Blanca Missé

Blanca Missé is an Associate Professor of French in the Modern Languages and Literatures Department at San Francisco State University. They specialize in the Enlightenment, 18th Century French Literature, Francophone literature and culture, Modern continental philosophy, as well as Marxism, Feminist Theory and Film Studies. In the French Program they teach French language, literature classes as well as courses on contemporary French and francophone culture (including social movements, anti-colonial struggles, doing and undoing gender, popular music or cinema). Their publications on Spinoza, Diderot, La Mettrie and Fourier’s materialism have been published in Romance Studies, Eighteenth Century, Theory and Interpretation or Cahiers Philosophiques. They are currently finishing a book project on the philosophy of acting in French auteur cinema, and are working on a book manuscript on “materialist aesthetics” in the “Radical” Enlightenment and the Marxist tradition. Their more recent publications on Spinoza’s conception of the freedom to philosophize and “On Democratic Governance of Universities” with Prof. Martel (Theory and Event) are contributions to the collective rethinking the intellectual practice of teaching and philosophizing from a Marxist and Spinozist perspective. They are an active member of their union (CFA-SFSU) and of California Scholars for Academic Freedom.