David Caron

David Caron is a Professor of French and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. Born in Caen, France, he received his B.A. (1985) from the Université de Caen, then came to the United States to continue his education, earning his M.A. (1989) at West Virginia University and his Ph.D. (1994) at the University of California, Irvine. During his doctoral studies at UC Irvine he received a number of honors: a Leon and Molly Lyon Family Award in French, a Humanities Research Grant, a Dissertation Fellowship, Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, and a Humanities Graduate Essay Award.

After a one-year visiting position at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, he joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 1995. His areas of expertise include contemporary French literature and culture, gender and sexuality studies, and Jewish studies, and his publications reflect the interdisciplinary nature of his interests. Among them are AIDS in French Culture: Social Ills, Literary Cures (U. of Wisconsin Press, 2001); “AIDS/Holocaust: Metaphor and French Universalism,” L’esprit créatur, 45 (3) (2006); “Masculinité et altertemporalité dans J’apprends l’allemand de Denis Lachaud,” Itinéraires, 4 (2008); “The Queerness of Male Group Friendship,” in Entre Hommes: French and Francophone Masculinities in Culture and Theory, ed. Todd W. Reeser and Lewis C. Seifert (U. of Delaware Press, 2008); “Shame on Me! or The Naked Truth about Me and Marlene Dietrich,” in Gay Shame, ed. David Halperin and Valerie Traub (U. of Chicago Press, 2009); and My Father and I: The Marais and the Queerness of Community (Cornell UP, 2009). His article “Tactful Encounters: AIDS, the Holocaust, and the Problematics of Bearing Witness” is forthcoming in Yale French Studies; also forthcoming is Charlotte Delbo, ou la communauté qui revient (Toulouse: Presses Universitaire du Mirail), which he edited with Sharon Marquart. His Guggenheim Fellowship will support the completion of his next monograph, tentatively titled Tact and Contact: HIV/AIDS, Disclosure, and the Return of the Body.

David Caron has been an invited speaker at venues worldwide, and in recognition of his work he has been awarded a Mention of Honor from CUNY’s Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (2001) and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2002) and the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities (2005-06).