Michael Meere is a Queer scholar of French-language literatures and cultures with a focus on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theatre and performance. At Wesleyan, Michael teaches all levels of French language courses as well as seminars in French and English, such as "Love, Sex, and Marriage in Renaissance Europe," "Forbidden Love from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution," "Imagining the 'New World,'" "French Way(s)," and "Spectacles of Violence." 

Books

Onstage Violence in Sixteenth-Century French Tragedy: Performance, Ethics, Poetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. (Author) [French translation (by Églantine Morvant) under contract with Classiques Garnier]

Coups de Maître. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Literature and Culture, in Honour of John D. Lyons. Medieval and Early Modern French Studies. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2021. (Co-editor with Kelly Fender McConnell)

French Renaissance and Baroque Drama: Text, Performance, Theory. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2015. (Editor)

Journal Issues

"Replaying the Francophone Early Modern in the Twenty-First Century." L'Esprit Créateur 62.2 (Summer 2022): 1-167. (Guest Co-editor with Annelle Curulla)

“Staging Justice in Early Modern France.” Early Modern French Studies 42.2 (2020): 105-217. (Guest Co-editor with Valérie M. Dionne)

Journal Articles and Book Chapters (Selection)

“(Ré)imaginer le viol dans Les Napolitaines (1584) de François d’Amboise.” Special issue on “La Comédie humaniste.” Ed. Emmanuel Buron and Julien Goeury. Cahiers V.-L. Saulnier, 42 (forthcoming, 2025): 273-86.

“Théâtre de la première modernité en France: une centralité du désordre?” 179-190. Co-authored with Michaël Desprez. Éloge du désordre. Penser le théâtre avec Christian Biet. Ed. Tiphaine Karsenti, Olivier Neveux, and Christophe Triau. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2024.

“‘Seulement amis?’ Lecture queer de l’amitié entre hommes de Regulus (1582) de Jean de Beaubreuil,” trans. Églantine Morvant, L’Universo Mondo 49 (2022): 1-19.

“Poliarque-Théocrine, or Pierre Du Ryer’s Crossed-Dressed King.” 347-62. Coups de Maître. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, in Honour of John D. Lyons. Ed. Kelly Fender McConnell and Michael Meere. Medieval and Early Modern French Studies 18. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2021.

“Just Friends? Queering Male-Male Amity in Jean de Beaubreuil's Regulus.” Exemplaria: Medieval, Early Modern, Theory 32.4 (2020): 305-24.

“Filling in the Gaps: Identity, Exile, and Performance in 1962 and Babel Taxi by Mohamed Kacimi.” Co-authored with Sophie Dora Tulchin (’20). Special Issue on “North African Literatures Beyond the Francophone Maghreb.” Ed. Ziad Bentahar and Erin K. Twohig. Journal of the African Literature Association, 14.3 (2020): 435-53.

“On Specters and Skulls: Rosamund and Alboin in Seventeenth-Century French Tragedy.” 129-48. The Dark Thread: From Tragical Histories to Gothic Novels. Ed. John D. Lyons. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2019.

“Les enjeux du prologue: le cas de Bourges, 1607.” 41-53. Le dramaturge sur un plateau. Le personnage de l’auteur dramatique au théâtre (XVIe-XXIe siècles). Ed. Clotilde Thouret. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2018.

“Les Amours de Pistion et Fortunie et Acoubar: de l’amour triomphant aux périls de la colonisation.” 149-59. Dramaturgies vagabondes, migrations romanesques: écritures en dialogue (XVIe-XVIIe siècles). Ed. Magda Campanini. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2018.

“Sur l’absence curieuse d’Henri III dans La Tragédie de feu Gaspard de Colligny de François de Chantelouve (1575).” 155-66. Rappresentare la storia: letteratura e attualità nella Francia e nell’Europa del XVI secolo. Ed. Mariangela Miotti. Perugia: Aguaplano, 2017.

“Farce, Community, and the Performativity of Violence in Rabelais’s Quart Livre: The Chiquanous Episode.” 39-62. Co-authored with Caroline Gates. French Renaissance and Baroque Drama: Text, Performance, Theory. Ed. Michael Meere. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2015.

“Theatres of Torture: Martyrs, Pagans and the Politics of Conversion in Early Seventeenth-Century France.” Early Modern French Studies 37.1 (2015): 14-28.

“Violence, Revenge, and the Stakes of Writing during the French Civil Wars: Simon Belyard’s Le Guysien.” Romanic Review 104.1-2 (2013): 45-64.

“La violence sur la scène classique: une question de (dé)goût?” 123-40. L’invention du mauvais goût à l’âge classique. Ed. Jean-Christophe Abromovici and Carine Barbafieri. Leuven: Peeters, 2013. 

“Social Drama, Cultural Pragmatics, and Louis XIII’s Performativity: La Victoire du Phébus (1617).” The French Review 84.2 (2012): 672-83.

“Staging Sanctity: Moral Confusion in Pierre Troterel’s La Tragédie de Sainte Agnès (1615).” Special Issue on "Sanctity." Ed. Cary Howie. L’Esprit Créateur 50.1 (2010): 49-61.