Carolyn Shread is committed to interrogating the canon to make space for marginalized voices and to 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.
Shread’s research approaches the language and literature of the French speaking world primarily through the lens of translation studies. She has published eleven books in translation, including six by contemporary French philosopher Catherine Malabou, of which the most recent, Pleasure Erased: The Clitoris Unthought was a recipient of the French Voices 2022 award. She has published articles on Bracha Ettinger’s psychoanalytic concept of metramorphosis as a means of rethinking translational paradigms with a feminist lens, her translation of Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s Les Rapaces, and especially, in recent years, on the intersection of Malabou’s signature concept plasticity and 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 of the Faculty Seminar on Literary Translation and co-chair for the French Studies Faculty Seminar.
Areas of Expertise
Language teaching, twentieth and twenty-first century French and Francophone literature and culture, translation studies, women and gender studies
Education
- Ph.D., M.A., University of Massachusetts Amherst
- M.A., Sussex University
- B.A., St. Anne's College, Oxford
