Areas of Research/Interest: 20th-century literature; narration and the media; literature and politics; the avant gardes; theory of literary history

Select Publications:

Editor, Michel Leiris: La règle du jeu (Editions de la Pléiade, 2003).

Literary Debate: Texts and Contexts, Ed. with J. Mehlman (The New Press, 1999).

Absent Without Leave: French Literature Under the Threat of War (Harvard University Press, 1998).

Epreuves d´artiste (Galilée 1996).

Les Dépossédés: Bataille, Caillois, Leiris, Malraux, Sartre (Minuit, 1993).

Rouan, la figure du fond (Galilée, 1992).

General Editor, A New History of French Literature (Harvard, 1994).

De la littérature française (Bordas, 1993).

Politique de la prose: Jean-Paul Sartre et l´an quarante (Gallimard, 1982; English translation, Minnesota, 1986).

Le Collège de sociologie (1937-1939) (Gallimard, 1979, 1995).

La Prise de la Concorde: Essais sur Georges Bataille (Gallimard, 1989).

Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille (MIT, 1989).

General Editor, Panorama des sciences humaines (Gallimard, 1973).

Rabelais, ou c´était pour rire, with Michel Butor (Larousse, 1972).