The TurkeyBlog is written by Geoffrey Barto. I have a masters degree in French language, literature and culture; have completed the coursework for a doctorate and am taking a break to work on a dissertation on Victor Hugo that I hope to finish "soon," really. My bachelors degree is in French, with a minor in chemistry.

As a part of my academic pursuits, I have studied one semester at the Université de Haute Bretagne in Rennes, France and have taken summer courses at the Institut de Touraine, in Tours, France. I was also co-editor of Tropos, one of a very few graduate student journals indexed by the Modern Language Association.

While French is the dominant theme in my curriculum vitae, my outlook is also informed by working in the family business, working five summers at McDonald's, taking business classes one semester between my bachelors and masters, having ulcerative colitis, having a fiancée who suffers from manic depression.

Back to Academia: About that dissertation: I am seeking to answer the question, did Hugo's abilities as an author stem from a mindset that impeded him in politics, and if so, is there something about the different ways politics and literature create narrative that makes being an author-politician a bad idea?

My longer-term question, loosely related, is why out of the thinking of the Enlightenment France created a statist and (Postrel would say) stasist society and the United States created a liberal, dynamic society.