Alice Kaplan

Alice Kaplan is the Sterling Professor of French at Yale University, specializing in 20th-century French literature and history. Her work intersects archival research with textual analysis, focusing on WWII, Algerian War, and writers like Céline, Proust, and Camus. She teaches courses on translation controversies, French cinema, and modernist literature.

Educated at UC Berkeley (B.A., 1975) and Yale (Ph.D., 1981), she has held prestigious roles including Guggenheim Fellow and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received France's Légion d'Honneur and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Kaplan co-founded the Yale Translation Initiative and collaborates with Comparative Literature, Women's Studies, and Humanities programs. Her research extends to institutional roles like board membership with Critique journal and the French Voices Book Prize jury. Recent publications include Maison Atlas (2022) and Looking for The Stranger (2016), examining Camus's legacy and colonial narratives.

Her advising focuses on interdisciplinary topics like queer theory, interwar family literature, and mid-century murder trials. She actively participates in transatlantic cultural initiatives, bridging academic and public spheres through writing in the New York Review of Books and Nouvelle Revue Française.