Evans, Arthur B. 1948–

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Evans, Arthur B. 1948–

(Arthur Bruce Evans)

PERSONAL:

Born October 24, 1948, in Salem, MA; son of Richard Albert (a heavy equipment operator) and M. Kathleen (a laboratory technician) Evans; married Mary Agnes Bertha, July 4, 1970 (divorced February 14, 1978); married Janice Elaine Mishler, April 26, 1986; children (first marriage): Kelly Kristin. Ethnicity: "White." Education: Sorbonne, University of Paris, diplômé d'études, 1969; Tufts University, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1970; Goddard College, M.A. (humanities), 1973; Middlebury College, M.A. (French), 1979; Columbia University, M.Phil., 1982, Ph.D., 1985. Hobbies and other interests: Stained glass work, carpentry, guitar, writing French folk songs, skiing, fishing, reading science fiction.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Greencastle, IN. Office—Department of Modern Languages, DePauw University, Greencastle, IN 46135; fax: 765-658-4764. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER:

High school French teacher in Montpelier, VT, 1970-78; DePauw University, Greencastle, IN, assistant professor, 1985-90, associate professor, 1991-99, professor of French, 1999—, university professor, 2000-04, faculty fellow, 2004-07, department chair, department of Romance languages, 1994-99. Community College of Vermont, adjunct instructor, 1974-75; conference participant. Managing editor, Science Fiction Studies, 1998—; science fiction film consultant. Editor and publisher, Science Fiction Studies, 1998—.

MEMBER:

Modern Language Association, American Association of Teachers of French, Council of Editors of Learned Journals, Société Jules Verne, Amnesty International.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Eaton Award, J. Lloyd Eaton Conference on Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, 1990, for Jules Verne Rediscovered: Didacticism and the Scientific Novel.

WRITINGS:

Jean Cocteau and His Films of Orphic Identity, Associated University Presses (Cranbury, NJ), 1977.

(Editor and contributor) En Route! Review Grammar, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich (New York, NY), 1985.

Jules Verne Rediscovered: Didacticism and the Scientific Novel, Greenwood Press (New York, NY), 1988.

(Coeditor) On Philip K. Dick, SF-TH (Greencastle, IN), 1992.

(Editor) Albert Robida, The Twentieth Century, translated and introduced by Philippe Willems, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 2004.

Contributor to books, including Modernités de Jules Verne, Presses Universitaires de France, 1988; Handbook of French Popular Culture, Greenwood Press, 1990; Transformations of Utopia: Changing Views of the Perfect Society, AMS Press, 1999; Jules Verne: Narratives of Modernity, Liverpool University Press (Liverpool, England), 2000; and Science Fiction, Canonization, Marginalization, and the Academy, edited by Gary Westfahl and George Slusser, Greenwood Press, 2002. General editor of book series "Early Classics of Science Fiction," Wesleyan University Press, 2000—. Contributor of articles, interviews, translations, and book reviews to journals, including Bulletin de la société Jules Verne, L'Esprit créateur, Romantic Review, Studies in the Literary Imagination, Cahiers du musée Jules Verne, Scientific American, Pour la science, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Utopian Studies, and Foundation: Review of Science Fiction.

EDITOR OF WORKS BY JULES VERNE

(And author of introduction and critical material) Invasion of the Sea, translated by Edward Baxter, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 2001.

The Mysterious Island, translated and introduced by Sidney Kravitz, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 2001.

The Mighty Orinoco, translated by Stanford L. Luce, introduced by Walter James Miller, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 2002.

The Begum's Millions, translated by Stanford L. Luce, introduced by Peter Schulman, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 2005.

The Kip Brothers, translated by Stanford L. Luce, introduced by Jean-Michel Margot, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Arthur B. Evans told CA: "I am a French professor and literary scholar. My interests have evolved over the years, but I have always been attracted to the edges of the canonical—first to surrealism, then to science fiction. When I published my book on Cocteau in the late 1970s, he was considered a minor French writer who was located outside the literary mainstream, in much the same way as surrealism itself was portrayed as a curious but rather marginal movement in early twentieth-century French culture. Today both are solidly part of the accepted canon of world literature and art.

"In the late 1980s I became interested in Jules Verne and how his ‘scientific novels’ sought to convey, using the tools of traditional nineteenth-century narrative, the values of an emerging technoculture. Up until that time, Verne had been viewed mostly as a precursor of a somewhat low-brow genre called science fiction—a writer of mere adventure tales whose literary credentials were suspect.

"Today, some twenty years later, both Verne and science fiction are part of the world literary canon, or at least what remains of it. As technology has multiplied the instruments by which culture is transmitted and consumed, and as postmodernism has blurred the boundaries between those cultural products that are ‘elite’ and those that are ‘popular,’ it is becoming progressively more difficult, not only to discern the edges of the canonical, but also to see the canon itself. To my mind, this is a good thing. In fact, I see it as one of the most important social functions of the literary criticism that I write."