (“deputata straniera”) of the Deputazione di Storia Patria per la Toscana, Tuscany’s most prestigious historical society, founded by royal decree in 1862 (also since 2024).
Selected Publications
Books:
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Premières leçons sur les Fables de La Fontaine, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1996,120 p., prefaced by Gérard Ferreyrolles (2nd edition: 1997).
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Instituer un “art”: politiques du théâtre dans la France du premier XVIIe siècle, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2009, 540 p.
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Le Principe de plaisir: savoirs, esthétique et politique dans la Florence des Médicis (XVIe-XVIIe siècle), Les Belles Lettres (coll. “Essais”), 2022, 696 pages and 42 illustrations.
Presentations of Le Principe de plaisir, with some available on the internet:
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Radio interview on Le Principe de plaisir (Chambre avec vue, with Camille de Rijck) on the RTBF, 09-05-2022.
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Book presentation and roundtable discussion on 03-23-2023 (4-7pm), at the Villa Médicis (Académie de France à Rome) : « Pratiquer les sciences et les arts dans les académies de la première modernité » with the participation of Déborah Blocker (UC Berkeley), Matthijs Jonker (Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome), Dinah Ribard (École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris), Maria Pia Paoli (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa), and Samir Boumediene (KNIR Fellow / CNRS, Lyon).
Journal issues edited:
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In collaboration with Alain Viala, Mathilde Bombart and Dinah Ribard, 'De l’“utilité” de la littérature, Littératures classiques, 1999, 37, p. 5-261
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XVIIe siècle, n° 270, 2016/1, p. 3-132: “Auctorialité, voix et publics dans le Mercure galant. Lire et interpréter l’écriture de presse à l’époque moderne”, edited in collaboration with Anne Piéjus, eight articles published, plus a joint introduction (p. 3-8) : https://www.cairn.info/revue-dix-septieme-siecle-2016-1.htm
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Les Dossiers du Grihl, 02 | 2021: “Académies et universités en France et en Italie (1500-1800): coprésence, concurrence(s) et/ou complémentarité?”, five articles published plus an Introduction.
Digital humanities project:
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"Studying Academic Discussions on the Art of Poetry in Late Renaissance Florence", a collaborative digital research project funded by the Cluster of Excellence 2020 “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective”, at the Freie Universität in Berlin, with Professor Ulrike Schneider (Institut für Romanische Philologie, Freie Universität, Berlin) and Dr. Veronica Vestri (Prato).
Selected book chapters, journal articles and published conference papers (since 2012):
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‘Theatrical identities and political devices: fashioning subjects through drama in the house of cardinal Richelieu (1635-1643)’, in David Warren Sabean and Malina Stefanovska (ed.), Space and Self in Early Modern European cultures, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2012, p. 112-133.
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‘Corneille et l’art poétique: appropriations, déplacements, reconfigurations’, in Pratiques de Corneille: actes du colloque de Rouen (6-9 juin 2006), Rouen, Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2012, p. 213-228.
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‘Servir le prince par la philologie: André Dacier (1651-1722), un érudit dans l’orbite du pouvoir royal’, Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 35/1, 2013, p. 3-22.
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‘S’affirmer par le secret: anonymat collectif, institutionnalisation et contre-culture au sein de l’académie des Alterati (Florence, 1569 – ca. 1625)’, Littératures classiques, 80, 2013, p. 167-190.
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‘The Accademia degli Alterati and the invention of a new form of dramatic experience: myth, allegory and theory in Jacopo Peri’s and Ottavio Rinuccini’s Euridice(1600)’, in Katja Gvozdeva, Tatiana Korneeva and Kirill Ospovat (eds), Dramatic Experience: The Poetics of Drama and the Early Modern Public Sphere(s), Leiden, Brill, 2016, p. 77-117.
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‘Pro or/and anti-Medici? Political ambivalence and social integration in the Accademia degli Alterati(Florence, 1569 — ca. 1625)’, in Jane E. Everson, Denis V. Reidy and Lisa Sampson (eds.), The Italian Academies 1525-1700: Networks of Culture, Innovation and Dissent, London, Routledge, 2016, p. 38-52.
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‘Tous pour un et un pour tous ou de l’activité de penser en commun mais non en rond(s)’, texte rédigé à l’occasion des vingt ans du G.R.I.H.L., in À l’enseigne du GRIHL, Les Dossiers du Grihl, 2017-02, 2017.
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‘Deux professeurs en République: de la promotion sociale par les lettres à la redéfinition de leurs fonctions socio-politiques’, in Littéraire. Pour Alain Viala, edited by Marine Roussillon, Sylvaine Guyot, Dominic Glynn and Marie-Madeleine Fragonard, Arras, Artois Presses Université, 2018, p. 159-170.
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‘La haine du plaisir et son envers. Molière et la querelle de L’École des femmes’, Littératures classiques, 2019/1, n° 98, p. 119-132.
