Paul de Morais

Paul de Morais (they/them) studies and teaches literature and culture of the Romantic period (French, German, British, Anglo-American, Spanish, and Portuguese), focusing especially on prose and the novel. In their dissertation they analyzed the fiction of George Sand, Honoré de Balzac, and Bettine von Arnim in relation to discourses about genre framing the authors' works and the interwoven topics of gender, politics, aesthetics (idealism and realism), nature, and idealist philosophy. They show how the novel writing practices and literary ideologies of Sand, Balzac, and Arnim, which took shape in the first half of the nineteenth century, are not reducible to either genre of idealism or realism when compared to how critics and scholars developed the terms in relation to the novel during the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. In this way, the dissertation aims to reconstruct what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu highlights as the “point de vue de l'auteur” as it emerged. Other teaching and research interests include the intersection of literary form and ecocriticism; political and aesthetic ideologies; gender and critical theory.

At UC Berkeley Paul has taught courses for the departments of French and Comparative Literature, from French 2 to reading and composition classes on topics ranging from alternative love plots to environmental literature and plant studies. With teaching their interests have expanded to include some Latin-American, Japanese, and Senegalese literatures. They are currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for African Studies through the Future of Higher Education postdoctoral program, which focuses on administration.