Scott M. Sanders
Associate Professor
Appointments
Associate Professor of French
Affiliated Faculty in Music
Area of Expertise
Eighteenth-Century Culture, Voice Studies, Music and Literature, Theater and Performance Studies
Biography
My research investigates British and Caribbean influences on French performance culture. My first book, Voices from Beyond: Physiology, Sentience and the Uncanny in Eighteenth-Century French Literature, won the 2021 Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for outstanding scholarship in eighteenth-century studies. My second book project, entitled An Uneasy Marriage: Reflections of the Black Atlantic on French Stages, examines the influence of the Black Atlantic on eighteenth-century French theater, especially in theatrical works produced across the naval admiralties in Metropolitan France, including the slave trading ports Bordeaux and Nantes.
Education
B.M. Indiana University
M.A. New York University
Ph.D. New York University
Publications
Books
Voices from Beyond: Physiology, Sentience and the Uncanny in Eighteenth-Century French Literature, University of Virginia Press, (April 2022). Walker Cowen Memorial Prize.
Review by Logan J. Connors, The French Review, vol. 96 no. 4, 2023, p. 200-200.
Review by Nathalie Vuillemin, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 35, no. 4, 2023, pp. 559-562
Review by Ellen Welch, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 57, no. 3, 2024, pp. 404-406
Deirdre Loughridge and Scott Sanders, special issue editors; Fayçal Falaky and Zeina Hakim, volume editors. Voice and Sound in Diderot/Diderot entre son et voix, Diderot Studies, vol. 41, Geneva: Droz, 2025.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
"Figures of Sound: Metaphors of Acoustics in Early Modern France," in Literature as Sound Studies. Edited by yasser elhariry and Liesl Yamaguchi, 159-176. Bloomsbury, 2025.
"Singing through the Pain: Murat riffing on Montaigne," Eighteenth-Century Fiction. 35, no. 4 (2023), 445-462
"Between Novels and Songs: Eliza Haywood's French Romance," Studies in the Novel, 54, no. 3 (Summer 2022), 139-158.
"Beastly Variations: Allegories on Race, Migration and Marriage," The Opera Quarterly, 34, no. 3-4 (Fall 2020), 1-31.
Co-Authored, "Distant Approaches to the Printed Page," Digital Studies/Le champ numérique, 12, no. 1 (2022), 1-28.
"Code Noir in Marivaux's Theater," Eighteenth-Century Fiction. 32, no. 2 (2020): 272-296.
"On Chanting, Wailing, and Spell-Casting: Haunting Voices in Jacques Cazotte's Le Diable Amoureux," Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation. 57, no. 4 (2016): 469-90.
"Flying the Colonial Skies during the French Enlightenment," in Rediscovering French Science-Fiction: In Literature, Film and Comics, From Cyrano to Barbarella. Edited by Philippe Mather and Sylvain Rhéault, 41-64. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016.
Co-Authored, "Multimedia in the Long Eighteenth Century," Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Digital Libraries for Musicology, 2 (June 2015) 29-32.
"Sound and Sensibility in Diderot's Le Neveu de Rameau," Music & Letters. 94 (May 2013): 237-62.
Reviews
"Reading Drama in Eighteenth-Century France. By Thomas Wynn," Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies, 47:4 (December 2024) 470-472.
"Théâtre en guerre: acteurs, auteurs, publics en temps de conflits armés. Sous la direction de Sandra Cureau, Anne Debrosse, Yann Lagadec, Valeria Pansini et Giovanna Sparacello," French Studies, 78, no. 3 (April 2024).
"Ellen R. Welch, A Theater of Diplomacy: International Relations and the Performing Arts in Early Modern France. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press," H-France Forum 12, no. 3 (May 2017): 1–6.
Review of Denis Diderot, Ed. Marian Hobson, Tr. Kate Tunstall and Caroline Warman, Denis Diderot's Rameau's Nephew: A Multi-Media Edition, Eighteenth Century Music. 13:1 (March 2016): 130-32.
Encyclopedia Entries
"Perturbations dans les théâtres nantais au 18e siècle," Nantes Patrimonia, July 2023.
"Denis Diderot, Lettres sur les sourds et muets," Lexikon Schriften über Musik: Vol. 2. Musikästhetik in Europa und Nordamerika. Eds. Wörner, F. & Wald-Fuhrmann, M. (Kassel/Stuttgart: Bärenreiter/Metzler, 2023) 225-28.
"Denis Diderot, Diderots Beitrag zur Querelle des Bouffons," Lexikon Schriften über Musik: Vol. 2. Musikästhetik in Europa und Nordamerika. Eds. Wörner, F. & Wald-Fuhrmann, M. (Kassel/Stuttgart: Bärenreiter/Metzler, December 2023) 222-23.
"Friedrich Melchior Grimm, Le petit prophète de Boehmischbroada," Lexikon Schriften über Musik: Vol. 2. Musikästhetik in Europa und Nordamerika. Eds. Wörner, F. & Wald-Fuhrmann, M. (Kassel/Stuttgart: Bärenreiter/Metzler, 2023) 298-300.
Speaking Engagements
"An Uneasy Republican Marriage: Bordeaux's Afro-French Community with the Jacobins," Abolition and the Arts, Columbia University, May 6, 2023
Works in Progress
An Uneasy Marriage: Reflections of the Black Atlantic on French Stages. (Book in progress)
Contact