LOUIS MACKENZIE
Chair, Department of Music
Associate Professor, Romance Languages and Literatures
Liaison to the Chair for the Program in French and Francophone Studies
Advisor for the French Honors Program
B.A., University of Notre Dame
M.A., Middlebury College
Ph.D., Cornell University
Office: 105 Crowley Hall
Telephone: (574) 631-6201
Email: lmackenz@nd.edu
Professor MacKenzie, a 1969 graduate of Notre Dame, specializes in classical French literature and culture with particular emphasis on tragedy and the writers commonly called moralists (e.g., Pascal La Bruyere, LaRochefoucauld). He also works on theater and opera. He is the author of a book on Pascal's Provincial Letters entitled Strategies of Fragmentation. He has written articles on DuBellay, Descartes, Saint-Amant, Racine, Mallarme, Gide and others. He is currently working on a book provisionally titled Looking Back at Orpheus: Poets Figuring Poets in French Poetry. Professor MacKenzie is active in a number of professional organizations including the Northeast Modern Language Association, the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association and the North American Society for Seventeenth Century French Literature. His recent papers for NASSCFL on Racine and on Vaux-le Vicomte were recently published.
Among the courses that Professor MacKenzie offers on a rotating basis are: "Reading Versailles," a multidisciplinary look at the palace and court of the Sun King; "Taking Liberties: from Book to Libretto, or French Literature Goes to the Opera"; and "Facets of French, France and the French," a course capped off at an end of term reception with public dramatic recitations of literary texts by student participants in the course. Professor MacKenzie served four years as Department Chair.
In 2000 Professor MacKenzie was the recipient of a Kaneb Teaching Award, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to undergraduate education.
