Raphael Koenig
Assistant Professor
Education
Ph.D. Harvard University, 2018
M.A. Paris IV Sorbonne, 2011
École normale supérieure, 2011
B.A. Paris I, 2005
Areas of expertise
20th and 21st-century French and Francophone literatures and visual cultures, Disability Studies and Medical Humanities, Jewish Studies, Diasporic Literatures, Critical Refugee Studies, Translation Theory.
Bio:
Raphael Koenig is Assistant Professor of French and Comparative Literature, and affiliated faculty of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life.
Koenig’s research and teaching interests focus on the intersection of esthetics and social issues in literature, philosophy, and the visual arts, specifically with regard to Disability Studies and Medical Humanities, Jewish Studies, Diasporic Literatures, and Critical Refugee Studies. His recent publications explore the interplay between mental health and artistic production, specifically the reception history of works produced in psychiatric institutions in France and Germany. They include Portals: The Visionary Architecture of Paul Goesch (Yale University Press – Clark Art Institute, 2023), and the edited volume L’art brut, objet inclassable? (Bordeaux University Press, 2021).
Koenig has taught at the University of Toulouse II (previously Mirail) and at Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D in 2018. He holds undergraduate and MA degrees from the Sorbonne and the École normale supérieure in Paris, as well as an agrégation in Modern French Letters. He held the Leonard A. Lauder Fellowship in Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2019-20), and served as Head of Visual Arts for the Paris-based NGO Atelier des artistes en exil and as Director of the Cérès Franco Museum (France). Koenig is a member of the Editorial Board of In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies, and of the International Association of Art Critics.
