Laurence Marie

Laurence Marie, a lecturer in the Department of French at Columbia, focuses on the history of emotions, theater, and disability studies in the eighteenth century, with a particular interest in the formalization of sign language for the deaf in 1770s France. Her current research examines the experiences and education of people born deaf in France and the United States since the eighteenth century, work that weaves together historical research on the long debate between sign language and oralism with a family history project drawing on her parents' own experiences as deaf individuals educated under France's oralist system.

In Paris, Marie will continue archival research at the Institut National des Jeunes Sourds, the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, while meeting with deaf history scholars including Andrea Benvenuto, Marion Chottin, Colas Duflot, and Didier Séguillon. She also plans to connect with SIEFAR to research deaf women in eighteenth-century France and with practitioners of narrative medicine.