Semple

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benjamin_sempleBorn in Boston and raised in Vermont, Benjamin Semple majored in French at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, receiving his B.A. in 1983. He studied in Paris at the Sorbonne (1982) and taught English at the University of Burgundy in Dijon (1987-8). He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. In 1995-96, as a Morse Fellow of Yale University, he conducted research at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. He has taught at Gonzaga University since the fall of 1998 and is currently Associate Professor of Modern Languages. He teaches beginning, intermediate and advanced French, as well as upper-level courses on French and Francophone literature and civilization.

Trained as a medievalist, Professor Semple has focused his scholarship on French works of the late Middle Ages. With Françoise Jaouën, he co-edited the volume Corps mystique, Corps sacré (Yale French Studies, Number 86). This collection of essays explored the mystery of the body in French texts from the medieval, Renaissance and early modern periods. As a recognized scholar of Christine de Pizan, Professor Semple has contributed to several collections of essays on this late 14th-century writer. His most recent publication in this area is an article which appeared in Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference (ed. Marilynn Desmond; University of Minnesota Press).