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William Falls Lecture: "Your Papers Please": Where Maghrebi Meets Transgender

Promotional graphic for the Department of French & Italian’s 2026 William Falls Memorial Lecture featuring Todd Reeser of the University of Pittsburgh. The lecture, “Your Papers Please”: Where Maghrebi Meets Transgender, takes place November 5, 2026, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in the STM Multipurpose Room, followed by a reception from 6 to 6:30 p.m. The graphic includes a portrait of Reeser in front of bookshelves and a pale gold and gray filmstrip background.

William Falls Lecture: "Your Papers Please": Where Maghrebi Meets Transgender

French | School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Thursday, November 5, 2026 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm St. Mary’s Hall Multipurpose Room

Todd Reeser works at the intersection of French studies and gender/sexuality studies. His research combines cutting-edge theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches with contextualized close-readings of a variety of types of texts. In 2010, he published Masculinities in Theory (Blackwell), a widely-cited monograph in a second edition providing a series of theoretical models for considering masculinity studies from a literary/cultural perspective. Reeser’s 2016 monograph, Setting Plato Straight: Translating Ancient Sexuality in the Renaissance (University of Chicago Press), won the Gordan Prize for best book in Renaissance studies from the Renaissance Society of America in 2017.  Reeser also publishes on twenty-first century French queer/trans* film; his book Queer Cinema in Contemporary France: Five Directors was released with Manchester UP in 2022 ("French Film Directors" series). His most recent monograph, Transgender France: Universalism and Sexual Subjectivity (forthcoming with Minnesota) studies how the inception and development of the category of transgender/transsexual in France starting in the 1950s relates to political ideas on the “universalist” citizen. 

Reception to follow: 6-6:30 pm.

Add to Calendar 11/05/26 17:00:00 11/05/26 18:00:00 America/New_York William Falls Lecture: "Your Papers Please": Where Maghrebi Meets Transgender

Todd Reeser works at the intersection of French studies and gender/sexuality studies. His research combines cutting-edge theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches with contextualized close-readings of a variety of types of texts. In 2010, he published Masculinities in Theory (Blackwell), a widely-cited monograph in a second edition providing a series of theoretical models for considering masculinity studies from a literary/cultural perspective. Reeser’s 2016 monograph, Setting Plato Straight: Translating Ancient Sexuality in the Renaissance (University of Chicago Press), won the Gordan Prize for best book in Renaissance studies from the Renaissance Society of America in 2017.  Reeser also publishes on twenty-first century French queer/trans* film; his book Queer Cinema in Contemporary France: Five Directors was released with Manchester UP in 2022 ("French Film Directors" series). His most recent monograph, Transgender France: Universalism and Sexual Subjectivity (forthcoming with Minnesota) studies how the inception and development of the category of transgender/transsexual in France starting in the 1950s relates to political ideas on the “universalist” citizen. 

Reception to follow: 6-6:30 pm.

 St. Mary’s Hall Multipurpose Room false

Cost

FREE