Ryan
Evelyn
Ph.D., The Graduate Center, CUNY (2023, French)
M.Phil., French
Advanced Certificate in Global Early Modern Studies
M.A., The University of Connecticut (2017, French and Francophone Studies)
B.A., The University of New Hampshire (2015, French and English)
Ryan Evelyn received his PhD in French from The Graduate Center, CUNY. Prior to coming to John Jay, he served as Visiting Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Lehigh University. In the past, he has taught all levels of French language, French and Francophone literature, and various survey courses in literature and history (in English and French). He currently teaches courses on the history of medicine, gender, sexuality, and witchcraft.
History of Medicine (Medieval to Early Modern)
Race and Rebellion
Microhistories: Comparative Approaches to Witchcraft, Magic, and the Occult
Renaissance Society of America
Societas Magica
Articles:
“‘Donne moy ce crochet que j’arrache le reste!’: Witchcraft and Gender-Based Violence in the Poetry of Pierre de Ronsard, Agrippa d’Aubigné, and Mathurin Régnier,” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 2023. (Peer-Reviewed)
“Demandez à une personne de confiance, comme votre mère: Representation of Mothers and Daughters in Mademoiselle Âge Tendre, 1968-1971,” Forthcoming from French Cultural Studies, 2024. (Peer-reviewed)
Monographs:
Witchcraft, Demons and the Body in Early Modern Discourse, 1400-1650 (under contract)
Book Reviews and Encyclopedia Entries:
“Tristan L’Hermite,” The Literary Encyclopedia, 2023.
Review of Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et demons (ed. Jean Céard, Droz, 2022), The Sixteenth Century Journal.
Review of The Possession of Barbe Hallay: Diabolical Arts and Daily Life in Early Canada, by Mairi Cowan (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022), Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft.
Conferences:
“Disease, Degradation, Depravity: The Concept of the Witch as Imagined by Agrippa d’Aubigné, Charles-Timoléon de Beauxoncles, and Mathurin Régnier,” 7th Annual Graduate Conference, Princeton University Department of French and Italian, 14 April 2023.
“Invoking a Genre: Depictions of Necromancy in Joachim du Bellay’s Les Antiquitez de Rome (1558).” 66th Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America (RSA). Dublin, Ireland.
“The Making of the Witch: The Function of Material Objects in Pierre de Lancre’s Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et démons […].” Enemies in the Early Modern World: Conflict, Culture and Control. Hosted and organized by The University of Edinburgh, 2021.
“Ambiguity and Cultural Displacement in Two Novels by Gide and Guibert”. Seventh Annual Languages Graduate Student Association Conference. Hosted and Organized by the University of Connecticut, 2016.
Ryan Evelyn is a literary historian interested in the intersection of witchcraft, gender, sexuality, and body politics in early modern France and England. His current book project, titled Witchcraft, Demons and the Body in Early Modern Discourse, 1400-1650, privileges the human body in demonologies, trial records, and imaginative literature. It looks beyond visual and iconographical representations of witchcraft and transcends genre lines, thus revealing the extent to which corporeality was imbedded in the textual history of witchcraft.