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Frédérique Leichter-Flack

frederique.leichterflack@sciencespo.fr
Full professor
Ethics, Literature And History, Law And Literature, History Of Moral Sensibilities, Political Humanities, Medical Humanities, Testimony Literature, Comparative Literature

Frédérique Leichter-Flack is Full Professor of Literature and Political Humanities at the Centre for History at Sciences Po.

She currently serves as Deputy Director of the Centre for History at Sciences Po, and as President of the admission jury of Sciences Po’s Equal Opportunity Programme. She is also a former member of the CNRS Ethics Committee.

Frederique Leichter-Flack received her academic training in Paris, where she was a fellow of the Ecole Normale Superieure. She graduated in philosophy, in history and in literature from the Sorbonne, and took her PhD in comparative literature from the Sorbonne nouvelle. She also holds an ‘Agrégation de lettres modernes’ and an ‘Habilitation à diriger des recherches’. At Sciences Po, she teaches at all levels of the curriculum, from the first year to the doctorate.

Frederique Leichter-Flack's research interests lie at the crossroads between literature, history and political thought, with a special interest for ethical issues in fiction, nineteenth and twentieth century European and Russian Literature, and testimonial literature of genocide and mass violence. She pursues research on the memory of tragic choices in extreme situations between history and literature, on the making of moral dilemmas in the laboratory of fiction, and more broadly, on the history of values and moral sensibilities, the meaning of artistic gestures of testimony, the controversies between law and literature around freedom of expression and the morality of art, or on the issues of prioritization, triage and rationing in the field of medical humanities.

Her publications include four books, La Complication de l’Existence. Essai sur Kafka, Platonov et Céline, Paris, Classiques Garnier ed., 2010, Le Laboratoire des cas de conscience, Paris, Alma ed., 2012 (Emile Perreau-Saussine Book Award 2013), republished by Nuvis in 2022 and by Champs Flammarion in paperback in 2023, Qui vivra qui mourra. Quand on ne peut pas sauver tout le monde, Paris, Albin Michel ed., 2015, and most recently, Pourquoi le mal frappe les gens bien? La littérature face au scandale du mal (Flammarion ed., 2023).

Last Publications

Last Publications

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