Reinier Leushuis

Reinier Leushuis (MA in French, MA in Italian, Utrecht University 1993; PhD in Romance Languages - French & Italian, Princeton University 2000) specializes in French and Italian Renaissance literature, with a particular focus on early modern dialogue, the literary treatment of love and marriage, Franco-Italian literary connections, gender studies, literature and spirituality, and the works of the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus. He is also the Book Review editor of the journal Erasmus Studies (Brill).

Research Interests

Early modern dialogue

Literature on marriage and friendship in the Renaissance

Franco-Italian literary connections in the sixteenth century

The works of Erasmus

Literature and spirituality

Gender studies

Courses Taught

Gender and Genre in French Renaissance Literature (FRW 4400 / FRW 5586)

Montaigne, Pascal, Descartes: Self, Reason, and the Passions in French Culture and Literature of the Late Renaissance and Early Classicism (FRW 4400 / FRW 5586)

Dialogues of the French and Italian Renaissance (ITW 4400 / ITW5415 - FRW 4400 / FRW 5586)

French Seventeenth-Century Literature: Le Grand Siècle (FRW 4433 / FRW 5587)

Italian Renaissance Literature : Letteratura umanistica e cortese (ITW 4400 / ITW5415)

Literature and Sexuality (FOW 3240 / FRE 4930 / FOL 5934)

History, Fiction, and Memory in Post-war European Cinema (FRE 4930 / FOL 5934)

Intermediate-level grammar, composition, and conversation courses (French, Italian)

Selected Publications

• “Liberating Speech: Confession and Dialogue in Marguerite de Navarre’s Les Prisons,” Sixteenth Century Journal 53.1 (2022): 109-133.
• “Castiglione and Platonic Love”, in Platonic Love from Antiquity to the Renaissance, eds. Carl O’Brien and John Dillon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), pp. 258-274.
• “The Space of the Neoplatonic Love Dialogue: Italian Variations in the French Renaissance”, in Early Modern Visions of Space: France and Beyond, eds. Dorothea Heitsch and Jeremie Korta (Chapel Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 2021), pp. 239-269.
• “Poetics or Homiletics? Hearing and Feeling the New Testament in Erasmus’ Paraphrases,” 2019 Roland Bainton Lecture, Erasmus Studies 40.2 (2020): 101–126 (Special Issue: Erasmus and Emotion, ed. Kirk Essary).
• “Emotion and Imitation: The Jesus Figure in Erasmus’s Gospel Paraphrases”, Reformation 22.2 (2017): 82-101.
• Speaking of Love: the Love Dialogue in Italian and French Renaissance Literature (Leiden: Brill, “Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts”, 18), 2017.