Charles Talcott

Associate Professor

  • Department: Communication, Media and Culture
  • Graduate Program(s): Global Communications
  • Office: 
    G-402

See Courses >>

Professor Talcott joined The American University of Paris after completing his PhD within the interdisciplinary program Philosophy, Literature & Critical Theory at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He also holds an MA in Continental Philosophy and obtained a DEA degree from Université de Paris IV - La Sorbonne where he specialized in the French fin-de-siècle. His research interests draw extensively from critical and legal theory, cultural studies & rhetoric, psychoanalysis, and political philosophy.

His current teaching and research circulates within the complex geographies of colonial and post-colonial memory, media and narrative. Tracing lines of travel and displacement, his work explores the political and cultural significance of instances of legal and linguistic difference with media structures past and present. Within Global Communications, he teaches in the areas of media law, sustainable development & development communications, memory studies, visual culture, critical theory, rhetoric and post-colonial theory.



Education/Degrees

  • PhD, Binghamton University, State University of New York, USA
  • MA, Binghamton University, State University of New York, USA
  • DEA,Université de Paris IV, Sorbonne, France
  • BA, Seattle University, USA

Conferences & Lectures

  • “Thai me up, Thai me down: ‘The Bad Life’ of Politicized Prostitution; The legal case against Frédéric Mitterrand’s “La Mauvaise Vie,”  Brown University, Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities (ASLCH) annual conference, March 19-20, 2010.
  • "Materializing Belief: Nicolas Sarkozy's Sovereign Wager," Second Annual NYU Media Culture & Communications – The American University of Paris Symposium, Media and Belief: Religion, Authority, Vision, June 19, 2009.
  • “Arresting the Global: The Translation of Law in Postcolonial Fiction,” Harvard University, American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) conference, March 26-28, 2009.
  • “Colonizing History: The Return of Colonial Sovereignty in Contemporary French ‘Memorial’ Laws,” Suffolk University Law School, Boston, Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities (ASLCH) annual conference, April 3rd-4th, 2009.
  • “Legislating the Postcolonial Imagination: French Law and the 'fracture coloniale',” University of Glasgow School of Law, Critical Legal Strategies conference, September 5th-7th, 2008.
  • “Singularly Criminal? The Letter of the Law in the 'Post-Colonial',” Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge, ‘Beyond Reasonable Doubt’: Conversations in Literature, Law and Philosophy conference, September 7th -9th, 2007.
  • “American Theory,” panel speaker and participant in roundtable discussion, “Fresh Théorie” series “Le lundi c'est théorie II,” Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, February 19th, 2007.
  • “Un-translating Law: Culture Translation and the Trope of Law in Postcolonial Fiction,” Georgetown Law School, Association for the Study of Law, Culture and Humanities (ASLCH) annual conference, March 23rd -24th, 2007.
  • Respondent to a paper given by David Saunders entitled “Outlawing Theory: Pierre Schlag and Bruno Latour on Law, not Theory” within the "Local Vital Legal- Regards Croisés” joint seminar series in Concepts and Practices in Contemporary French Philosophy, The American University of Paris, March 20th, 2007.
  • “Jacking the Twist: Lacanian Tragedy and Annie Proulx’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’,” Politics & Jouissance through Literature series sponsored by the Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, held at The American University of Paris, May 2006.
  • “Derrida and the Law: Post-colonialism and the Laws of the Monolingual,” Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities (ASLCH) annual conference, Syracuse University School of Law, USA, March 2006.
  • “Minor Uses of Law: Post-colonial literatures and the deterritorialization of Law,” Association for the Study of Law, Culture and Humanities (ASLCH) annual conference, University of Texas at Austin, USA, March 2005.