Jenai Engelhard Humphreys

Jenai Engelhard Humphreys specializes in 19th to 21st century French literature, thought, and culture. She is also a creative nonfiction writer and essayist with a master’s in journalism. In addition to teaching various French courses at BU, she spent a year teaching English composition and translation at France’s Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon. Jenai also teaches a course called “Travel Writing: the Literary Pilgrimage” in BU’s CAS Writing Program, and she is currently working on a lyrical essay that explores the concepts of neurodivergence/autism in relation to art and literature.

Teaching Interests

Second language acquisition; the personal essay; travel writing; creative nonfiction; therapeutic writing for mental health; reading pedagogy; the poetics of translation

Research Interests

19^th century French literature, thought, and culture; the Decadent movement in art/literature; postcolonialism; visual culture

Selected Publications

July 2022, “Sous-mission and the Mission Civilisatrice: Houellebecq’s Parody of Empire and Decadence,” French Decadence in Global Context: Colonialism and Exoticism, in the series Francophone Postcolonial Studies, Liverpool University Press.

2017, November/December issue of Eighteenth-Century French World, “Un Regard camp sur Manon Lescaut: L’esthétisation du moral”.