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‘Lire et commenter la Poétique d’Aristote en Italie dans la seconde moitié du Cinquecento : du commentaire érudit à l’élaboration d’une réflexion sur les arts’, in Francesco Robortello: réception des Anciens et construction de la modernité, sous la direction de Monique Bouquet, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2020, p. 65-90
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“Shedding light on the readings of Aristotle’s Poetics developed within the Alterati of Florence (1569-ca. 1630) : from manuscript studies to the social and political history of aesthetics”, in The Reception of Aristotle’s Poetics in the Italian Renaissance and Beyond: New Directions in Criticism, edited by Bryan Brazeau, London, Bloomsbury, p. 98-132. A
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‘Experimenting with the Teaching of Academic Genres in the Target Culture: A Reflexive Testimony’, in L2 Journal, 2021, 13(1).
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‘Establishing a Poetics of Theater in France under Cardinal Richelieu : From Processes of ‘Unknowledging’ to the Establishment of Worldly Expertise’, in Dynamiken der Negation. (Nicht)Wissen und negativer Transfer in vormodernen Kulturen, sous la direction de Sirin Dadas et Christian Vogel, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz Verlag, 2021, p. 353-373.
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In collaboration with Emily Linares: "Literacy en français and à la française : Socializing students to academic literacy practices in a foreign language", Foreign Language Annals, 2021, November 2021, p. 1-32.
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Introduction to issue « Académies et universités en France et en Italie (1500-1800) : coprésence, concurrence(s) et/ou complémentarité ? », in Les Dossiers du Grihl, 02 | 2021, p. 2-19.
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« Mazarin, l’Italie et la France : nouveaux éclairages et paradigmes historiographiques persistants », a discussion of four recently published books, Archivio Storico Italiano, 2022/3, p. 563-572.
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Two billets on Leone Strozzi and the Strozzi chapel in San Andrea della Valle in the Carnet Hypothèses of the École Française de Rome entitled A l’École de toute l’Italie : https://efrome.hypotheses.org/5576) and https://efrome.hypotheses.org/6276)
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“Accademia degli Alterati”, dictionary entry on the Alterati of Florence, in Boutier, Jean, Maria Pia Paoli and Claudia Tarallo, Dizionario storico delle accademie toscane, vol. 1, Florence, Pacini, p. 57-64 (in Italian).
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“Représenter l’indicible: le tombeau d’Henri II de Montmorency dans la Chapelle de la Visitation de Moulins (1649-1655)”, Mémoires de l’Académie d’Angers, tome 39, 2024, p.157-172.
In preparation/forthcoming articles:
Forthcoming, researched in collaboration with Dr. Francesco Martelli (Archivio di Stato di Firenze and Deputazione toscana per la storia patria): “Arms, Letters and the Art of Writing the Vite of One’s Ancestors: Biographical Practices Among the Strozzi in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Beyond the Medici: Patrician Culture in Florence circa 1600, edited by Maia Wellington Ghatan and Donatella Pegazzano, scheduled to appear with Brepols (Turnhout, Belgium) by the end of 2026. The research was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Martelli, but I wrote the essay in English (ca. 143000 characters).
Accepted: “The Alterati of Florence (1569-ca.1635): a localized and secluded Republic of Letters?”, to appear in Perdichizzi, Vincenza and Diego Pirillo (eds), Carrefours des savoirs. L’Italie et la République des Lettres (XVIe-XXe siècles), scheduled for publication in Laboratoire italien in 2028 (ca. 35000 characters).
Accepted: “Florence, 1595: the Alterati’s academic practices in local and transnational contexts (1570-1620)” for a multivolume history of early modern European literatures from a global perspective entitled Europe in the World: A Literary History, 1529-1683, ed. by Warren Boutcher et al. and contracted to Oxford University Press (ca. 78000 characters).
Accepted: “De la grâce à l’exemple: les conceptions cornéliennes de l’utilité du théâtre furent-elles modelées sur la théologie morale des Jésuites ?” to appear in the proceedings of a conference held at Sophia University in Tokyo, June 7-8 2025, on “L’Utilité du théâtre: poétique et politique — de la formation des normes littéraires dans la France de la première modernité” , edited by François Lecercle and Hirotaka Ogura (ca. 63000 characters).
Accepted: Claire Tourmen-Perron, Déborah Blocker, Vesna Rodic, Nina Rennert-Cohen & Richard Kern, “Building Professional Pathways in French: Growing Learner Communities in a Time of Crisis”, collective publication submitted for a volume entitled Europe in the World: A Literary History, 1529-1683, edited by Marie-Line Brunet (Ball State University), Flavien Falantin (Colby College) and Jennifer Misran (University of Southern California). The book will be published by Routledge in 2027 (ca. 56000 characters).
Under review with the interdisciplinary journal XVIIe siècle: “Mobiliser « arts » en aristocrate dans la France du XVIIe siècle: le mausolée d’Henri II de Montmorency dans l’Église Saint-Joseph de la Visitation de Moulins (1632-1666)”(ca. 83000 characters).
