Carolyn Shread reworks the canon to make space for marginalized voices, decolonizing the curriculum through the inclusion of texts from throughout the Francophone world. Her language classes integrate digital practices, combining a focus on grammatical rigor with creative self-expression in French. Her goal is to support students in exercising the plastic capacity of their brains to live, think and dream in French.
Shread’s research approaches the language and literature of the French-speaking world primarily through the lens of translation studies. She has published fifteen translations of both scholarly and literary texts, of which eight books are by contemporary French philosopher Catherine Malabou, including Pleasure Erased: The Clitoris Unthought, recipient of a 2022 French Voices Award. Shread has published articles on BrachaEttinger’s psychoanalytic concept of metramorphosis as a means of rethinking translational paradigms with a feminist lens; the process of translating Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s Les Rapaces; the intersection of Malabou’s signature concept plasticity andtranslation; and most recently, eco-translation.
In addition to teaching at Smith College as a faculty exchange since 2013, Shread participates actively in the Five College community as co-chair for three Faculty Seminars in French Studies, Literary Translation, and Translate Together! She has collaborated with the Haitian publishing house LEGS Édition since its founding in 2012, as well as the associated biannual literary journal, Legs et Littérature, and is a member of the Eco-Translation Network.
Areas of Expertise
Language teaching, twentieth and twenty-first century French and Francophone literature and culture, Haitian studies, translation studies, women and gender studies.
Education
- Ph.D., M.A., University of Massachusetts Amherst
- M.A., Sussex University
- B.A., Oxford University
