Foreign Languages and Literatures at University of New Mexico

FLL Faculty

Walter Putnam - Professor of French

Walter Putnam - Professor

Contact Information

Ortega Hall 323B/229A University of New Mexico Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001 Fax: (505) 277-3599 Email:

Educational History

1985, Ph.D., in Comparative Literature, Université de Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle.

Dissertation:
L’Amité Littéraire de Joseph Conrad et d’André Gide.

1980, M.A., in French, Université de Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle.

Thesis:
Le Statut des personnages dans Les Faux-monnayeurs d’André Gide.

1978, B.A., in French, Université de Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle.

1974, B.A., in English, Duke University.

Research Interests

My doctoral training in comparative literature led to two book-length publications: one on Franco-British literary cosmopolitanism (Gide and Conrad), the other on modernist French poetry (Paul Valéry). The early work on Gide and Conrad dealt with questions of literary exchange, translation and Africa; it was this latter area that became my more central concern throughout the 1990s when I devoted considerable attention to European representations of Africa and to the residual image of Africa that has permeated much western cultural production: literature, cinema, popular culture, travel narratives, museum collections, etc. A parallel interest in animals as literary and cultural figures evolved into my current scholarly project titled The Colonial Animal. Whether as prominent actors or as background décor, animals have played an important role in the colonial project.

Going back to Pliny’s declaration that Africa was a land of wild beasts, animals have been enlisted in the construction of western discourses of savagery, racial difference and cultural alterity. Western knowledge of exotic colonial spaces directly relied on the capture, displacement and display of rare and unusual species, whether in menageries and zoos or through the adventures of King Kong, Babar and Tintin. The western treatment of animals reenacts the fundamental relationship between colonizer and colonized, between master and slave, between superior and subaltern. Indeed, the important debates on conservation and management of wilderness and natural resources in formerly-colonized Africa and Asia revolve around the question of the animal.

Selected Publications

Books
Articles & Book Chapters

Teaching Interests

Representative Courses