This event is free and open to the public, and will take place from 3:30-5:00 p.m. on Friday, April 8, 2016, in 315 Phillips Hall.The European Studies Group and the French and Italian Forum will co-host an upcoming talk, "Le Soleil Couchant by Théophile Gautier (1830): An Introduction to Reading French Poetry." Featuring guest speaker Geoffrey Hope, a professor of French at the UI, a reading and discussion will take place on the poetry of Théophile Gautier, in honor of the retirement of Professor Wendelin Guentner.

After earning her Masters' degrees from the Université de Paris/Sorbonne and the University of Delaware, Professor Wendelin Guentner was awarded her doctorate degree at the University of Chicago in 1982. She taught at Marquette University before coming to The University of Iowa in 1985.

Areas of graduate teaching expertise include 19th-century French literature and culture, especially Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism; the novel, non-fictional prose (the travel narrative, the preface, the salon, the letter); aesthetics and interarts discourse; the relationships between literature and the plastic arts, technology and cultural expression.

She has written two books, Stendhal et son lecteur: Essai sur les "Promenades dans Rome" (Gunter Narr, 1989) and Esquisses littéraires: Rhétorique du spontané et récit de voyage au XIXe siècle (Nizet, 1997).

Additionally, Professor Guentner has published in the area of women art critics in 19th-century France, and is currently editing a collection of essays by art historians and literary critics entitled Vanishing Acts: Women Art Critics in Nineteenth-Century France.  She is completing a book, The Sketch in Nineteenth-Century Cultural Discourse in France, which examines the pictorial sketch in theoretical, critical and literary discourse.  Her next book project, which deals with technological change at the beginning of the last century, is entitled Remembrance of Things Present:  Jules Claretie’s Historical Imagination in La Vie à Paris (1880-1913).

Learn more about the European Studies Group.

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Roland Racevskis in advance at roland-racevskis@uiowa.edu.