Thomas Constantinesco

Thomas Constantinesco is a Professor of American Literature at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Sorbonne University, France. He has held visiting positions at Yale University, Oxford University, and Université Paris Cité. His research focuses on 19th-century American literature, with a particular emphasis on the representation of pain, literary theory, and cultural history. He was awarded the 2023 Book Award from the Institut des Amériques for his monograph Writing Pain in the Nineteenth-Century United States, which explores how pain is theorized and articulated through the works of Emerson, Dickinson, James, and others. His work bridges close reading with historical and philosophical inquiry, emphasizing pain’s role in shaping identity and sociality.

Constantinesco has held prestigious fellowships, including a Junior Fellowship at the Institut Universitaire de France (2014–2019) and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at Oxford (2019–2021). He contributes to the research unit Voix anglophones, littérature et esthétique and has authored/co-edited works such as Ralph Waldo Emerson: L'Amérique à l'essai (2012) and Romanticism and Philosophy: Thinking with Literature (2015). His essays appear in journals like The New England Quarterly and Textual Practice.