Louisa Mackenzie (they / she)

Associate Professor
frontal portrait with purple background

Contact Information

PDL C-260
Office Hours
By appointment

Biography

PhD., French, University of California Berkeley, 2001
Curriculum Vitae (186.05 KB)

Louisa Mackenzie grew up in Scotland and did their graduate work in Berkeley, California before moving to the UW in 2002. They have research interests in  early modern and contemporary Francophone and Anglophone culture, ecocriticism, Animal Studies, and gender studies, from a comparative perspective. Their first book The Poetry of Place (2011) is an interdisciplinary study of landscape and ideology in 16th-century poetry, articulating cartographic and land use histories with literary criticism. The book won an honorable mention from the Modern Language Association. With Stephanie Posthumus, they co-edited a volume of academic essays on Animal Studies, French Thinking About Animals (2015). Their focus then shifted to transgender and non-binary identity formation, including pedagogical implications in the language classroom, and they have collaborated with Vinay Swamy at Vassar College on several related events and publications, including book-length edited collections in English (H-France Salon, "Legitimizing Iel", 2019,) and in French ("Devenir non-binaire", Le Manuscrit, 2022). They teach a broad variety of classes on many periods and themes, including science fiction, the "idea of Europe", and comparative gender studies. Community activities include volunteering with the GSBA scholarship fund, providing academic scholarships to LGBT-identified students. Louisa has also served as a College Board Commissioner for AP French. They are very involved in shared governance at the UW, and will serve as Vice-Chair for the Faculty Senate in 2023-24, and Chair in 2024-25, looking forward to working with ASUW to represent student and faculty interests to the administration. Particular priorities will include support for inclusive pedagogy, and better recognition of the often-hidden work of service and community-building.

Research

Courses Taught

Spring 2023

Additional Courses

To date I have taught a wide range of undergraduate courses with French as the language of instruction. In CHID, I am planning to keep my focus on French and Francophone archives while teaching in English as the language of instruction, and adding explicitly comparative approaches to course content. The first class I will teach is a large 200-level class on "The Idea of Europe in Film", which will look at how contemporary films from Europe engage with the idea of European identity itself. The course will be offered in Winter 2024. In Spring 2024, I will teach a seminar on "Intergenerational Conversations", focusing on a variety of issues - gender in particular-  with a view to creating shared understanding across generations.

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