Maury Young Bruhn

Assistant Professor of French This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
University Hall
(205) 934-8902

Research and Teaching Interests: Marcel Proust, Nineteenth-century French literature, Cognitive literary studies, Visual art and art history, Ecocriticism, The Arabian Nights in French and Francophone literature, Media studies, Science fiction

Office Hours: By appointment

Education:

• BA, Seattle University, English and French
• MA, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, French
• PhD, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, French

UAB Scholars Profile Opens an external link.

I hold a PhD from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and I have taught French language and literature at UNC-Chapel Hill and at Vanderbilt University, and English literature and culture at Université Paul Valéry in Montpellier, France. Before beginning graduate work at UNC-Chapel Hill, I earned a BA from Seattle University, taught elementary school EFL in France through TAPIF, and worked at a French immersion summer camp in Minnesota. These experiences have given me a deep appreciation for the ways in which language learning can increase students' creativity, give them new perspectives on the world, and help them take risks and grow.

My first book, Seeing Impossible Things: Proust at the Limits of the Reader’s Imagination (University of Wales Press, 2026), blends literary criticism, art history, and cognitive science to examine how readers visualize complex descriptive material in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, and the benefits of such descriptions for increasing imaginative flexibility. I am currently working on a second book about Proust’s influence on contemporary science fiction.