Hélène Visentin

Hélène Visentin teaches courses on language and culture, the cultural history of Paris across time and space, French intellectuals as activists, and networks and knowledge production in early modern France. Her teaching emphasizes historical, critical, and intercultural thinking and the relevance of the past for understanding the present.

Visentin’s research examines early modern literature and culture, with a focus on the history and aesthetics of the performing arts and the relationships between art and power. Her articles and reviews have appeared in journals including Littératures Classiques, L’Esprit Créateur, Renaissance Quarterly, H-France Forum, and XVII^e Siècle. Recent publications include a critical edition of Pierre Corneille’s tragedy Andromède in Théâtre complet (Classiques Garnier, 2025) and a digital pedagogical edition of Lafayette’s seminal novel La Princesse de Clèves (Lever Press, 2022) developed with three colleagues from liberal arts colleges; this edition received the 2024 Scholarly Edition in Translation Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender and was a 2023 PROSE Award finalist for Best eProduct (Association of American Publishers). Visentin is currently working on a collaborative, digitally informed handbook on early modern France for the twenty-first century that brings together diverse scholarly perspectives.

Visentin has served as director of Smith Programs Abroad in Paris (2006–07, spring 2012) and Geneva (2007–08). She has also taught at the Institut d’Avignon (France), an intensive summer program in Provence under the auspices of Bryn Mawr College, and remains a member of the advisory board.

From 2020 to 2025, she served as Associate Dean of the Faculty/Dean for Academic Development, overseeing strategic curricular initiatives and operations, faculty development with an emphasis on equity and inclusion, academic administrative leadership, and the Graduate & Special Programs.

Selected Publications

Andromède, tragédie (1650) de Pierre Corneille. Texte établi, annoté et présenté par Hélène Visentin. In Pierre Corneille, Théâtre complet, Tome IV. Dir. Liliane Picciola. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2024. 587-810.

“Machine Plays in France: Between Italian Opera and French Tragedy in Music.” In Opera and Tragedy, and Neighboring Forms: From Corneille to Calzabigi. Ed. Blair Hoxby. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2024. 31-58.

Hélène E. Bilis, Jean-Vincent Blanchard, David Harrison, and Hélène Visentin. La Princesse De Clèves by Lafayette: A New Translation and Bilingual Pedagogical Edition for the Digital Age. Ann Arbor, MI: Lever Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12629286. EPUB.

“Légitimation du théâtre à machines et transfert du savoir technique (1630-1650).” Littératures classiques 105 (2021): 29-40.

“Turning to Seventeenth-Century Machine Theater to Teach Tragedy.” In Teaching French Neoclassical Tragedy. Eds H. Bilis and E. McClure. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2021. 172-186.

“Machine Plays.” The Oxford Handbook of the Baroque. Ed. John D. Lyons. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. 386-408. Oxford Handbooks Online. Literature, literary studies. 2019. Oxford University Press. 26 p.

“Transferts culturels et innovation artistique à Rouen: le motif du char triomphal dans l’entrée de Henri II en 1550.” In La Renaissance à Rouen. L’essor artistique et culturel dans la Normandie des décennies 1480-1530. Eds X. Bonnier, G. Milhe Poutingon et S. Provini. Rouen: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2019. 223-239.

“La pratique des tableaux vivants dans les entrées royales à la Renaissance.” In Le Tableau vivant ou l’image performée. Ed. J. Ramos, with the collaboration of Léonard Pouy. Paris: Mare&Martin, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, 2014. 53–68.

“‘Ce grand bastiment neuf et vieux’: The Louvre Towards Political, Social and Urban Transformations in the Grand Siècle.” L’Esprit Créateur 54, No. 2 (Summer 2014): 45–62.

“The Material Form and the Function of Printed Accounts of Henri II’s Triumphal Entries (1547-51).” In Writing Royal Entries in Early Modern Europe. Eds M.-C. Canova-Green, J. Andrews, with M.-F. Wagner. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2013. 1-30.

“Au cœur d’une mutation socio-politique et esthétique de l’art dramatique en France: le théâtre à machines à la Cour et à la Ville (1630-1650).” In Rome-Paris, 1640. Transferts culturels et renaissance d’un centre artistique. Dir. Marc Bayard. Rome: Collection d’histoire de l’art de l’Académie de France à Rome, Villa Médicis, 2010. 509-520.

French Ceremonial Entries in the Sixteenth Century: Event, Image, Text. Eds. Nicolas Russell and Hélène Visentin. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2008.

L'Invraisemblance du pouvoir. Mises en scène de la souveraineté au XVIIe siècle. Eds. Jean-Vincent Blanchard and Hélène Visentin. Paris: Schena Editore/Presses de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2005.

Les Sosies, comédie (1638) de Jean Rotrou. Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 2005.