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Ty Blakeney (he/him) is an Assistant Professor of French. He received a PhD in French and Francophone Literature and Culture from UC Berkeley in 2023. He received a BA in French Literature from Reed College in 2012.

His research centers on the literature, culture, and film of France in the 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st centuries. He has a particular interest in sexuality studies and critical theory.

His first book project, Amis de la gaieté, focuses on same-sex sex in prisons in France during the July Monarchy (1830–48) and after. On a historical level, the book offers a careful reconstruction of discourses about prisoner sexuality during the period in which the liberal reformers of the July Monarchy invented and modernized French prisons. Drawing on a diverse archive of texts, from literary authors like Victor Hugo and Balzac, to popular theater and comedic writing, to the works of prison officials and reformers, the book demonstrates that the figures of the prisoner couple and the criminal who engaged in same-sex sex were common tropes during this period, not repressed but discussed openly, albeit in a different language than one we would use today. Blakeney works transhistorically to demonstrate the impact of the invention of homosexuality on these discourses of prisoner sex, showing their surprising persistence well into the late 20^th century.

On a theoretical level, the book argues for a reconfiguration of how we view sexuality and its relationship to the state. Blakeney argues against what he calls the outlaw thesis, the idea that the state is inherently against same-sex sexuality. Through historical work and drawing on the theories of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, Blakeney demonstrates how state power and sexuality interact at the level of the individual, and shows that the state plays less of a role in determining sexual behavior and identity than is often thought in accounts of the “heteronormative state.” The book ultimately questions the utility of the term “queer,” which presupposes a certain relationship between sexuality and state power.

Blakeney has also published articles and chapters on nationalism and Proust and on the right-wing ideologue and avant-garde gay author Renaud Camus, whom Blakeney argues reveals a blind spot in the thinking of queer theory. He is currently working on articles on Robert Bresson and Foucault.

As a graduate student instructor at UC Berkeley, he taught a range of courses from French language to upper-division French culture, including “The History of Heterosexuality,” “The Rhetoric of Scientific Language (Critical Theory for Science Students),” “No Homo: Same-Sex Sexuality without Homosexual Identity,” and “Prisons in French Culture Since 1945: Metaphor, Revolution, and Sensationalism.” At Northwestern, Blakeney will teach theoretically oriented courses in French culture and sexuality studies which seek to train students to read literary texts within their broader cultural and historical contexts.

Selected Publications

“Challenging the Outlaw Thesis: New Configurations of Sexuality, Politics, and Aesthetics,” in Reaction Formations: The Subject of Ethnonationalism, ed. Joshua Branciforte and Ramsey McGlazer (Fordham UP, 2023)

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781531503161-004/html

“‘The moment is poorly chosen’: Proust, Same-Sex Sexuality and Nationalism,” Paragraph 45, no. 1 (March 2022). Special issue, Approaching Proust in 2022, ed. Michael Lucey.

https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/para.2022.0384