Theresa Varney Kennedy

Research/Teaching Interests

• Early Modern French women writers and playwrights
• Seventeenth-century French theater
• Representation of female characters in theater
• Early Modern pedagogical theater
• Children’s literature in French

Education

Ph.D., French, University of Maryland, College Park, 2007

M.A., French, University of Maryland, College Park, 2001

Certificate of Qualification in French, State University College at Buffalo, 1997-1998

B.A., French, State University at Buffalo, New York, 1997

B.A., Music Performance, State University at Buffalo, New York, 1996

Courses Taught at Baylor

• Intermediate French (FRE 2310)
• Passport to the French-Speaking World (FRE 2320)
• Conversational French (FRE 3302)
• Introduction to French Literature (FRE 3310)
• Children’s Literature in French (FRE 3312)
• Panorama of French Theater (FRE 3315)
• A Moveable Feast: An Exploration of Paris and Its Culture (FRE 3348)
• French Writers and Ideas I: From Roland to Revolution (FRE 4331)
• French Writers and Ideas II: From Romanticism to Post-Modernism (FRE 4332)
• Special Topics: Madame de Maintenon’s Proverbs in Translation (FRE 4V90)

Selected Publications

Book

Women’s Deliberation: The Heroine in Early Modern French Women’s Theater (1650–1750). London/New York: Routledge, 2018.

Critical Editions

• Madame de Maintenon. Dramatic Proverbs. Annotated and introduced by Theresa Varney Kennedy. Translation by Paige Tierney. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, Volume 111. Toronto: Iter Press, 2025.
• Madame de Maintenon. Proverbes dramatiques. Perry Gethner and Theresa Varney Kennedy, eds. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014.
• Françoise Pascal’s ‘Agathonphile martyr, tragi-comédie’: An annotated critical edition. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, "Biblio 17", 2008.

Book Chapters

• “Héroïnes hors normes & espaces ‘excentrés’ aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles.” Femmes de spectacle (danse, opéra, théâtre). Création, représentation et sociabilité au féminin, 1650-1914. Romain Bionda and Valentina Ponzetto, eds. (Leiden: Brill; 2024): 95–109.
• Kennedy, Theresa Varney. “Aspirer à la vie parfaite: la pensée chrétienne dans le théâtre pédagogique de Madame de Maintenon.” Femmes, Théâtre, Religions: Actes de la journée d’étude virtuelle du 28 juillet 2023 en l’honneur de Perry Gethner. Ed. by Éric Turcat. (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2023): 83-102.
• “La Folie sur scène: L’angoisse de l’auctorialité chez les femmes dramaturges.” In Femme et folie sous l’Ancien Régime. Marianne Closson, Nathalie Grande, Claudine Nedelec, and Ghislain Tranie, eds. (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2022): 183-195.
• Co-authored with David Jortner. “Corneille versus the French Academy: Teaching Le Cid through Courtroom Drama.” In Teaching French Neoclassical Tragedy. Hélène Bilis and Ellen McClure, eds. (New York: Modern Language Association) (2021): 327-339.
• “Women’s Honesty in Molière’s Theater.” In L’Honnêteté au Grand Siècle: Belles Manières et Belles Lettres. Ed. Marcella Leopizzi. (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, "Biblio 17", 2020): 365-377.
• “Revisiting the ‘Woman Question’ in Molière’s Theater.” In Molière Re-envisioned. Twenty-first Century Retakes / Renouveau et renouvellement moliéresques. Reprises contemporaines. Ed. Giovanni Dotoli (Paris: Éditions Hermann, 2019): 417-441.

Articles

• “Françoise Pascal, ‘fille lyonnaise’, et son Agathonphile martyr, tragi-comédie (1655).” Théâtre de femmes du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle: archive, édition, dramaturgie. Actes du colloque de Lyon (15-17 novembre 2023). Isabelle Garnier, Edwige Keller-Rahbé, Emily Lombardero, Isabelle Moreau, and Michèle Rosellini, eds. Pratiques & Formes littéraires 16-18 22 (2026).
• “The Precarious Lives of Women in Madame de Maintenon’s Dramatic Proverbs.” Women in French Studies. Special issue edited by Cheryl Toman and Gina Stamm. 11 (2025): 219–229.
• “The Exigencies of Disillusionment in Madame de Maintenon’s Pedagogical Theater.” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 18.2. (2024): 266-287.
• “The Tyrannical Mother in Madame de Staal-Delaunay's Eighteenth-Century Comedy.” Women in French Studies 27 (2019): 89-99.
• “Early Modern Women’s Mobility in French Women’s Theater.” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 14.1 (2019): 119-130.