Maurice Samuels


Maurice Samuels is the Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French at Yale University. He graduated with a BA in 1990 from Harvard University, where he also earned his MA and PhD. Before moving to Yale in 2006, Samuels taught at the University of Pennsylvania. He specializes in the literature and culture of nineteenth-century France and in Jewish Studies, and is the author of books and articles on these and other topics. He is the inaugural director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism.

Work

Samuels is the author of T, ', and '. He co-edited and did translations for '. His new book, ', will be published by Basic Books in spring 2020.
In 2011, Samuels became the inaugural director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism, housed at Yale's Whitney Humanities Center. Through a seminar series of invited international scholars, an annual conference, and the awarding of faculty and student research grants, YPSA "promotes the study of the perception of Jews, both positive and negative, in various societies and historical moments, and also encourages comparisons with other forms of discrimination and racism."

Awards

The Spectacular Past won the , awarded by Yale University's MacMillan Center. Inventing the Israelite and The Right to Difference both received the , given by the Modern Language Association. In 2015, Samuels was awarded a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Teaching

Samuels teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on a variety of topics. Recent courses include "Paris: Capital of the Nineteenth Century"; "Money and the Novel"; "Jewish Identity and French Culture"; "Realism and Naturalism"; "Fin-de-siècle France"; and "Representing the Holocaust." With Alice Kaplan, he teaches a popular undergraduate survey course, The Modern French Novel.