Professor Emeritus of French
Research and Teaching
Professor Mehlman is a literary critic and historian of ideas and the author of a memoir, Adventures in the French Trade: Fragments Toward a Life (Stanford University Press, 2010). His other books include A Structural Study of Autobiography: Proust, Leiris, Sartre, Lévi-Strauss (Cornell University Press, 1974), Revolution and Repetition: Marx, Hugo, Balzac (University of California Press, 1977), Cataract: A Study in Diderot (Wesleyan University Press, 1979), Legacies of Anti-Semitism in France (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), Walter Benjamin for Children: An Essay on His Radio Years (University of Chicago Press, 1993); Genealogies of the Text: Literature, Psychoanalysis and Politics in Modern France (Cambridge University Press, 1995); Emigré New York (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); and (with Denis Hollier) Literary Debate: Texts and Contexts (New Press, 1999).
He has translated works by Laplanche, Derrida, Lacan, Blanchot, Vidal-Naquet, and Roudinesco.
In 1994, Jeffrey Mehlman was named an Officer in the Order of Palmes Académiques, a high honor bestowed by the Prime Minister of France and the French Ministry of Education.