beckj

beckj@arizona.edu
Beck, Jonathan
Professor

PhD and MA Harvard, BA Columbia
Areas of research & publication

  • popular culture, politics, and religious history in medieval and Renaissance France
           publishers: Classiques Garnier, Champion-Slatkine, Brill;
  • literary theory & history: articles in Critical Inquiry (Chicago), Representations (Berkeley),
           Diacritics (Cornell), New Literary History (Virginia), Littérature (Paris: Larousse)
  • medieval and Renaissance French literature; historical linguistics & philology.
           Articles in Romance Philology (Berkeley), Speculum (Medieval Academy of America),
           Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie (Tübingen-Heidelberg); French Review (AATF).

Publications list here. 

Major research focus: Theater and propaganda in early modern France.  
In a few words, what’s that about?  
It’s about mass media 500-600 years ago – before books and newspapers – and how mass media shape how we think and what we believe. It’s about public opinion, guerilla theater, religion and politics in late-medieval, early-modern France.  Culture wars, information, satire, morality. Wars waged in the name of religion have seen incredible changes over the past 600 years in the technologies of warfare and communication - the ways of war. But the why has not changed much. The motivating behavior, the reasons and reasoning behind these wars have not changed. That is what these books are about: politics & religion; culture wars; fear belief hope persuasion conflict coercion; confident ignorance & ineffectual wisdom.  
Click here for details and photos of manuscript sources.  
Or click on individual books below (in order of publication)