Rudy Le Menthéour

Rudy Le Menthéour has studied the polemical battles between Rousseau and the main philosophers of the French Enlightenment. His work also focuses on the rise of hygiene and medical anthropology in the Eighteenth Century. He published La Manufacture de maladies: la dissidence hygiénique de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Classiques Garnier, 2012), edited the first modern eugenic treatise, Charles-Augustin Vandermonde’s Essai sur la manière de perfectionner l’espèce humaine (Classiques Garnier, 2015), as well as an anthology on Seventeenth Century French Literature, Baroque et classicisme (Flammarion, 2003). With Prof. Ourida Mostefai, he co-edited the Lettre à D’Alembert, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Œuvres complètes, vol. IX B, Classiques Garnier, 2024).

Select Publications

• “Rousseau’s Twilight: Graeber and Wengrow’s Critique of the Second Discourse,” Monde Français du Dix-Huitième Siècle, vol. 9, issue 1, 2024, https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/mfds-ecfw/article/view/18662/14203

• “Le secret d’une pyramide: Diderot, la double doctrine et l’Encyclopédie,” Diderot Studies, vol. 37, 2022: 185-208, https://repository.brynmawr.edu/french_pubs/12/
• “Seul en son royaume: la jouissance souveraine selon Rousseau Crusoé,” in Thierry Belleguic et Philip Knee (dir.), Le sentiment de l’existence. Lectures des Rêveries du promeneur solitaire de Rousseau, Paris, Hermann, 2021, p. 199-218 [initially published in Italian]
• “To Preserve or To Protect? Rousseau’s Take on Hygiene,” Sens public, 2019, http://sens-public.org
• “Le paradis à portée de lance: variations autour du modèle spartiate à l’âge des Lumières,”MLN, vol. 133, no. 4, 2018: 914-936, https://repository.brynmawr.edu/french_pubs/7/
• “Restaurer l’âme antique: Rousseau, Mably et le mirage polonais,” Dix-huitième siècle, 50, 2018: 449‑469, https://repository.brynmawr.edu/french_pubs/6/
• “De la moisson humaine: botanique et perfectibilité dans les Lumières médicales,” TrOPICS, no. 1, Dec. 2013, http://tropics.univ-reunion.fr/accueil/numero-1/rudy-le-mentheour/
• “Melancholy vaporised: self-narration and counter-diagnosis in Rousseau’s work,” in Medicine and Narration in the 18th Century, ed. Sophie Vasset, Oxford, SVEC (2013:04): 107-123, https://repository.brynmawr.edu/french_pubs/11/
• “The Tarantula, the Physician and Rousseau: the Eighteenth-Century Etiology of an Italian Sting,” Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, vol. 37 (2009), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.0642292.0037.003
• “De la ruche au polype: figures de l’organisation sociale,” Dix-huitième siècle, no. 41, 2009: 205-221, https://repository.brynmawr.edu/french_pubs/9/
• “De l’ingratitude volontaire: Rousseau, Mirabeau et les paradoxes de l’hospitalité moderne,” Theatrum historiae, 4, Vydavatelství Univertzity Pardubice, 2009: 47-58, https://repository.brynmawr.edu/french_pubs/5/
• “Cendrillon: portrait de la jeune fille en vestale,” La grande oreille, no. 33 (Winter 2007): 33-39, https://repository.brynmawr.edu/french_pubs/8/
• “Interview with Daniel Clowes/Entretien avec Daniel Clowes,” PLG, no. 37, 2002: 27-37, https://repository.brynmawr.edu/french_pubs/14/

Courses Taught

• FREN 204 Le Siècle des Lumières
  An introduction to French Enlightenment, with texts by Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, among others

• FREN 306 Libertinage et Subversion
  A study of Eighteenth-Century Libertinage through novels by Prévost, Crébillon, Laclos, Sade, etc.

• HLTH 275 Improving Mankind
  A comparative and historical approach to eugenics in different national contexts (UK, US, France, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, etc.).

• COML 217 Lovesick
  This course explores the different ways love has been compared to a sickness, but also how love relationships are impacted by the experience of disease. Works by Ovid, Burns, Lafayette, Bechdel, Campillo, etc.