Contact Information

Biography

Dr. Agin joined the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures as Assistant Professor of French in 2005. His research focuses primarily on Denis Diderot and the interrelations among art, literature and philosophy in 18th-century France.

Academic interests include:

17th- and 18th-Century French and Italian Literature and Culture
Early Modern Philosophy
The Enlightenment in Europe
History of Sexuality
Aesthetics and Writing on Art

Education

Ph.D., French, The Johns Hopkins University, 2004
Diplôme d’études approfondies, French, The University of Geneva, 2001
M.A., French, The University of Kansas, 1996
B.A., English, The University of Kansas, 1993
B.A., French, The University of Kansas, 1993

School

French:

  • French Language (Elementary through Advanced)
  • French Conversation and Composition (changing course theme)
  • Advanced French Grammar
  • Introduction to French Literature and Culture I (Medieval to 17th Century)
  • Introduction to French Literature and Culture II (18th Century to Contemporary)
  • Introduction to 17th- and 18th-Century French Literature and Culture
  • France and Italy through the Lens of the Camera
  • La Philosophie Ă  l’âge classique (17th- and 18th-century Philosophy)
  • The French Novel in Translation
  • Faith and Reason in the Age of Revolution
  • French for Reading Knowledge
  • Critical Theory and Research Methodologies (graduate seminar)
  • Quarrels and Controversies in the Age of Reason

Italian:

  • Italian Language (Elementary)
  • Introduction to Italian Language and Culture
  • France and Italy Through the Lens of the Camera

Books and Edited Volumes:

Sex Education in Eighteenth-Century France, ed. Shane Agin. SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century) (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2011).

Book Translations:

Futurist Painting Sculpture (Plastic Dynamism) (and the Futurist Manifestos) by Umberto Boccioni, et al. Co-transl. M.E. Versari. Ed. M.E.Versari. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute Publications, 2016.

Articles and Chapters:

“The Debate on Judicial Torture in Austrian Lombardy,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 46 (2016), forthcoming.

“Diderot et l’affaire du musicien disparu: Sur les caprices de l’expĂ©rience esthĂ©tique.” Actes du colloque Diderot: Théâtre et Musique, Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne (2016) (forthcoming).

“Diderot, Rousseau, and the Historiography of Virtue,” Diderot Studies 32 (September 2011): 381–400.

“Entre instinct et imagination: l’éducation sexuelle chez Rousseau,” in La question sexuelle: Interrogations de la sexualitĂ© dans l’œuvre et la pensĂ©e de Rousseau, ed. Jean-Luc Guichet (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion) (Collection: L’Europe des Lumières) (2011): 243–64.

“The Construction and Education of the Sexualized Subject in Rousseau,” in Sex Education in Eighteenth-Century France, ed. Shane Agin. SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century) (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2011): 125–48.

“The Development of Diderot’s Salons and the Shifting Boundary of Representational Language,” Diderot Studies 30 (2008): 11–29.

“Sketch, Illustration and the Power of Imagination: Aesthetic Production and Reception in 18th-Century France,” in The Ruin and the Sketch in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Peter Wagner, FrĂ©dĂ©ric OgĂ©e, et al. (Trier: Wissenschaflicher Verlag Trier, 2008): 59–69.

“Le viol au XVIIIe siècle: Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de la femme sociale,” in Le Viol: Actes du colloque international, ed. Jean-Michel DevĂ©sa (Bordeaux, UniversitĂ© de Bordeaux 3 [L’A.P.R.I.L]).

“La Physiologie de l’art,” in Plaisir, souffrance et sublimation, ed. Jean-Michel DevĂ©sa (Bordeaux: Pleine Page Editeurs, 2007): 49–59.

“Sex Education in the Enlightened Nation,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 37 (2007): 1–21.

“Le public des ascensions en Montgolfière et la dĂ©mocratisation de la science au XVIIIe siècle.” Cahiers de littĂ©rature française 5 (2007): 13–25.

“Vers un nouveau Salon : Diderot, Falconet, et le dĂ©bat sur la critique d’art,” Cahiers d’Histoire culturelle (La littĂ©rature et les beaux-arts au 18e siècle) (2005): 111–19.

“« Comment se font les enfans? » Sex Education and the Preservation of Innocence in Eighteenth-Century France,” MLN 117 (2002): 722–36.

Article Translations:

Jean M. Goulemot, “Sex Education in Utopia: An Investigation into the Margins,” in Sex Education in Eighteenth-Century France, ed. Shane Agin. SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century) (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2011): 83–104.

Didier Masseau, “Representations of Sexual Awakening in Eighteenth-Century Memoirs,” in Sex Education in Eighteenth-Century France, ed. Shane Agin. SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century) (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2011): 171–90. (translated with Diane B. Brown)

Patrizia Veroli, “Loie Fuller’s Serpentine Dance and Futurism: Electricity, Technological Imagination and the Myth of the Machine,” in Futurism and the Technological Imagination, ed. GĂĽnter Berghaus (Amsterdam: Rodopi, December 2009): 125–47.

Reviews:

FrĂ©dĂ©ric Charbonneau, ed., La Fabrique de la modernitĂ© scientifique: discours et rĂ©cits du progrès sous l’Ancien rĂ©gime, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation (SVEC 2015:13) French Studies (2016).

Élise Pavy-Guilbert, L’Image et la Langue: Diderot Ă  l’épreuve du langage dans les Salons, Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014, in H-France Review 15 (2015): 1–4.  (in new tab).

Ourida Mostefai and John T. Scott, Rousseau and l’Infâme: Religion, Toleration, and Fanaticism in the Age of Enlightenment, in French Review 84.4 (March 2011).

Nicholas Cronk, The Cambridge Companion to Voltaire, in French Review 84.1 (October 2010): 160–61.

Daniel Brewer, The Enlightenment Past: Reconstructing Eighteenth-Century French Thought, in French Review 83.4 (March 2010): 865–66.

Jean M. Goulemot, Adieu les philosophes: Que reste-t-il des Lumières? in American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies Book Reviews On-line.